I wasn't trying to change anything.
I was tired, irritated, and honest in the lazy way writers are when they think no one is really listening.
The city is rotting.
I wrote it because "crowded" felt boring and "corrupt" felt pretentious. Rotting was vivid. Rotting sounded alive.
I uploaded the chapter at 2:11 a.m. and shut my laptop before doubt could catch up.
Outside, the city hummed—engines, voices, stray dogs fighting over something invisible. Normal. Familiar.
I slept.
I woke up to sirens.
Not one. Not two. A pattern—too many to count, overlapping like the city itself was screaming through different mouths.
My phone buzzed.
BREAKING: Waste workers' strike turns violent in multiple districts.
Unidentified contamination reported near Old Market.
I sat up slowly.
Rotting.
I told myself it was coincidence. Cities flirted with collapse every day. All I'd done was describe the smell.
Downstairs, a man was arguing with a shopkeeper about water bottles. Someone coughed, wet and deep. Another siren cut through the air.
By noon, the news stopped using words like temporary.
By evening, they stopped pretending to know what was happening.
I opened my laptop.
I deleted the sentence.
Nothing changed.
That's when I realized the problem wasn't what I wrote.
It was that I had meant it.