And back into the normal workday we go. It is nice to have a three day weekend, but the week always feels so strange to me after that, like my body knows I missed a step but can’t quite figure out how to tell my brain. Oh well, at least I’ll know why I’m off, which is a nice change. Usually I’m off and I can’t figure out why. Like when you get a song stuck in your head that you know you haven’t actually heard in several years and can’t figure out why it popped in. Regardless, it is time for the morning prompt and I’m sure you are ready for me to end my mental meanderings. So lets get to it then shall we? To the timers!
Interesting. Not what I was expecting, but interesting. I thought house fire when I first looked at the prompt this morning, but apparently other ideas surfaced.
Tuesday, January 19th: Everything, aside from a few stored items, was destroyed.
Everything, aside from a few stored items, was destroyed. They surveyed the wreckage in silence. Jessie felt a strange sense of unreality. One moment she would be looking at unknowable wreckage, bricks and stones and belongings turned into an alien landscape. She would stare as though a stranger, having no idea where she was standing. Then she would see an almost untouched street sign. Garrison St. and she’d realize that she was standing at the corner of Garrison and Welty. It was a place she stood thousands of times in her life.
On one corner was the green grocers and across the street was a tea shop. A bakery stood across from the tea shop and the post office in the final building spot. She knew exactly where she was and felt on firm ground. Then she would look to the green grocers and see only a deep crater lined with broken stones, the edge of one half crushed pip leaking water and everything else turned into something unidentifiable. An entire building reduced to refuse. Her mind balked at the idea that his could have been the place she shopped only the day before. Her mind refused to pair the two together and once again she felt lost, adrift in an unknown sea.
Jesse moved on and found herself wandering away from the more familiar locals. There was nothing left for her there. She had been to see her home first. What the bombing didn’t destroy the first that came after consumed. Anything that remained was twisted beyond use or recognition. Worse, amid the rubble of what had been the building next door, she had seen something she could identify. At first she thought it was a glove, gleaming white and somehow managing to survive untarnished. A part of her wanted to pick it up as a sign that not all was lost. Then she saw the blood and realized it wasn’t a glove, but a hand. She recognized the scar that ran along the side, could name the person it belonged to. After than the unidentifiable rubble did not seem so bad.
There was worse in other parts of town. Her part of town was sparsely occupied at the best of times and was easily evacuated, for those that wanted to go. Most did. There were more grizzly remains in the other parts of town but the dead were strangers to her and somehow that made it easier to see them. The images would not haunt her the way Mr. Jeffries hand would. Here the streets weren’t familiar spaces and the people were unknown. She could at least pretend that this misery was happing somewhere else, to someone else’s home. She knew the pretense wouldn’t last. But for now there were things she needed to do. The pretense served as her shield and would let her focus enough to do what needed to be done. After…well after would be after.
Ten til Midnight 