Revelations

Just a little dream I had.

I felt many emotions on that day:  fear, pity, remorse, but most of all…helplessness.  There was no help for me…or for anyone.  Before all of the broadcasts ended for the final time, I heard the anchorwoman’s voice cracking with sorrow and panic as she broke the terrible news to the world.

          We were all too comfortable.  We were too comfortable with our technology, our governments, and our religions.  I think that most people didn’t really believe it.  We believed that someone would stop it, somehow…but the anchorwoman had delivered the cold, horrid truth with finality…we were indeed helpless.

          Twenty minutes…maybe less, she had said, and now about ten of them…ten precious minutes had been spent trying to cope and come to terms with what was happening.  I walked down the darkened hallway of my home, feeling the tremble of the Earth growing steadily with each passing moment.  I opened the door of my children’s bedroom to bid them one final farewell.  They were so young.  I fought back the tears and the lump in my throat, as I thought, “They were gypped.  They will never make new friends, go to Disney World, drive a car, fall in love.  It has all been stolen from them.”

          “Daddy!  What’s happening?”  My little girl yelled.  They were so scared.  They ran up to me and threw their precious little arms around my legs and held on for dear life.  They were looking to me for protection; thinking…believing that I could make all of this go away.

          I calmed them down as best as I could and lay them back in their beds.  I kissed them all on their foreheads and bitterly lamented all of the time that I should have spent with them.  “It will all be ok,”  I said gently, “Just go to sleep, and when you wake up…this will all be over.”  They calmed as best as they possibly could, and I walked out the door, looked back, and said, “I love you.”

          I walked out onto the back deck, and there stood my wife, the love of my life, watching the end unfold.  The sky was a deep red, almost black, and ablaze with the smaller ones burning up.  The big one, however, loomed in the distance, like a merciless hour glass.  The tremors had awakened ancient magma cauldrons, which had slept beneath the mountains in the distance.  Now the mountains spewed the magma forth with vicious vitality.  It was Hell on Earth.

          As my wife turned to me, with her hopeless, tear-streaked face, I could not help but think of the clear, Spring day when I had taken her picture on that very deck.  Her glimmering, smiling, loving face was so pleasant with the vibrant, blue sky and majesty of the mountains in the distance.  The image that I saw then seemed a sick perversion of that picture.

          I walked over to her and held her.  I closed my eyes and savored those last precious moments in the arms of my love as the ground tremored violently.  I didn’t see it, but I felt that it was here.  “This is it!”  I cried over the deafening noise as I held her tight, “OH GOD!”  Then…blackness.

          Sometime later, I awoke.  Don’t ask me how, but I awoke.  I was in some sort of museum?  Laboratory?  It was hard to tell.

          There were humans there.  Yes, humans, but…they were…different.  Their eyes were solid black and their skin shimmered with a metallic, copper tone.    

          There was something written on the walls, but it was in some sort of language that I had never seen before.  Three of the metallic humans were huddled around something that I could not see.  One of them turned to me and beaconed me to come over.

          He spoke to me, in his language, but I somehow understood him.  “Look.”  He said as he pointed to the object.  The object was a faded, seemingly ancient book, encased in a hard, clear substance.  I could barely read the cover, but finally made it out.  It read, A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  The metallic human spoke, as a cold ripple of terror swept through me, “This is from the old ones.  The ones who came before us.”

Reviews

[Benjamin Kroeger]

I think you did well to quickly convey the mix of emotions your main character is going through in the otherwise hard-to-fathom end of the world situation. I also liked the part after the main character woke up, definitely makes me wonder where the heck he is and how did he get there? Well done!

[Nix]

A very enjoyable read. Well written, friend.