3 posts tagged with "Absurdism"

K arrived at the "Comprehensive Affairs Processing Center" on a grey morning. No one knew exactly what "comprehensive affairs" this center processed, only that if you wanted to legally continue breathing, walking, existing in this city, you had to obtain a specific permit from here. No one remembered the permit's specific name; people vaguely referred to it as "that thing" or "the permit."

The Center was a massive, ugly concrete building, like a crouching grey beast, swallowing and spitting out anxious crowds. K took a deep breath; the air was thick with dust, sweat, and an indescribable musty odor, like old paper. He entered the main door and was immediately seized by the sight before him—a queue so long it disappeared from view, like a giant, docile, grey python composed of countless human figures, coiling through the hall and vanishing around a distant corner.

No one knew exactly how many floors the "Interdepartmental Joint Review Office for Tariff Exemption Lists" occupied, or indeed, if the building truly possessed a structure like "floors" comprehensible to mortals. It was merely rumored to be like a self-replicating grey dream, entrenched in some forgotten corner of the city. I, Shen Mo, am a low-level archivist here, number 718. My job, simply put, is to verify and file the lists of goods granted "exemption" status. However, the word "simple" here was like a faded lie, an ancient joke long lost to time.

When Wang Wei first heard his passport had been "buried," he thought it was a bad joke, or perhaps a mistranslation. He was standing outside the leaky tent at the temporary settlement, trying to glean some news about returning home from the official distributing relief supplies. The earthquake in Myanmar had struck without warning, collapsing buildings and shattering the already fragile lives of many.