Chapter 2 - Rubble

The light subsided after what seemed like years and years. I feel the spark of a million fires dance across my body as I struggle to open my eyes. It is strangely quiet– all that remains is the scent of ash, fire, and… rotting flesh? I painfully pick myself up and open my eyes to see what awaits me– Rubble, buildings aflame, people all around me, laying lifelessly on the ground as their blood paints a gruesome picture all around them. The flowers I once had are practically a pile of ash now. I scream out in terror and searing pain, but nobody answers. It then hits me. Everyone is dead. All of the life around me is gone.

With all my strength, I forcefully pick myself up and cry out for help, begging for at least someone to take my hand and guide me away from the unsightly horrors around me and the searing pain across my body. The waves of agony crashing throughout my body are too much to bear, and I collapse back down to the ground. Nobody is coming to save me. Nobody is left to save me.

All of the aspirations of the future I once had, the normal life I could’ve lived, the days with Her I could’ve spent… reduced to nothing in an instant. The brighter days I wished to have no longer exist, and the future I longed for is meaningless.

I don’t know how long it’s been until I decide I should get away from this area despite my aching, burned, and wounded body. The fire continues to spread, turning corpses and what used to be buildings into ash. Picking myself up, painfully slowly but surely, I limp out into the distant wasteland. Unsure of where I’m going, the once recognizable city I lived in now an impassable, unrecognizable mess of rubble.

The sky has an orange tint, despite the thick, dark, and debris-filled clouds fogging the air around me. Each step I take is a desperate plea for survival, and my body screams at me to stop and let the ground reclaim me as its own, but I don’t stop moving.

I have to keep living. I have to make it out of this hell.

For you, for myself and for the distant future that seems like nothing more than a daydream now.