And The Child Fled The Angry Gods
We have angered the Gods.
Somehow, in some way, we have earned their displeasure.
That is all I can think of as this madness engulfs me.
Mothers screaming for their children,
Babies stumbling about in confusion,
Thundering, earth-shaking footsteps
Throwing clods of earth and loose gravel high over my head.
There is a little paper mask around my face.
That is my only protection against this unholy wrath.
I am little more than a statue, stumbling through the swarm of citizens.
Lank hair, gritty skin, crusted clothes, chalky tears,
All enveloped in gray,
Hot and flaking,
The color of impending demise.
We have angered the Gods.
What have we done...
What have we done?...
What have we done?!
Coughing, gasping, rasping sobs;
A woman falls to the ground, choking on ash.
No one stops to help her.
We all part around her, like a tide around a crumbling stone.
She reaches out, to crawl, to scramble across the ground like an animal.
She wants to escape, but it is impossible.
Everyone ignores her in their own flight, even I.
More ash, falling about us as if thunderclouds have come unpinned from the sky.
Hard stones, too, pelting the ground
And the bodies scattered at my feet.
Still, we ignore them.
We must flee...
We must outrun the Gods...
We must live!
...But, somehow, I know we will not.
A stone misses my nose by the width of a hair
And rips my mask away.
To be trampled into the earth,
Like my little doll, my home, my innocence,
Like my safe little bubble of an existence.
Burning sandpaper coats my throat as I try to breathe.
I can feel the bruises and aching bones as I am thrown to and fro.
We have become animals.
We are little more than lambs
Spooked by a great monster
With no shepherd to protect us.
We run, we scatter,
Frothing at the mouth, eyes rolling, keening voices ripping through the air,
As calamity closes in on us.
What have we done...
What have we done?
In the name of all that is sacred,
What could we have possibly done?!
I trip over something--
A rock, a head, a dropped infant, I can't tell--
I fall.
Oh, the noise...the noise....
The screaming, the crying, the thunder, the rasping, hacking sounds of destruction...
Make it stop...make it stop...
JUST MAKE IT STOP!
I feel a foot connect with the back of my skull.
Pain...
Darkness...
Silence.
...
A thick blanket lay spread across the land.
Gray and gritty in my eyes, but fine and soft to the touch.
No one would guess what nightmares it hides,
The bodies lying in deep slumber down below.
The bodies of strangers...
Somewhere, the bodies of my parents, of my baby brother...
Somewhere, too, the body that used to be mine.
I feel nothing now.
No pain.
No confusion.
No fear.
I never awoke from that darkness to find myself here.
At first, there was nothing.
And then, there was me.
I am not meant to stay here long.
Perhaps I never was.
No one else is here.
I am all alone.
I wonder why...
...And now, I don't.
After all, questions like these are trivial now.
The air is calm, if still clouded over
Like the sea in the throws of a storm.
There are no screams.
There is no thunder.
The Gods sleep.
My people sleep.
Now, I must sleep.
We had angered the Gods.
Somehow, in some way, we had earned their displeasure.
Now, there is nothing.
Nothing to be displeased with.
It is as if the world had always been this still and silent and heavy with death.
Maybe it always had been.
Maybe we were simply too blind to see things as they were.