Signing Off

Radio Entry 721

This is Eclipse Tristark, signing off.

A small pop and the twist of a knob, and the static ended. The radio tower was quiet, the slight whistle of the wind coming through the broken windows with the setting sun. Everything was cast in pastel yellows, fall oranges and a steady summer red. You'd think nothing bad would ever happen looking at the tranquil aura the sun was throwing the world in. Like the past four years could be erased...

"Hey, E, you finished up in there?" I turned in my chair to find a raven and platinum blonde haired, hazel eyed boy standing in the doorway.

"Yeah Cry, just about done here." Crysis Moreno Valdona. My second in command, recently promoted. He looked about as worn down as I felt. His eyes were puffy, pink. I knew better than to ask if he was alright. He was the calm, level headed one in our family. Whatever he'd been dealing with earlier, he'd gotten through it and was back to normal. I looked out of the window again. It was probably the last time I'd get to do so. My eyes fell on the thick, black tendril as it wavered and rose in the distance; the last remnant of our home. I grimaced, a dark thought running through my mind. I heard footsteps stop beside me.

"It's the only thing left, or th-"

"...the only moving thing anyways....hm." I felt Cry's sidelong glance. He was thinking the same thing. Morbid, incredibly so. I grimaced again. There was a low, constant rumbling in the distance., like a dog growling when it doesn't like someone. A hand gripped my shoulder.

"We'd better go, Eclipse. The symphony is getting closer." Cry took a last longing glance at the smoke in the distance and turned to leave. The symphony of the dead. The shuffling of their feet, the rustle of their clothes, the low baritone of their moans. 

"I thought I told you Cry," He stopped and turned around again, I looked over my shoulder to see his face contorted into an amused smirk. Bastard had done that on purpose, "it's Zephyr now."

He chuckled and continued out of the door, down the stairs and away from the radio tower, the crowd below parted for him and awaited their next set of instructions. They were scared, homeless, and desperate for any sign that the day's previous events had never happened. I used to pity the people who constantly yearned for the past, but now I suppose I counted myself among them.

I looked at the black smoke rising from my old high school. I started seeing movement across the field where me and my friends would sometimes play capture the flag. It was time to go. I walked across the room to the door, my boots crunching as I trampled on the dried Fall leaves that occasionally blew through the window. As I reached the doorway, I grabbed the door handle and tugged it behind me, the door giving a familiar click. I exhaled the breath I'd been holding and started walking down the stairs for the final time. I gripped the railing not so much for support as it was to remember what it felt like. Rusted, shaky, and cold. I descended to the last step and switched from hard metal to the soft wet ground and looked up at the closed door. I expected it to open. That he would come out smiling brightly and laugh about how gullible I was. I'd already hallucinated him more then a few times in the last hour. A creeping shadow behind a tree, a crouching form by a bush, a ghost in the corner of my eye always just out of reach. I sighed. These people needed a capable, focused leader but at this rate, I was deteriorating faster than I'd hoped. How much longer before I'd descended the stairs into madness, hm? I chuckled. Quite the romantic now, aren't you? His voice echoed in my head. I shut my eyes.

"How can you laugh at a time like this? I don't see anything funny about our current situation! Unless there's some inside joke you'd like to let the rest of us in on!" I opened my eyes to see Efran standing directly in front of me, his big grey eyes were angry, frightened.His brown hair was an unkempt mass.  Tears stained his face and made him look like he was four again crying about how he thought he'd gotten separated from us, clinging to my hand and promising me not to let go ever again. I smiled at him and laughed.

"You keep crying like that your face is going to get stuck, Effy. How many times have I told you that?" His face softened and he tried to smile, it just wasn't reaching his eyes. He grabbed my hand and fell to his knees, his face buried in my leg, like when we were kids.

"Just one more time. I promise. One last time." He cried harder into my leg, people looked on at us from the crowd with their grim expressions and cold wet faces. I knelt down and hugged him, smothering him. Warm drops escaped from my eyes before being assaulted by the cold unforgiving  Fall breeze. Time seemed to stop, it was if the world itself was holding its breath.

                                      Stop crying Eclipse. Or else you're going to get stuck like that.

                                                                                 <End Transmission>