Radiant Memories

Awoken from fiery rubble, dusting the remnants of ash off his legs, a panicked boy arises. Torched houses and tarred ground are but a skeletal reminder that the worst has yet to come. Fleeting flock staggering around as if their heads were cut off, their animal instincts pried out of them like a rusty nail in a two-by-four. He breathes deep as an infectious, humid gas rushes down his throat and fills his lungs like an anaerobic toxin. The boy coughs heavily at an attempt to rid his body of the foreign parasite only to be left gasping for oxygen, but there is none. Radiation bathes the air in waves of despair as children crowd the streets. The horizon, now a discolored hue as putrid as an overly crowded landfill of deteriorating bodies. As nervousness and confusion encapsulate him, he struggles to recall how he got here, and where he was going. His focus diverted to his burning skin, like an open wound drenched in alcohol. A Lack of oxygen in the air forces a black night upon his helpless body.

A shadowy outline of a familiar shape is slowly drawn in front of him as his eyes slowly begin to open. The stench of watery diarrhea fills the room as his body attempts to rid itself of the poison, a puddle forming under the barely living boy. He began to convulse like the seats of an archaic airplane in a spiraling descent. Death penetrated the room, "my son’s body shutdown, right in front of my eyes, I felt completely helpless. All I could do was watch as his last breathe escaped his little lips, and it was over. I knew I would be next."

He affirmed as he looked up from the floor, his long white cane resting next to his legs. There was not a single unscarred tissue on his body as he looked at me and said, "My blindness is a punishment, my scars are a reminder. I can still see his face, and I will forever feel his pain."