Chapter 4: The Greatest Story in the Universe
The absolute dark is lit up and imploding. Screams are everywhere, along with too-late sirens and the impossible booms of flyover planes ricocheting through the chaotic air. The close, tucked-in community of houses is in utter confusion, with people running here and there and diving into air-raid shelters, frantically yelling for their husbands, their children, their mothers and fathers and wives. Beyond them, eerily shrouded by plumes of new thick smoke, the city is on fire.The shadow appears quietly into the chaos. She is a girl (perhaps sixteen; perhaps twenty) in a belted, any-era dress than goes down to her knees and an overlarge trench coat hanging open. Her hair is shoulder-length and dark, sweeping in the wind of the fire, and her hand is still poised over a watch-like object on her wrist. Her eyes are brimming, and a single tear tracks its bitter way down her young face from her impossibly old irises that have seen everything and nothing yet. She is unsteady, and sits down on the curb, watching without reaction as people run by her, not noticing, screaming. She is emotionless as she looks on at the city burning.
A terrible hour passes, and the street quiets. The sirens fade, and the sounds of the blazing city and the weeping, scorched people and the fire engines screaming far away, in the metropolis in the valley, take over. The inhabitants of the cornered neighborhood are shivering and praying down in their shallow air-raid shelters. The small, wooden-doored, quaintly-gardened community remains for now untouched.
The girl has remained, now tearstained and despairing, her head in her hands. She is still motionless on the curb until her wristwatch glows and warbles a warning: seven minutes to enemy bomb on this sector. Evacuation is advised.
The girl starts at the noise and slowly stands. She glances, carelessly, at the glowing, coughing city behind her, its flames outlining her imposing, ruined figure in the smoky night, and then begins down the street. No urgency is in her footsteps, but a feverish madness infects her, the madness of those who have walked alone by the sea, who have seen empires fall and held dying people in their arms as they cough out their last breaths. All this, the girl carries. It is an impossible burden.
"Mummy?" the boy could be judged as too old for this word, by his peers at least; he is eleven, maybe older, with an intelligent brow and defiant, brown-streaked-black hair. His eyes are fluorescent crystal, and his stature is an extinct, stately one of stolen grandeur and delicate lies. Now, it is obvious his confidence is shattered; he walks toward the girl with a puncture to his ribs and fear dancing in his bright eyes.
"I'm not your mummy, boy." The girl mutters, stepping back and drawing her trench coat around her.
"Then who are you?" the boy asks inquisitively, and the girl in the coat flinches and turns to walk away and grits her teeth and turns.
"Nobody in particular." the girl answers finally, with a forced brightness. "Now, what's more important is you. Are you okay? Shouldn't you be in a shelter?"
"Yes, but I'm lost." moans the boy, giving way to his despair. His confusion grips him, making his hands clench and his chest tight.
"Lost? Where do you live?" The girl asks quickly, checking her watch-that-wasn't-a-watch. Suddenly, the time, and the closeness of the impending bomb, seem to matter to her; in fact, it pumps desperately in her veins. This boy with his bright eyes would not die; not tonight, not under her watch. She suddenly begins walking into the nearest neatly-manicured lawn, pulling the boy along by his hand.
"Umm..." he was still pondering, absently resisting her tug.
"Come on!" The strange girl cries. She and the boy begin to run just as something large explodes in the depths of the city, bringing about a deafening boom! and a wild shower of sparks from the valley below. Tugging out a strange, shiny instrument, the girl activates it, and, with an unearthly whirring sound, the door to the house clicks open.
"Is anyone home?" asks the boy nervously, but the girl in the trench coat shakes her head.
"No car in the garage, and three newspapers in the driveway. They must have forgotten to stop their mail when they left." She reassures the boy rapidly. He blinks.
"Why are you doing this?" The little boy asks the girl as she leads him down the steps in the house to the cool, silent cellar. Strange herbs hang from the ceiling and jams and pickled things line the musty, cobwebbed walls.
The girl flinches, letting go of his hand, before checking herself and blurting, her eyes elsewhere, "Because I'm lonely,"
The boy is not old enough to think this strange. He lets out a little cry of terror and reaches for her arm again as another, closer crash sounds in the distance and a threatening, repeating sirens whirrs nearby.
"You know what?" The girl sighs, surfacing, bending down a bit so she and the boy are face to face. "Let me tell you a story. It's a long, hard story, and by the time it's over, this all will be done and we can go and find your parents. Okay?"
The boy shivers, but finds comfort, somehow, in the girl's manic tortured-genius eyes. He sits on the cold floor of the empty house's dank cellar, his arms wrapped tightly around his knees.
"Is this story any good?" he asks pointedly, his awkwardness showing his age. The girl, beneath her tears and overhanging madness, looks ages old. The things she has no doubt seen, good and bad, the boy cannot even begin to fathom.
"Of course," responds the girl in the trench coat, a small, sad smile creeping around the sides of her lips. She sighs like a traveler at the end of a long journey, with a greater journey yet to come. "It's the greatest story in the universe. They call it Skyshock."
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