Voices Amongst Ruins

"Emma!" Rings from outside.

Rays of sun dance through the flowing curtains of the window and lay across the stained tiles of the kitchen.

"Emmaaa!!" It gets closer.

A small skinny boy runs in from the back door covered in mud.

His facial features are blurry to me but his smile is big, bright, and clear.

I squint but still can't make out his features into a recognizable face, yet I still know who that smile belongs to.

"Manny! How did you manage that?" I huff out a laugh and set down my paint brush at the base of the easel propped in front of me.

The canvas is covered in beautiful blues and yellows pieced together in a portrait of a middle aged woman with a face hard to make out but eyes identical to mine.

As I step closer his face gets blurrier.

I kneel in front of him, getting to his level face to face when suddenly his uneven features start to bleed.

I blink and reach for his face only to be met with my hands filling with his shredded flesh and the heat of his blood pouring through my fingers.

It drips and pools onto the once beautifully sun adorned tiles.