it was morning and there was sun, silence and suffering. like any other town, in Sawol all streets were black, houses were yellow with locked doors and gates, and the people were walking and working and wearing worn out looks on their blank faces that day. the horses pulling the carriages of litter along the streets did not look pleased. the neighbourhood's parrots and parakeets were shedding human tears inside their cages. there was quietness on the streets, and all you could hear were steps of human feet and engines of the few cars that roamed about the borough. on the porches, driveways and gardens there were cats pulling out their hair with their teeth and meowing in pain and dejection. the spiders, the ants, the bees, the flies, the fireflies and the mosquitos were nowhere to be seen, and the snails carried broken shells up the walls and gates slower than usual. the water had blackened in every fish tank in every living room or waiting room or fish store in town. wild birds of yellow, black, green and blue fell from the sky and from their nests on trees, filling the streets and sidewalks with the stench of death. the butterflies lost their wings all at the same time and the caterpillars dried out and shrunk to the size of the dying potato beetles and ladybirds. people's dogs had tragic faces as their chicks, roosters and hens choked and tumbled down all over the warm grass of the backyards.
the rats, the mice and even the town's hamsters were vanquished mysteriously without the help of traps or poisoned bait. an awful display could be seen on the only lake there was in the area; the swans floated tumbled with their throats tied in knots as the ducks bled into the once crystalline water, and the coy fish drifted shattered around the other bodies.
the termites that were eating the town from the inside managed to survive for a while, but soon lost their tiny minds. insanity also took over the pigs that used to share the backyards to the houses with the egg laying birds, and eventually their heads came to convulse and explode.
reasons were just reasons, and, as usual, remained undisclosed. the people accepted the unexplained torment promptly, never assuming it to be some variety of heavenly punishment. that month during which all life in Sawl slowly withered was never spoken of ever again, and the inhabitants kept on living their lives as if nothing had happened.