Molly - Part 1

Chapter 26

The father stepped in tandem with the shifting sand. The son was not far behind. The son was a troubled soul, his face always downcast. The apocalypse hadn't helped rid the son of this depression, and instead had developed a sort of satisfaction that everything he had predicted had come true.

"Dad."

An arch of light. Orange, almost like a ray of sunlight. The pillars came and went. The father didn't know what this could possibly mean. He was a fool, and had said as much to everyone he had ever met.

"Come on."

A funnel of metal, burrowing into the dirt. The father lit a match and huffed a cigar. Only a few left, he realized, tracing a hand against his chest. It was only going to get harder.

Before them was a bed of lilies. White as death.

The son waited at the edge.

"Well," the father said, chewing on the cigar.

"We have to."

"We could go around. Climb up."

"No, that's stupid."

The son took the first step, lilies wilting beneath his boot.

The father remembered gazing upon him, out of the womb, grasping for life.

Beyond, a gale stapled to the city. Vistas of grass-covered hills rolling, waves of natural splendor. The father thought it was beautiful, so he stopped to take it in, but the son did not wait and so he was forced to follow.

"I need some rest."

He could feel the resentment burning inside. The son threw his backpack on the floor, then waited.

He'd gone through about half the cigar. Reaching into his pack, the father took out a roll of foil and ripped a part of, covering the end of the cigar, burning his fingers.

The son was staring at the ground. He did not move, nor did he speak.

From behind the vale, a woman appeared. She was gorgeous, wearing little and surrounding her was a strange light that reminded the father of fire. She consumed the veil wherever she stepped. She was destruction incarnate intermingled with the woes of this time and place.

The son was gaping. The father knew the burning in the heart, the fluctuation in the chest. He had felt it many times before. He had felt it when looking upon the mother, dead and gone now.

"She's not real."

"I don't care."

He began to fumble forward like a beggar. Wires stretched from one side of a block to the next, clumped together. Orange mist, sifting, rolling into their lungs.

The vale was being destroyed. It was happening before their very eyes.

The son fell to his hands and wept aloud, the woman on fire slowly drifting down to him. The father drew his emitter and aimed. Fruitless. Her eyes, like the rest of her body, was fire, a strange ethereal cloak resting on her shoulders.

"Please," the father said. "You will die with the rest of them."

They came from the mist, men garbed in the skulls of long-dead saints, their black cloaks reaching the ground.

The father didn't know what to do. He had no more words. He was so tired he thought he might faint.

"I don't care anymore," the son said, reaching up. "I don't care if people die or live. Just give me one second of sleep. That's all I want."