Sunder

A disheartening tale of a mother and her daughter.

Janet was lost.

The cacophony of the crowd only added to the intense turmoil, mothers screamed for their daughters and fathers attempted feebly to fight the crowds in search of their sons. One mother in particular was hysterical, her poor daughter was lost, she was right next to her when she felt her hand slip away, ripped backwards by a sudden jostle in the crowd. Troops were jockeying the entire city into the backs of transport trucks that groaned under the weight of hundreds of people. A thick rancid mist covered everything. 

She couldn't see anything, she had to find her daughter.

Trampled bodies carpeted the ground, every step on what was once a proud cobblestone square was now met by a soft red mud-like substance, adding to the already reeking air. She didn't care how many people she had to walk across, she had to find her daughter. People didn't care, they were scared, nobody knew anything and the only thing they did know was that they needed to get on those trucks. The troops were brutal to anybody that dared stray from the tightly woven pack of citizens. At this point it was all too common to hear a burst of rifle fire.

This fog was so heavy, so surreal. It blanketed everything, it even blanketed nothing, giving the air such a suppressive feeling that she could feel in her lungs, wanting to collapse from the pressure. She'd hold her breath forever, she had to find her daughter. Screams began to permeate the fog. Not screams of the scared, no, these were worse, screams of those who had nothing left, screams of those who knew without knowing that they were doomed to most painful fate imaginable. Piercing shrieks filled the spaces the fog failed to cover, the air was horribly alive. The troops were beginning to lose control of the crowd, fear was taking over and the most primal part of everyone's brain began to kick in with wicked force. Mothers began to climb over their own daughters to get into the trucks, to get to safety. Fathers pushed their sons back to make room for themselves. Panic was the only thing left on the entire spectrum of human emotion.

But Janet was lost, and she was going to find her.

A flash caught her eye, the unmistakable shape of a handmade teddy bear, its somber eyes somehow managing to glint even when no sunlight could penetrate the heavy mist. Janet was running as fast as she could in any direction that was away from this terrifying mess, until she began to bolt past the barrier. Troops moved to stop her, to try and redirect her to the few trucks that hadn't roared off just yet.

The fog was too thick, they were too slow.

"NO!" she screamed, running with every ounce of energy she had left. Her daughter... she had to save her daughter...

The troops caught her, they had to maintain the barrier. They wouldn't let go no matter how loud she screamed, or hard she thrashed. Tears more akin to rivers than drops began to flow from her eyes, her lungs hurt, her body was in pain, her mind was going numb. Her daughter, she was right there, just on the other side of the mist.

A transport rolled by, making an unsettling squelch as it drove over the layer of those too weak and too slow. The guard at the rear of the truck nervously tossed away a lit cigarette, it landed inches from where she now lay sobbing on her knees. Her legs covered in blood, her voice now absent, the fog was so thick all she could see was the glowing ember slowly fading from the cigarette.

Finally a scream, the source of which could only be Janet. She was so close, She could have almost reached out and grabbed her, pulled her back behind the barrier. For a few unbearable seconds there was only silence. Silence, and the amber glow in the mist. And then a rip, an unmistakable unsettling and utterly disgusting sound of flesh being rent from bone.

And then the glow was extinguished by a soaked, bloodied teddy bear arm.

Author's Note

This is a part of a larger story I'm working on, I hadn't gotten to this yet but I had the imagery rather vivid in my mind so I decided to flesh it out a bit.