It was "the macaroni man" who was walking the dog who saw a bunch of "black people" macheti-ing our house on an afternoon.  We were fighting them off cleverly but a macheti clipped one of us and then we were losing as our mother pulled each of us into the front closet, all sweaty and hands over each others' mouths, not a sound, not a sound a white foreigner with us mouthed.

  Airports and planes all over the world had been being hijacked and commandeered.  Traffic diverted.  "It wasn't on the news," a white foreigner's Christian wife explained.  We stupidly asked, "Why not?" 

  "Oh, see, on our Continent...." The wife explained how people used radio and TV to play war.  Others were blotting out the day's sunshine by putting furniture and stuff in front of glass.

  "It's an interstice," one explained to another.

  "What the fuck is that?" Our mother demanded.

  They explained a certain kind of lawlessness because 

  Our mother swooped all children into her and Dad's room and she called the Operator to get our father on the phone. 

  She brilliantly asked him which workmen he'd asked to work on the house that May day.  He couldn't remember, why?  Well, she explained, this crew works with machete.

  "WHAT?" 

  There was static and sure enough the line went dead.  

  The world was messily moving into a lockdown and people were desperate for "needs" so some lead carpenters were hiring "temps".  

  Our mother and the siblings passed each other out the back window and we zig zag ran to macaroni man.  We had to hit the ground and crawl because the grandparents who lived behind us, their house had been taken over and people in hijab were chanting around a bonfire.  The smell of burning goat stung our eyes.