Generations

Chapter 14: Nightmare

Chapter 14: Nightmare

To drift aimlessly, to float without body.

Some would’ve said this is death, brought on by the separation of the two.

But he wasn’t dead.

He knew that much. Even if he couldn’t see with his eyes, or hear with his ears, or even touch with his skin, he was aware of his surroundings.

They just didn’t make sense.

He’d drifted down; away from a reality he thought he knew if this place could even be called that. It wasn’t as if he could control himself any, he’d just kept drifting further.

He couldn’t resist, heck he didn’t even try. Even he knew some things he just had to go along with, as with the darkness of this place, he had to just let it take him. It was as if, for better or worse, he knew this drifting, this force, would take him where he needed to go.

He saw in the city below, remnants of forgotten memories still locked within. He drifted towards it, calling to what he had forgotten, to what he knew, to the place he once called home. With the winds of this world propelling him, he descended, through the black smoke as it rose, obscuring the sun as he drifted closer.

He knew this place, these roads, and these buildings. It was his hometown.

But he did not know those flames.

The flames that consumed it all, that reduced the once mighty buildings to naught. Jason saw this, and as his feet hit the ground, he wondered where he was, or better yet, when he was?

He saw the apple tree he used to love climbing when he was a kid, the one he always dreamed of reaching the top of, but instead he got stuck in it and had to have the fire department rescue him. He bent down, the burned branches littering what he remembered as being beautiful green grass. He saw the apples, far from ripe, and now they never would be. Their red was charred black, their shape deformed. He’d wanted to cry, to go back to a world where everything was normal.

But he couldn’t.

He had taken a gentle step forward, taking in the sights, smells, and sounds of a world so familiar and yet so different. If anything, he’d been looking for something, something that felt familiar, something that felt right. But as he took each step, he walked guided by instinct, and confusion. He felt a familiar presence, still distant, it was one he recognized, but so different from what he remembered.

‘Return to the place you once called home’

That voice, one he knew, and definitely hated, but he listened anyway, seeing no other choice.

He’d taken off toward home, his feet pounding away, jumping over the smoldering, flaming, and oftentimes-unrecognizable debris.

But this didn’t matter, none of this mattered.

His purpose was to return home. The destruction, and all its heart wrenching pain, that was beside the point.

Jason pushed it all aside, but not of his own will. He just had to keep running.

Then he’d seen it. He stopped, taken aback by the flames, obviously fresh; and he could smell it all, the burning coals forever smoldering under the blaze, the ashes climbing into the sky. The dark light those flames emitted were the same ones that struck to the very core of his heart, despite the fact that he’d still been many yards away.

Jason’s whole body shook, partly from terror, but mostly from awe of this power. The raw destruction that obliterated his city, a city once filled with people and life, but now was gone. Void of the hustle and bustle of daily routines, it was now filled with death. What once was a summer of color and joy, now faded into colorless black.