Swithun Cooper Extract from The Interruption
S
ilja stood alone in the meeting hall – the room everyone hated but her, the room they could not do without – and took a ragged angry breath. The cold air stung her throat in a good way. Her pulse was still up but at least she was no longer trembling. She peered through the wintry dark at the broken windows letting in the rain, and the high, vaulted ceiling where the ugly English pigeons hid, shitting, pecking, and shuffling filth from their wings. This is why everyone hates it in here, she thought. But right now it was what she needed. Her argument with Kim had left her hot and brittle, lost in rage, as if she might weep and the weeping would split her limbs. She needed to be alone, to calm down, to take on a task she could actually achieve. The argument had been unwinnable for both of them. Here at least her work would have results. The meeting began at seven. It was six. The hall now needed light, warmth, clearing. She moved to the wall where the generators stood. When they’d moved in Kim had offered to rewire the meter, but Silja said no. It’s a disgusting habit, she’d declared, when squatters abdicate from the system but still want to feed off its benefits. It’s ideologically impure. We have rejected the old world and we will live with our constructed alternatives! Now she resented her principles. In each room sat a stubborn little generator, donated by Kim’s friends from HomoCamp, loaded with extension cords and portable heaters and standing lamps that shorted their fuses. Kneeling, she picked at the cables in the dark, checked the plugs, ran her hands down the generator’s edge. Slapping its face with the flat of her palm – expecting nothing, more to vent her fury – she
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