Morning all and welcome to Friday. It has been quite the emotional week for me and I am happy to reach the end of it. Next week should be calmer and then we will roll into August calm and steady. With luck. Shall we start today’s prompt then? Excellent.
not exactly the happiest way to end the week, but it is what came out. Not sure if it will go anywhere but it is interesting. At least, I want to know what the disaster is. Perhaps once i find that out a story will unfold.
Friday, July 22nd: Terrified, they fled their homes.
Terrified, they fled their homes. They merged into a sea of people flooding the streets and moving away from the destruction. They caused their own destruction in the wake of their departure. Lawns were gouged, the formerly well cut grass churned to mud. Those who slipped and fell were trampled. The luckiest of the fallen escaped with bruises and minor breaks, many were not so lucky and the death count rose.
The fire was what initially drove them, but it wasn’t just fire. There was a scent in the air, blood and violence danced on the wind. The scent caused animals, both human and otherwise to sniff the air, tremble in fear and race away.
Families were separated in the chaos. There was no thought of sticking together, not once they left their homes and began running. It was only later that those who survived, those who made it to safety began looking for the lost.
Almost no family made it in tact. Entire swaths of the city had been levelled, nerely every outlying subdivision was a smoking ruin. And no one had answers. Some claimed it was an attack, unknown enemies using the cover of darkness to enact their evil plan. No one was certain what that plan was. Others claimed it was some sort of natural disaster. What sort of disaster it was and what natural processes started it was likewise a mystery. Any attempt to fit it into known systems met with several points of failure and had to be dismissed. Still others decided it was some sort of condemnation. It was either a punishment from an angry god or something demonic had risen from the depths to destroy humanity and use that destruction to challenge god’s dominion over the earth.
Once it was realized that there were no sectors spared. No privilege for the holy or direction towards the unworthy, those who clung to religious reasoning leaned into the unholy war and signs appeared like mushrooms after a rain admonishing people to repent and be wary of those who would recruit them for the demonic army.
Many were angry, most were grieving and many were numb. The numb would wonder from place to place as though searching for something or someone lost. Occasionally they would surface from their haze and realize that what they were looking for was gone forever. Then they would spend time with the grieving before sinking back into the numb oblivion. I wasn’t certain whether to pity them or envy them. My mind was clear, but grief was a heavy weight with sharp razor blade edges. No one was left, nothing remained. I was across town when the attack hit and escaped with strangers. I barely made it out and had several broken fingers as a result of my misadventure. I was one of the luckier injured. I had been saved only by rolling onto a stair case. The concrete battered my ribs, but it gave me the space I needed to regain my footing and rejoin the fleeing instead of being trampled. Those I loved were among the first hit. They barely made it out of the front door before they were consumed.
When things began to settle, my first act of post evacuation, had been to travel the ranks of the dead and identify their remains.
Ten til Midnight 