The Plague by Kevin Chong

Author:Kevin Chong
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781551527192
Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press
Published: 2018-05-10T00:00:00+00:00

Siddhu grew up in a house with an above-ground swimming pool. His parents had two additional properties that they either rented at a discount to extended family or left sitting empty. His mother drove only German cars. His parents spoke of deprivation in their childhoods: too many family members, too little space, bill collectors that had to be evaded. As a young man, he believed that he was fortunate, anointed by fate to live on the crest of his family’s rising fortunes.

In his adult life, Siddhu revised that estimate. He saw wealthy foreigners arrive, setting up their children with sports cars, mansions, and clothing budgets. He had wanted to move into the city (and away from his family), but kept waiting for real estate prices to fall to realistic levels. In his self-pity, he considered himself one of the forsaken. He needed only to do his job to realize how wrong he was. In the city he saw desperation and those who lived in chemically blotted consciousness.

The city’s visible history was characterized by a series of dramatic demographic reversals. Asian people moved into areas previously inhabited by white people. White people moved into places previously inhabited by Asians. Rich people moved into places where poor people lived. Neighbourhoods once avoided had become hotspots for professionals and the creative class. Other homes, once brought to life by families, sat empty as investment properties.

It should not have sounded so unlikely to Siddhu when he first heard reports about needles found in the city’s most prestigious residential neighbourhood, Shaughnessy. He was too distracted to take notice. These tips came the week that he changed jobs. He could not pursue the story for his old paper, and he half-thought the tips would lead to a hoax or a piece of transgressive performance art. But in his first week at GSSP, he heard Horne-Bough mention squatters, dozens of them, in vacant homes and future teardowns.

He spent the Tuesday afternoon walking through Shaughnessy. He scoured Devonshire Park, where needles were allegedly discovered, but found only uncollected dog waste. He knocked on doors, but no one answered.

It was by chance that he saw a man pushing a shopping cart through the gates of a Tudor-style mansion. Its lawn was overgrown and its towering evergreens fenced in orange plastic mesh—a telltale sign of a teardown. Siddhu followed the man up the driveway to an open garage door, where the shopping cart was parked.

He entered the house and walked into the kitchen. There were bottles and lighters and needles on a marble counter-top. Beyond was a carpeted family room in which lawn furniture and the back seat of a car had been set up. Half a dozen men and women in hoodies and baseball caps sat around staring at the unlit fireplace. He did not know these people, but he recognized them. This was the part of the population that many citizens had wished away. They’d gotten their wish; these people were no longer seen—and yet, they were never closer.

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