Happy Friday everyone. It seems we have almost made it through another work week and the weekend is almost in sight. I don’t know about you but on Thursday night I suspect that the paperwork fairy arrives, waves her wand and doubles the amount of things on my desk that need to get done before I can call it a weekend. Despite several intensive sting operations, I have yet to catch the fairy in the act, but I am working on it. Until then, we have the friday morning writing prompt. Timer’s set and pens and keyboards eady? Good then lets go.
Huh. Not at all where I thought that would go. I fell asleep last night to a documentary on Egyptian Mummies last night so I’m not even sure where this came from. The mysteries of the mind.
Friday November 13th: Her smile widened.
Her smile widened. It was a Cheshire cat grin. All the humor was at my expense. I braced myself for the mocking, but it never came. As she opened her mouth, the siren wailed overhead. Its screams rent the air and anything she or anyone else had to say was lost. People scattered like cockroaches before a light. Tasks were left unfinished, items dropped, daily life forgotten as everyone scurried to find a place behind closed doors. We had been running drills for months and everyone knew their place. But behind the siren we heard the rumble of engines, the thump of marching soldiers.
They were coming.
The sting I felt from my recent humiliation faded as I fled. She went one way and I went another. I hoped we would meet again when the sting had faded, the memory of my failure faded from her mind. I dared not hope it would be replaced by anything else. That seemed too close to wishing the enemy well and bringing damnation down upon my neighbors. We were the last hold outs. The last part of the empire not to be conquered.
Technically, the empire had already fallen. For all practical purposes the Golshan Empire was no more. The Fresian blockaded it at the beginning of the war. Once certain no one could escape, the order to surrender was given. It was refused. Those inside the trapped city fought to get out while the rest of the empire fought the Fresian’s from the other side. The Fresian line held firm. They didn’t seek to expand, just to hold. To lay siege to the city. One month, then two passed. At the three month mark when the city again refused to surrender, became content to simply out wait the invaders, the fliers arrived. They swarmed across the sky their forms when viewed from below looking like giant mosquitos. For an empire whose earliest history included a fight with the swamps and then later with the disease that came from them often borne by swamps of mosquitos the image was ominous. Though they managed finally to quell the disease, these mosquitos brought a different death.
Lightning bounced from the man made mosquitos, appearing to bounce from one to the other, gathering strength with each pass until it was large enough to drop on the city. Blue whit light streamed down and left destruction where it landed. There was no safety. Stone was smashed, glass melted, even gemstones shattered. Anything flammable was set ablaze. People were crushed, burned alive and smothered with smoke.
For a few, they experienced all three before being released to death. The destruction lasted until not a single building was left standing and only the defensive walls surrounding the smoldering rubble remained. Then the walls came down. A few survivors struggled out of the wreckage, or so the stories went. But the Fresian guard slaughtered any who were left alive. They were not interested in anything but the land. They wanted no people, they had their own overpopulated nation to fill in the land once emptied. Once the capitol was destroyed the soldiers turned away from the city, clearing the country side as they made their way to the next nearest city. Methodically they made their way through the empire, leaving only ruins behind until Kevta was the only city remaining. As the sirens fell silent, I could hear the buzzing whine of the Fresian mosquitos and knew they now approached. This was not a drill.
Ten til Midnight 