NationStates Jolt Archive

It came softly.

A little boy held the hand of this father tightly, by the creased and calloused hand only felt cold to his touch. The father lay on a soft bed, all white and in a white room. Doctors ran around, and some coughed, but the mother screamed and wailed, unaware of them. The green line ran flat, and a nurse unplugged the machine, ending the wail. The mother collapsed the to the ground sobbing, as her child stood there, looking with his soft brown eyes at the white sheet that covered his father.

“Daddy?”

A man crouched in the corner of the street, the waters from drain pipes above dripping onto his head in a steady stream of Death's footsteps. “No!” he screamed, shaking his hands about and his face streaming with an emotional rain of it snow. “Mary, no!” He crouched down in the corner and rocked back and forth, wailing in a primal scream of pain that no one heard. “Oh, please, I want to live again, oh please...”

No one heard.

Offices of the military were shut down. All windows stood opened, all ambulances sat still, all hospitals went quiet, all nothing went on. Power was left in a void, and nothing took it. Nothing was there. A bird called, and stared with anguish at its pool of water, waterless. The cage, thin wire painted a bright yellow, swung in the soft wind. Eventaully, it stopped, and the bird left through the cage door rusted wide open.

There was none.

A car idled in a driveway, a nice white sedan matching a nice white house. The car idled. Inside the house, a shower poured down, on the skin of the young girl's back, still warm but rapidly cooling. A dog ran around the house, barking and whimpering, nuzzling at the still hand that lay against the cool tiles of the kitchen. He licked it, but received no response. The car idled.

Its owner slept an infinite, dreamless sleep.

A voice of the Earth screamed a million silent screams, and life collapsed. Slowly, it seemed the evolution of man went into reverse. Humans went back down, buildings crumpled, and slowly there was none. A baby's cries died down into a contented nothing. Fans to ward of the summer heat spun in a futile effort, for there was no one to enjoy the cool air. And then the enrgy left, and then the lights went dark, and then life went dark.

Somewhere, a cat meowed and ran out the pet door, down the driveway lined by yellowed, dying grass, and out onto the streets. It looked both ways, and with one last mournful cry left.

The winds came softly.

They went just as soft.

Jone crawled across the landscape, pulling up her tattered skirt as she pulled herself up over a rusted old car, the dusted metal biting into her worn, thin skin. She fell over the other side of car and laid down, letting the sun bake and boil her skin. A cloud passed over, and the rain watered her mouth.

She pulled herself back up and leaned against the car, licking the blood off her wounds and occassionally falling into coughs that would rain green and red roplets on the concrete.

A dog walked up, its breathing pulling its mangy fur tight across the ribs. It sniffed at Jone curiously and wagged its tail, nuzzling up against her scarred face.

Jone forced her mouth open and cracked a twisted, yellowed smile. "Garry. That will be your name." She put her hand on the dog's back and rubbed it gently, never speaking.

After a few minutes, the rubbing stopped, and Jone laid down with a contented sigh and a small, withered smile. Her hand fell limp from the dog.

The dog turned around and whimpered, pushig its head into hers, but received no response. The dog howled before trotting off, to find somewhere where it too would lay down.

Jone continued to lay.

Two weeks earlier...

Garry pulled the jacket tighter, and hustled through the narrow streets, weaving through the crowd that gathered at the street vendors who peddled silicion chips and yarn sweaters alike. The noise seemed to be of one, moaning monster, a strangle blend of excited buzzing and angry shouts and murmured promises.

Garry reached a noodle vendor and huddled beneath the smallumbrella, where the drizzling rain wouldn't get him. He opened his wallet and removed a plastic card, which the vendor swiped without pause and returned as the LED screen glowed and beeped a confirmation.

"One small," Garry shouted over the dim roar, holding up a finger and pointing at the steaming pot of yellow strings.

The vendor nodded eagerly and spooned a cupful of noodles into a white, styrofoam bowl, slamming a lid on the thing and handing the warm food to Garry, with a pair of plastic chopsticks.

Garry nodded and flipped open the top of the lid, feeding himself as he swam back through the mass of humans. His cellphone beeped and he tapped the microphone on his jacket collar with a chopstick.

"Garry."

"It's Erin, we've got a confirmation. Where are you?"

Garry slurpeddown some more noodles and breathed in deeply to cool his mouth. "Hot."

"What?"

He shook his head. "Nothing," he responded into the microphone, finding a relatively quiet stall in the marketplace and sitting down on the flimsy cardboard table. "So the appointment's set up?"

There was a static laugh from the other end, and the voice replied. "Yeah, you meet with Jone in about twelve hours, so wherever the fuck 'Hot' is at, you might want to plan on coming back soon."

Garry nodded. "And the shipment?"

"The experiment's fine, Garry. Sustained, and all that. Look you want to-"

"No," Garry said quickly, cutting her off. "I got to go. See you later, Erin."

She snorted. "Or not."

Garry quickly tapped on the microphone twice and was disconnected. He finished the rest of his noodles, and threw the trash back down onto the streets. He pulled his hood over his head, and went back out, walking back to his hotel.

Present...

The branch swung from the tree tunk and seemed to want to just let go, and jump into the river below it like so many kids had done before. The river's waters were clear and the pebbles of the riverbed could be seen from the banks. Colorful growths of plastic swimming tubes bloomed along the river, their bodies slowly losing the air.

A boy lay on a picnic table, moaning in pain, and staring at a stream of red and black beneath him. He wondered where it came from, before he realized it fell out of his mouth every time he breathed. He drew in another raged, painful breath and looked back up at the skies, which were covered in a forest of gray clouds, threatening to unleash themselves.

A lightning crack sounded far away, but the boy could not see the flash. All he saw was the gray blanket that would encircle and warm him like his mother used to do, so long ago.

She would wrap him in a blanket and rub his back. The raindrops felt like her fingers to th eboy, cool but reassuring. And then she would sing to him, light drop sof water resonating with the wood bench. The boy dreamt once more, and he dreamt of his mother, and his last thoughts were of his mother.

The rain stopped, and moved on, leaving behind only dying strings of gray wool in the skies above.

Present...

Asher stood at the pulpit, caressing the worn and soft wood, smoothed over by years of preachers. The small room was filled with dust, and Asher imagined their white appearances, flashes in the light, floating around the room. The stand behind him, he imagined, still carried the purple cloth, brilliant and majestic even through years of use.

He stumbled out from behind the pulpit and fell against a chair, screaming and thrashing about, calling out to his congregation that laid transfixed in their seats. "I have seen it Coming!" he screamed, sobs trembling his voice and broken streams of tears falling from his pale, staring eyes. "I Saw it Coming! I Saw it, I Saw it... I could see the echoes of the dead souls, and lost, all praying with futile effort in their last mortal moments..."

Asher screamed again, a high primal scream that seemed to only echo nothing of what he felt, as he stumbled around the room, smashing glass windows and falling over the scattered remains of that which he built.

"Oh Lord!" he called, beating the ground and rubbing his eyes with his shirt, "Oh Lord! Though I be but Blind, I have seen it Coming! Oh why won't they respond, oh Lord, why?" He rolled around on the ground, scraping up a cloud of dust in silent terror before he flaid about again, trying to get up but collaspsing back down.

"Why?" he screamed twisting around and hugging the pulpit, his tears dripping onto the simply carved base. "Oh why?"

He continued screaming until he had no voice with which to scream. And still he screamed in silent terror.

18 Days Earlier...

The alarm went off at 5:30, and Jone found herself on her feet, the product of years of practice. Getting up this early had never been easy for her, but she knew she had to, and gradually her body was beginning to comply. She really woke up in the shower, the cold water bursting on her skin. She washed herself vigorously, removing any dirt or sweat that had accumulated since the night before, when she had showered last. She dried herself slowly with a towel, soft and comfortable, the only kind she would accept. She slipped into her clothes, presenting to the world a crisp, businesslike exterior, with just a flair of creativity. She always had her own special touch to add to her business clothes. A tasteful, almost invisible quantity of makeup, and manicured hair, and she was ready to leave.
Jone was known throughout her workplace as the odd one. She dressed carefully, she "dolled herself up", only to replace all of that with a sterile white lab coat. Nobody quite understood her, but they all respected her. She was a bit of a crazy, on the fringes of modern science, but her ideas were revolutionary. They accepted her quirks, but still wondered to themselves what she was thinking.
For lunch, her first meal of the day, she ate a salad with lowfat Italian dressing and a hamburger with fries. She sat chatting amiably with Garry and Erin, her lab associates. They talked about work, they talked about nothing but work.
Jone went home at nine, exhausted, but relieved that she would not have to sit alone in her home for very long before going to bed. She showered, undressed, put on her pajamas, and went to bed. The next day, the alarm went off at 5:30. Jone found herself on her feet.