Sometimes, I wake up and think "Wow, that dream would be an awesome short horror story." Today was a day like that. This time, I actually wrote it all down. I'm calling it Microfiction Monologue, because I don't do dialogue well.
Caught
The apocalypse started with a fire. Not a meteor shower, nuclear disaster, or volcanic eruption. A six story office building downtown started burning, filling the sky with an acrid smoke. It was Luke’s office building towering over the block so we identified ourselves as gawkers and took off for the best spot we could find around the perimeter. That was weeks and weeks ago. Before the end of our world came the authorities would have assigned fire investigators to the disaster and sought a cause. A task force would have been created to study the malfunction of the bridge, which prevented fire fighters and the curious alike from crossing the river into downtown. Now, though, there are bigger fish to fry.The last time I walked through the office I stopped to admire the new shelves displaying company alcohol. Spirits, liqueurs and mixers all paid for by the boss man to help smooth over those fried employees. When I close my eyes to sleep, I see those bottles. First, their contents are lit seductively by the surrounding flames. Then labels start to peel and char in the heat. Finally, the plastic slumps over softly while the glass shatters and booze runs until it hits the flames and is set on fire, too. It’s a beautiful scene of death in the midst of our horror, and the waste of it makes me want to cry.
How things went from an office building fire and misbehaving bridge to military law and a broken civilization I can’t say. If I were clever, could blithely throw out some excuse for my lack of memory but cleverness isn’t a valuable skill right now so I’ve given it up. Every ounce of energy I have goes into surviving this place, if only so that I can drag my husband and remaining children into survival with me. Trying to recall the crisis that brought us here only fills my head with screaming - my own screaming, as it turns out, from those frantic moments when my son’s hand slipped out of mine and he was swept away by the indifferent mob. My voice has gone back to it’s normal volume but I’ll scream for him forever. I suppose the end of my civilization happened when I lost my grip.
Life, now, has been taken over. It never was my own and now even less so. We’ve been assigned to the wild predator unit, tracking down animals that managed to slip away during the crisis. Luke has some tracking skills leftover from boyhood outdoor experiences but I’m just a weight he carries. There’s no reason to this assignment, the animals are best left to scrounge what they may while we worry about clean water and corrupt unit managers. I wasn’t consulted on any of this, however, so I do my best to learn about prints and scat during the daylight. Surviving doesn’t really require success at our assignment so I set it aside with the sun to work on teaching Luke and our children how to navigate this stinking social system ruling our lives.
The four of us come together every night and hang on to each other, each ready to throw the hook and line to reel another back into our tight fold. Temptation runs rampant here; there are so many ways to leave and none of them beautiful. I only sleep after checking and rechecking that our lines are woven together and anchored properly. When I dream, there are five of us standing on the bridge watching the office burn.
