V of Cups

That odd-looking kid with the NOFX t-shirt who loaded the groceries in your corner store, and the hooded Norwegian gunner, they must have told you something. And the mass jailbreak, did that give you a clue? All those long-stay convicts, docile for twenty years, leaving in ones and twos over a week in June. The people of the boundaries and the outer limits. Soldiers, police, renegades and reprobates.
Buskers flocked to street corners; jugglers, trombonists, preachers, poets and men with dancing monkeys in hand-embroidered waistcoats. The paving stones were frying-pan hot in the early afternoon, and at night it was warm enough to sit outside in a t-shirt, drinking iced vodka-and-coke.
Friday.  About six in the evening. Sitting in a corner café, ogling a couple of girls too young to flirt with, when the sky turned black. There was a flash of light in the east, and the sun was gone.
“Terrorists!” he said.
But they weren’t terrorists; they weren’t even murderers, though it was hard to tell the difference in the dark. By the Sunday, 5th Avenue was in flames, and a thousand
drug dealers hung crucified on lamp-posts.