Zolomon's Jewels: the story of poor Ross (prologue)

This is not dedicated to anyone.

Among the things Ross didn't know (no emotional codebreaker), silent and grinding things, roots writhing penile and tentactular deep in bone-choked subterranean clay, here thick clot-blocks heavy with glints of grit, there sliding with runnels of ditchwater pulsing down from the burial pond nearby festering through unkennable strata of crust, was that at the center of that beigely bland building hunkered a mute threat squat, a convergence of malevolent force, several tendrils horribly entertwined like the proverbial nest of snakes but this time no viperish bolus but a sundering nexus of every vicious angle modernity plays 'gainst our hoarse, yammering little lives, empty by default until the straining-toward whatever goal comes shining clear (?) from some sad, thin intersection between biography and history--good sex, a faithful, competent body, task assignments blending challenge and possibility, fetter-free exponenting of your sense of who you might really be, sleeping late when you can, whatever--a vile, rotten nexus of pressure and selfishness and extraction, bullying and judgment and lack and walls and bars and surveillance, expectations left unclear and murky desires designing exitless hotel-lives of juiceless, watery hopes even so unsatisfied: poor Ross didn't know life the world hated her with plans cruelly to use her, grind her every protruding feature away, mash her to a gruel-like paste undifferentiatable from any of these other humans blasted into oblivion. She just thought she had a job.