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“I remembered the night the stars fell from the sky. I remembered the pillars of grey smoke that blotted out the silvery sliver of the goddess lamp. The reflected light of the flaming trees bounced from one cloud-like pillar to another. It lit my village with a warm glow reminiscent of a darkened room lit by a birthday cake for one of the great-grans. I remember thinking it had smelled good as it all burned. Then, the screaming started.
 The villagers that had been trapped in their homes when the stars fell were screaming, crying, begging for help. Some of us had rushed to do so. Then the grasses caught fire too and we had no choice but to run. When we realized there was nowhere left to run, some of us began to panic while others just gave in to death. My brother had been a panicer. I watched, defeated, as his hair began to melt against his blistering skin. He had looked like a roasting pig. He had sounded like one too. I sat on the warm grass as everything burned around me. I think I might have cried, but the heat made it hard to tell. From somewhere in the flames shadows began to form and shift like the smoke had taken on a form more solid. The shadows twisted strangely as they closed the distance. I remember suddenly feeling terror.  Not the confusing fear that had taken my will to survive and left me sitting in the center of an inferno, but the terror that even strips away both hope for anything before death claimed me, and anything after death as well. I think we had screamed too, the few of us that hadn't tried to conquer fire with flesh, as their faces broke past the wall of smoke and flying ash. Their mouths stretched from one ear to the other and were filled with rows of tiny white teeth. Saliva dripped from the tongue of the thing that advanced toward me. I remembered it was thick and tinted red. Then, I remembered waking up here. Do you know where here is? Can you tell me?”
“I don’t know for sure,” he said, “I think it might be a stomach. I figure that’s why it burns.”

1 comments:

Hikialani said...

That was great. Your missing a few words here and there but it's still good.