We burn. The world

Submitted into Contest #60 in response to: Write a post-apocalyptic romance.... view prompt

6 comments

Science Fiction Romance Drama

It went like this -


A deafening noise. A dark cloud. A world, void of color.


People covering their ears. All as one, shaking like epileptics when an attack strikes.


Something was going on in their heads. Grown up people begging for their mothers, huddling in on themselves. A lonely girl, with orange hair and freckles, running naked in a sunflower field, looking up at the sky shouting for someone. Some didn't wait for the impact, some lost their minds straight away.


I took your head. I pressed you against my body, locked your ears with my palms so the noise wouldn't get into your head. You looked at me, you said, kiss me one last time. I was thinking how to protect you.


A building behind you fell on a group of kindergarten kids gathered around their chaperone. They huddled in closer, instead of spreading away to avoid the massive concrete block. Their guardian, looking up, waited a millisecond and screamed her lungs out.


A pink pair of a small girl's glasses escaped the fall.


Your eyes had frozen on them. I let go of your ears and cover your eyes. Will you kiss me or not? You say. How can I shield you from all of this?


A burning rubber car wheel rolled toward us. I opened your eyes and grabbed your sides and took you away from the road. You asked me to kiss you again. I am wishing I had ten hands to shield all of you. The wheel rolled down on a group of Asian tourists. An old man tried to side duck from the wheel. Instead, he crushed on the ground, and three last times, his chest moved up and down, so heavy like the whole world was resting on it. Then he became still.


I turned your farce toward mine. A tight grip on your chin. Looked you straight in the eyes, while the horizon was burning and the buildings were crumbling in on themselves. I wanted to put you to rest, you seemed at rest, yet I still felt I needed to explain.


Remember this moment, I said, it will never be this beautiful again.


The cables broke between two telephone poles. The poles fell on a burning field of wheat and the wood caught on fire. The electricity that still flawed between the wires was cut as the two of them stretched so far they broke. The poles all began to tumble and crumble like series of dominos.


You gazed into me, wrapped your hand around my neck and smiled in your crazy naughty way.


It began to rain. A woman opened an umbrella. An Earthquake broke out. The ground split between her feet, she fell into the crack, not able to decide to go left or right. She held herself up with the umbrella between the split parts of the world. The umbrella soon broke. I knew this is Dante's Inferno rising up to us.


There was a pity in your eyes, which made you even more beautiful. I caressed your brown hair, so pretty under the glow of the burning world.


The first crows began to fall dead. Their feathers floating up before settling down under heavy rain. The city started to smell of crow and human blood. The wind took this smell all over. There was no place in the world without the intensity of the scent of blood.


Decomposition.


The burning wheat took me to my mother's house where she extracted her freshly baked bread out of the oven.


Long summer days, running around, looking at the distant future unrolling over the horizon of the big city as we stood on a cliff with the boys. We all were headed there - to the big world. I wonder where you were that day, I wonder what dreams you were dreaming. Standing in a dream in its glimmering lights and skyscrapers that are now rubble under our feet.


You put your hand inside my shirt and quickly bring me back into the present. I shouldn't miss a single second. You are right. I never felt so one with you before. Fire spread on me straight from your eyes.


The deafening scorching of the skies entangled with the screams of mothers and cries of their children.


Hundreds of Battleship Potemkins were playing around us all at once. Faces of horrified people, Scream - souls, getting naked of their bodies. The skyline blurring into incomprehensible dilemmas that had no point to be resolved anymore. After all, all that's said is said, all that isn't, will never be.


All that hasn't been done, all the potential energy, will soon perish in one inelastic collision.


Your breathing got heavy and close to my hearing. Defeated the screams. Your smell defeated the electrocuted perfume of blood and muddy water.


It was only you, the last setting sun behind. The smile. A smile to die with. A sharp blade - full moon of a smile that cuts a person's mind to pieces.


And a thousand birds looking for a free place in the sky to flap their wings.


And we stood still.


The first meteorites are visible in the distance. Strange how all of this destruction is happening on the same day. Seems too decisive.


You pulled away from me. Before I had time to react, you took my hand and ran away. I just don't know what from. Where do you run when the world is ending?


You opened a door to an empty record store. You threw stuff down from the shelves. Mozart, Bach, Eminem, Beatles, all fell side by side. Circles of world vinyl history covered the floor of what would soon become nowhere. You smiled in your way at the mess you were making. You were as wild as the nature. Your taste was always immaculately fitting with the moment.


You chose a song I had never heard, something called Chlorine.


A rock fell on the glass vintage of the store, it shattered right behind my back.


I turned.


This time you took my face and let me look nowhere but at you. You smiled me straight into perfect stillness. You turned and threw some blues records down from a table and climbed up on it.


The song hit its chorus. A very happy but a very catastrophic catharsis.


You start unbuttoning your shirt standing up above. Your body moves like the confused waves of the sea today that don't know how to react to what's going on. Yet your face is so composed, almost cold with passion.


Another glass explodes because of the heat of the fire approaching. I can't even bother to turn around to look. Your marble smooth skin is all I see. I didn't dream to die like this. I climb up on the table, next to you.


I undo the last buttons of your shirt and throw it down into the fire which has already come inside. It smells like burned vinyl mixed with your charred skin. The song nears its end.


My last feeling before the boom is one of lust and joy. Lust, that this moment will never happen again for the rest of the history of the world. Joy, because precisely this is how to world will end. You take my hands and do a twist. I don't know how to dance; only today I do.


And you throw your naked body at me. You touch my lips with yours. This table is hotter than the fire. A kiss that couldn't survive without an explosion - followed by the end of the world. The Earth is spinning around us.


We might just be a little guilty for all of this.


I think the gods are envious. Perhaps all their destruction doesn't have this might.


We burn. The world

September 25, 2020 22:36

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6 comments

Deborah Landers
10:22 Oct 01, 2020

Reading this was a bit of a trip. It's chaotic and building with every piece of description. I have to say, it read sort of like slam poetry at times, focusing more on building the imagery than following a plot. As such, I think it would probably be served better by being performed. But from the very first moment, it was clear the characters were working with a distinct time limit. I disagree with the reviewer that said to turn the I say, you say parts into dialogue because that would destroy some of the pacing you've created, undercut the u...

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Mariam Mansuryan
07:47 Oct 02, 2020

Thanks for the thorough review. You are right about the time crunch, although I never thought it justifies anything :)

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Laurentz Baker
23:39 Sep 29, 2020

Very descriptive, nice flow.

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Mariam Mansuryan
07:46 Oct 02, 2020

Thanks!

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Sampada Sharma
05:32 Sep 26, 2020

It was a good story but it threw me off on you say and I say. I would have liked it better I think if it was in the form of dialogues, but you did a great job on this.

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Mariam Mansuryan
10:27 Sep 26, 2020

Thanks for the feedback.

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