The flag fluttered timidly in the gentle breeze, a lone and fragile source of movement in an otherwise rigid landscape. Its crest, which in years past could invoke anything from blinding fear to cautious suspicion and more often than not an almost suicidal loyalty, was now torn and shredded, its symbolism torn down along with the great monolith it had represented. The pole on which it rested was rusted and stained with the long, slow decay that only the onset of time can bring, its base firmly embedded in the roof of a shattered convenience store.
     Rising and falling, the wind passed through the skeletons of suburban homes, their symmetrical layout providing a bizarre patchwork of broken masonry. Trash littered the remnants of living rooms, rotting fruit providing brief flashes of colour in an otherwise grey world.Occasionally, the current would pick up an involuntary passenger, a leaflet offering free food for expensive sermons or a cutting from a now archaic news tabloid, describing in detail the exploits of an impotent god with a penchant for cheap whores. These inanimate passengers drifted along passively, waiting to be plastered across one of the few remaining walls which dotted the plain or to be lodged securely in the ribs of some faithful hound, dog and master long gone into oblivion. But the wind carried on, oblivious, indifferent to what it carried or what it disturbed.
     Rising higher now, into the black clouds that stretched from horizon to horizon, it began to pick up speed, sweeping through the sickly mesh of vapour which promised at any moment to vomit its putrid contents onto the choking earth. Swirling the mass of air and vapour into a cauldron of poisonous death, coaxing the fat clouds to shit all over this wretched refuse. Then silence, as the wind slowed down to a crawl, dipping gently below the apex of the sky, letting the swollen bellies of gas shift slowly back to their beds.
     The wind hung high as if to survey the full extent of it's domain. Here it was lord, here it was master, here was where the last remnants of culture had been slowly turned to dust by the eroding caress of it's arms.  Philosophy, enlightenment, ignorance and bigotry were all helpless in this quiet slaughter of an age, where no resistance could be offered, as the voice of the apes, their incessant yelping, had been silenced in five minutes by the hands of their most trusted leaders. But the wind was unaware of its sovereignty,  to its own dominance. Here was a king.