With the acquisition of DECA, I felt an impending sense of needing to get this completed. I want to share a story that I’ve had in my mind for years. It is time that I finally place that story here. I hope you all enjoy. I don’t know the timeline of the next piece, but I do hope it’s soon. Disclaimer, mature content follows.
Enjoy.
The decrepit stench of bodies fills the air. Gasoline drips from the engines of cars and robots alike. Seemingly liquid fire flows as the gasoline meets the many flames dotting the landscape. Rivers of flame leave behind their wake streaks of tar-like black. The distant view looks like waves of the ocean as the heat rises from the ground and everywhere around it.
Kurtz wipes his brow…and then his eyes…and falls to his knees as the stinging pain of debris and dust and smoke and soot burn his eyes. Might as well have just poured salt into them. In his obscured vision, he feels the wedding ring on his finger. He looks down at it, wipes it with his dirty fingers, and it glows gold. The only color in this new gray world. He lets out an anguished cry as he begins to recall the moment that led to this.
----
The explosions were many. First there was a loud boom, followed by shrieks of falling missiles of what he believes to be heronium-infused warheads. The fall-out of these explosions made their targets shine with an odd green hue. Kurtz and his wife saw a few explosions take place into the distance through the second story window before they felt one hit nearby their home. Running down the stairs, with his wife’s hand in his, they descend. They round the corner towards the cellar door. The cellar door in sight, they bolt towards it together. He opens the door and yells, “we’re almost inside!”
He steps down onto the stairs and turns around. His mouth open, he looks at his wife at the top of the stairs. He could still remember her final words to him as they began to feel the explosions come ever so nearer. Or did he feel them? He doesn’t truly remember, because it appeared to him like time halted for a millennium.
Flashes of memories fly by his mind, peppering his memory of the final moments…
He remembers holding her close while they were watching the explosions begin, telling her he would protect her, that he would shield her, that he would stop time itself to make sure she was safe.
He remembers running having only breathed a few breaths in between…or did he not breathe at all?
He remembers his wife’s tight grasp, a forever clench, a grip of love and fear and adrenaline pulsing through his veins…
Now, at the top of the stairs, she looks down at him, tears in her eyes, quivering lips, with a determined stare and said,
“I will always love you.”
The blast rocked Kurtz down the entire flight of stairs onto the cement floor below. Kurtz’s vision was vanishing, but he could remember just one thing. The glowing green hell-hole above him where his house used to stand. And then the splinters of wood from the stairs flew towards his face and then…black.
………
When Kurtz woke up, he wondered…has it been days? Or hours? He doesn’t even remember how he got out of the cellar. All he knows is that his feet are on solid ground while the area around him burns with bodies and cries for help, lost kids trying to find their parents in the debris, almost-dead bodies looking up blinking. Some of their pain so great, they let out no sound. His mind’s memories are fragmented. He didn’t feel his arm blown off from the shoulder until later. Funny thing is, he did keep wondering why he kept missing things as he tried to grab hold of them while he stumbled about the scene.
He inhales. The decrepit stench of bodies fills the air. Gasoline drips from the engines of cars and robots alike. Seemingly liquid fire flows as the gasoline meets the many flames dotting the landscape. Rivers of flame leave behind their wake streaks of tar-like black. The distant view looks like waves of the ocean as the heat rises from the ground and everywhere around it.
Kurtz wipes his brow with his left hand…and then his eyes…and falls to his knees as the stinging pain of debris and dust and smoke and soot burn his eyes. Might as well have just poured salt into them. In his obscured vision, he feels the wedding ring on his finger. He looks down at it, wipes it with his dirty fingers, and it glows gold. The only color in this new gray world. He lets out an anguished cry as he begins to recall the moment that led to this.
He cries and screams a scream that no man should exhale. His wife! Where was his house? And then he realizes that there is no way she could have survived.
And then the most horrid thought flashes through his mind. Kurtz stops and stumbles when he realizes…he might even be breathing in her dust.
His head begins to ferociously pound as his exhales become more than his inhales and he falls to the ground face first. He didn’t even feel the slam of the pavement, but once he realized she was no more, Kurtz’s mind shuts down from the trauma.
“I will always lo—"
Lights out.
