"Aunt Lindsey!" I shrieked, watching her collapse.
Anna began to cry. She ran to her bedroom and locked herself in.
Aunt Lindsey's glassy watered down emerald eyes were peeled open in eternal horror. Her mouth was still open, forever silently screaming. The oxygen mask was still in her cold hand, a warning.
I dragged Aunt Lindsey's cold, lifeless body into the hallway and down the stairs. I forced open the door and buried Aunt Lindsey in the ash. I'm not religious, so I didn't pray. The world was falling apart around me anyways, so it's not like it made a difference.
I surveyed the damange around me. There was a charred path where the pyroclastic flow had reached. I could still see smolders of gray smoke against the black sky. In the distance, I saw Lake Michigan, gray with ash. Black rocks reached up from its surface and relentless gray waves crashed against them. I assumed the black rocks were made of magma that made contact with the lake and cooled. Broken buildings reached towards the black skies like gnarled fingers. The streets between the buildings were empty and ash covered, as lifeless as the rest of the city. There were no footprints. Besides the bones and the charred corpses scattered across the landscape, there was no sign of life. Like the enitre city was dead. like it had just been abandoned.
I screamed. My screams were muffled with my oxygen mask. I screamed to the ash covered city. I screamed to see if anyone was still alive. If anyone had the strength.
But I was only met with silence, the sound of death.
YOU ARE READING
Ashes and Daydreams
Science FictionDarlena's life is normal. She lives with her mother, father, and sister, Anna, in a small Milwaukee apartment beside Lake Michigan. She remembers a calm, peaceful life in Wyoming, where she used to live close to her relatives, but she was forced to...
