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friezaessI felt like cheering myself up by working on my NaNo. Surprisingly I feel more accomplished passing the 18, 000 word mark than I do when I study for tomorrow's exam.
Unfortunatly my impatience got the better of me as usual, and this depection of a nuclear blast could have been told a lot more eloquently. And yet, here we are.
The streets were swamped with commuters who were desperately trying to get home and leave the day’s stress behind them. It was a bloodthirsty battle as they pushed and shoved their way past their fellow man in a brave attempt to get a seat on one of the packed trains which had gone from moving hobo hotels to big metal sausages full of human meat. The sky was a blue-grey and a cool breeze hardened the nipples of those without coats.
Even the normally desolate alleyways Keya frequented for their separation from the surrounding world were filled with businessmen craving a salmonella-ridden dinner before heading home to their lonely one bedroom apartments to watch television and pass out for eight hours, only to begin their workaholic cycle anew the next day. Wearing sunglasses was handy for concealing his identity but it certainly made for poor visibility at dusk, especially when the poor little introvert was drowning in a sea of people.
Sick and tired of competing with the masses for personal space, he weaselled his way out of the back streets and into one of the main shopping districts. It was still hugely busy, but at least he wasn’t being pressed up against the walls of buildings like a cheap whore. He navigated his way to a bench and sat down, waiting for the masses to thin out.
There was no end in sight.
In the distance he could hear music blaring from one of the department stores. They had it tuned into a local family radio station and shallow pop from decades gone by lured in middle aged people to spend their hard earned savings on pantsuits and play sets for their sweet little darlings, many of whom accompanied their parents down the street after being picked up from day care. Their screaming and wailing pierced the skulls of every weary worker who was within the vicinity, yet another argument for those who supported post-natal abortion.
The sight before Keya was indeed a prime example of humanity- materialists exhausted in their quest to earn money in order to add to their vast collection of commodities with no real purpose in life other than to bend over and receive the throbbing shaft of the ever looming advertisers and corporations. It was an exercise in capitalism, one from which a wealthy rock star with a private jet was certainly not exempt from. The difference was that he could afford it. Talent was the most powerful commodity anyone could sell as it cost nothing to produce yet raked in millions.
And so it was that this snapshot of daily life continued on in a procession of exhaustion and irritability. No-one noticed the incognito rock star in their midst, nor did they notice the hobos in the alleyways or the fast approaching twinkling object in the sky.
No-one paid any mind to the drunk outside the pub spouting curses, the old man feeling up women on the train or the strange metal tube descending from above. Everything was washed away by torrents of humanity that were focused on nothing outside of their own little worlds.
However, one can not hide in their own reclusive pockets of reality forever.
A loud roaring sound similar to a jet taking off snapped the bustling masses out of their daydreams. Some people stopped in their paths, instinctively looking for the source of the deafening racket that seemed to come from all around them yet from no particular spot in space or time.
Keya stood up, equally confused. Casting his eyes towards the evening sky, he felt a warm wind blow over his face before seeing a brief flash of light in the heavens.
And then, everything was white.
Screams and cries were silenced as an intense heat filled the air, melting people’s tracheas before dissolving their bodies completely. Human flesh melted into the pavement before turning into ash. Nothing existed save for the glowing white hot world that had suddenly encompassed the city and dissolved everything and everyone it touched.
Terrified, Keya bolted beneath the bench and curled up into a ball, squeezing his eyes shut and hugging his knees. The intense soundwave shattered his eardrums eliciting a blood-curdling scream as crimson trickled down his cheeks. The sudden heat penetrated his flesh and all at once stripped it away, leaving the long haired beauty a bald, quivering pile of exposed muscle. He wasn’t sure if he was still screaming or not as the intense pain coursed through his raw, red body, those beautiful, luscious lips having been pulled from his face exposing his teeth and gums.
His panic-stricken mind was suddenly filled with the horrifying realisation that the seat he’d been hiding beneath had dissolved, leaving him open to the elements. As his vision began to falter largely due to the fact that his eyeballs had begun to melt, he could feel himself being hugged close towards a cold, solid body. Deafened and completely defenceless, he blindly threw his arms around the other person and held them tightly as the world around him was turned to dust.
The white hot world suddenly turned black and Keya’s body went limp as strong arms continued to hold onto him possessively, a lone scream filling the void.
For the next few days a cold black rain fell from the heavens, bringing with it radioactive soil from the blast. The fat, deadly droplets left tell-tale stains on the cement that had survived and had been dyed white from the brightness of the explosion. Aside from the odd skeletal structure and fractured roads, there was little to indicate that anyone had ever lived in the desolate city which was now a sparse wasteland, a tribute to Einstein’s splitting of the atom.
A thick layer of dust hung high above in the stratosphere and would continue to linger long after the haze closer to Earth had cleared, decreasing visibility and bringing freezing cold nights due to the limited sunlight that pierced through the reddish-brown blanket that encompassed the sky. Those rays that did penetrate turned the landscape a similar colour, almost a dirty pink.
The world received endless stories on the news about how a prosperous first-would country had been nuked back into the Stone Age by an angry second-world government with trading issues. As it happened, the dispute between the two countries had started over the ridiculously high prices the now post-apocalyptic nation was charging its neighbour for much needed resources such as coal and oil, something which was intensified when one currency soared and the other simultaneously plummeted due to their lack of exports.
It had all come to a head during the music loving Prime Minister’s visit when he had inadvertently made a comment to the press about the two countries’ relationship that was interpreted as hostile and quickly broadcast to the country as a declaration of war. No amount of back peddling could stop an angry general with an itchy trigger finger from turning one of the world’s rising economic and resource powerhouses into a smouldering crater in the ground.
Of course karma was always a bitch- the added side-effects included the much sought after resources now being buried underneath a thick layer of radiation for the next few decades and hazardous cloud of nuclear fallout heading towards both the aggressors and surrounding civilisations.
A soft wind blew through the empty streets of what was once a bustling city, blowing the toxic dust that could once have been human beings across the cracked white pavement. It swept past the crumbled ruins of those buildings that hadn’t been completely evaporated, growing in intensity as a sinister black helicopter descended from the haze, the gust from it’s rotors clearing the ground of dusty contaminants before it landed in the middle of what was once a busy shopping district. The heavy metal side door slid open and three well-built figures donning thick white radiation suits jumped out onto the terrain.
The pure devastation was enough to bring a tear to the eyes of one of the elite soldiers as he walked towards the skeletons of a trendy strip of department stores. All that remained of the multi-level complexes were the featureless cement walls facing him that stood a mere four or so metres in the air at most, as well as some of the foundations. The trio were all citizens of the wrecked country and had been stationed overseas when they and various other soldiers had been called in to help survey the damage and check for survivors. Unfortunately it had soon become apparent that the entire nation had been virtually levelled and that the entire population had either been vaporised or burnt to a crisp.
A gloved hand ran lovingly over the surface of what was once a place where the owner had spent lots of times with his friends in their youth, stocking up on new CD’s and gadgets whilst enjoying the view of attractive young ladies weighed down with numerous bags with designer logos on them. His partners were silently inspecting the rubble around them trying their best to control their emotions. Even for highly ranked professionals who had bathed in blood on the battlefield, the sight of what was once familiar now reminiscing a lunar landscape shook them to the very core. It was hard to stay professional knowing your loved ones had been incinerated a couple of weeks ago.
Battle hardened eyes now wrought with despair absorbed the damage as the soldier tried to suppress his memories. He knew he was near where the entrance would have been and slowly, he trudged around to the other side of the chipped wall to inspect the foundations with some apprehension.
As he cast his eyes downwards, a reddish-brown form immediately stood out against the bleached white cement. He dropped to the side of the surprisingly intact mass and reached out tentatively. Trembling insulated fingers gently landed on soft flesh.
The head moved immediately upon his touch and suddenly the man was confronted with a pair of panicked eyes meeting his own.
He fell backwards onto the cement in horror. “Oh shi- guys, get over here!”
It was an intense three hour helicopter ride back to safety. The specially trained soldiers did their best to keep their battered souvenir awake and breathing, though all too often he would plunge into unconsciousness. It was shocking enough that they had found a survivor, let alone one who had survived for two weeks without medical attention not to mention basic needs like food, water and shelter during the freezing cold nights. The journey was rough and turbulent and several times the men were sure they were about to lose their patient due to shock, but by the time they landed and were met by a waiting ambulance crew there was still breath in those pained lungs.
Those same panicked eyes darted around in confusion as he was hauled off to hospital at top speed, flashing lights and wavering consciousness distorting his perception. There were people in white coats fussing over him and pushing things into his skin, though he couldn’t feel it. He lost time frequently as bouts of unconsciousness overtook him and he descended into dreams of fire and brimstone. Twitching unnervingly in his sleep, the man relived the blast in the same way he had whilst hiding behind the wall of a demolished department store for days on end. The noise from the bomb as the screams of those around him still pierced his brain during sleep and images of a great white light pulling away his cosy little self-constructed world assaulted his memory constantly.
A coma was induced to spare him pain and for several weeks he had an array of surgeries performed without his knowledge and was pumped full of enough drugs to put Heath Ledger to shame. It was only after a number of skin grafts and invasive operations that he was administered with an elixir that slowly brought him back to reality. He had to be held down by five nurses as the white light from the florescent globes above took over his vision initially, slowly clearing until his eyes adjusted.
The first thing that he noticed was that he was wrapped up like a mummy in tight bandages except for his eyes, nose and mouth. Morphine numbed the pain significantly, though he could still feel a burning sensation enveloping his body. As he calmed down, the nurse at his side spoke softly.
“It’s alright, you’re in hospital,” she told him gently. He nodded slightly, eyes taking on a more subdued look at his surroundings. He had a private room with a television in the corner and a few brightly coloured paintings of nature that contrasted with the morbidity of such a place. There were so many machines hooked up to him that it would have been frightening if not for the potions coursing through his veins. The nurse spoke again.
“Can you tell me your name?”
His lips twitched as he tried to make out the syllables, but in his drugged up and pained state it was hard to speak.
“K-Ke…” a coughing fit overwhelmed him as the nurses in the room quickly attended to him, administering drugs and pushing his convulsing body back against his pillow. The one next to him put a straw into a cool glass of water on the bedside table and brought it up to his lips. The patient drank it down so quickly that he immediately vomited it back up.
================
If you noticed some inconsistencies like lips suddenly being present after being ripped off, I assure you there is a reason for this that will be explained in the future.
Unfortunatly my impatience got the better of me as usual, and this depection of a nuclear blast could have been told a lot more eloquently. And yet, here we are.
The streets were swamped with commuters who were desperately trying to get home and leave the day’s stress behind them. It was a bloodthirsty battle as they pushed and shoved their way past their fellow man in a brave attempt to get a seat on one of the packed trains which had gone from moving hobo hotels to big metal sausages full of human meat. The sky was a blue-grey and a cool breeze hardened the nipples of those without coats.
Even the normally desolate alleyways Keya frequented for their separation from the surrounding world were filled with businessmen craving a salmonella-ridden dinner before heading home to their lonely one bedroom apartments to watch television and pass out for eight hours, only to begin their workaholic cycle anew the next day. Wearing sunglasses was handy for concealing his identity but it certainly made for poor visibility at dusk, especially when the poor little introvert was drowning in a sea of people.
Sick and tired of competing with the masses for personal space, he weaselled his way out of the back streets and into one of the main shopping districts. It was still hugely busy, but at least he wasn’t being pressed up against the walls of buildings like a cheap whore. He navigated his way to a bench and sat down, waiting for the masses to thin out.
There was no end in sight.
In the distance he could hear music blaring from one of the department stores. They had it tuned into a local family radio station and shallow pop from decades gone by lured in middle aged people to spend their hard earned savings on pantsuits and play sets for their sweet little darlings, many of whom accompanied their parents down the street after being picked up from day care. Their screaming and wailing pierced the skulls of every weary worker who was within the vicinity, yet another argument for those who supported post-natal abortion.
The sight before Keya was indeed a prime example of humanity- materialists exhausted in their quest to earn money in order to add to their vast collection of commodities with no real purpose in life other than to bend over and receive the throbbing shaft of the ever looming advertisers and corporations. It was an exercise in capitalism, one from which a wealthy rock star with a private jet was certainly not exempt from. The difference was that he could afford it. Talent was the most powerful commodity anyone could sell as it cost nothing to produce yet raked in millions.
And so it was that this snapshot of daily life continued on in a procession of exhaustion and irritability. No-one noticed the incognito rock star in their midst, nor did they notice the hobos in the alleyways or the fast approaching twinkling object in the sky.
No-one paid any mind to the drunk outside the pub spouting curses, the old man feeling up women on the train or the strange metal tube descending from above. Everything was washed away by torrents of humanity that were focused on nothing outside of their own little worlds.
However, one can not hide in their own reclusive pockets of reality forever.
A loud roaring sound similar to a jet taking off snapped the bustling masses out of their daydreams. Some people stopped in their paths, instinctively looking for the source of the deafening racket that seemed to come from all around them yet from no particular spot in space or time.
Keya stood up, equally confused. Casting his eyes towards the evening sky, he felt a warm wind blow over his face before seeing a brief flash of light in the heavens.
And then, everything was white.
Screams and cries were silenced as an intense heat filled the air, melting people’s tracheas before dissolving their bodies completely. Human flesh melted into the pavement before turning into ash. Nothing existed save for the glowing white hot world that had suddenly encompassed the city and dissolved everything and everyone it touched.
Terrified, Keya bolted beneath the bench and curled up into a ball, squeezing his eyes shut and hugging his knees. The intense soundwave shattered his eardrums eliciting a blood-curdling scream as crimson trickled down his cheeks. The sudden heat penetrated his flesh and all at once stripped it away, leaving the long haired beauty a bald, quivering pile of exposed muscle. He wasn’t sure if he was still screaming or not as the intense pain coursed through his raw, red body, those beautiful, luscious lips having been pulled from his face exposing his teeth and gums.
His panic-stricken mind was suddenly filled with the horrifying realisation that the seat he’d been hiding beneath had dissolved, leaving him open to the elements. As his vision began to falter largely due to the fact that his eyeballs had begun to melt, he could feel himself being hugged close towards a cold, solid body. Deafened and completely defenceless, he blindly threw his arms around the other person and held them tightly as the world around him was turned to dust.
The white hot world suddenly turned black and Keya’s body went limp as strong arms continued to hold onto him possessively, a lone scream filling the void.
For the next few days a cold black rain fell from the heavens, bringing with it radioactive soil from the blast. The fat, deadly droplets left tell-tale stains on the cement that had survived and had been dyed white from the brightness of the explosion. Aside from the odd skeletal structure and fractured roads, there was little to indicate that anyone had ever lived in the desolate city which was now a sparse wasteland, a tribute to Einstein’s splitting of the atom.
A thick layer of dust hung high above in the stratosphere and would continue to linger long after the haze closer to Earth had cleared, decreasing visibility and bringing freezing cold nights due to the limited sunlight that pierced through the reddish-brown blanket that encompassed the sky. Those rays that did penetrate turned the landscape a similar colour, almost a dirty pink.
The world received endless stories on the news about how a prosperous first-would country had been nuked back into the Stone Age by an angry second-world government with trading issues. As it happened, the dispute between the two countries had started over the ridiculously high prices the now post-apocalyptic nation was charging its neighbour for much needed resources such as coal and oil, something which was intensified when one currency soared and the other simultaneously plummeted due to their lack of exports.
It had all come to a head during the music loving Prime Minister’s visit when he had inadvertently made a comment to the press about the two countries’ relationship that was interpreted as hostile and quickly broadcast to the country as a declaration of war. No amount of back peddling could stop an angry general with an itchy trigger finger from turning one of the world’s rising economic and resource powerhouses into a smouldering crater in the ground.
Of course karma was always a bitch- the added side-effects included the much sought after resources now being buried underneath a thick layer of radiation for the next few decades and hazardous cloud of nuclear fallout heading towards both the aggressors and surrounding civilisations.
A soft wind blew through the empty streets of what was once a bustling city, blowing the toxic dust that could once have been human beings across the cracked white pavement. It swept past the crumbled ruins of those buildings that hadn’t been completely evaporated, growing in intensity as a sinister black helicopter descended from the haze, the gust from it’s rotors clearing the ground of dusty contaminants before it landed in the middle of what was once a busy shopping district. The heavy metal side door slid open and three well-built figures donning thick white radiation suits jumped out onto the terrain.
The pure devastation was enough to bring a tear to the eyes of one of the elite soldiers as he walked towards the skeletons of a trendy strip of department stores. All that remained of the multi-level complexes were the featureless cement walls facing him that stood a mere four or so metres in the air at most, as well as some of the foundations. The trio were all citizens of the wrecked country and had been stationed overseas when they and various other soldiers had been called in to help survey the damage and check for survivors. Unfortunately it had soon become apparent that the entire nation had been virtually levelled and that the entire population had either been vaporised or burnt to a crisp.
A gloved hand ran lovingly over the surface of what was once a place where the owner had spent lots of times with his friends in their youth, stocking up on new CD’s and gadgets whilst enjoying the view of attractive young ladies weighed down with numerous bags with designer logos on them. His partners were silently inspecting the rubble around them trying their best to control their emotions. Even for highly ranked professionals who had bathed in blood on the battlefield, the sight of what was once familiar now reminiscing a lunar landscape shook them to the very core. It was hard to stay professional knowing your loved ones had been incinerated a couple of weeks ago.
Battle hardened eyes now wrought with despair absorbed the damage as the soldier tried to suppress his memories. He knew he was near where the entrance would have been and slowly, he trudged around to the other side of the chipped wall to inspect the foundations with some apprehension.
As he cast his eyes downwards, a reddish-brown form immediately stood out against the bleached white cement. He dropped to the side of the surprisingly intact mass and reached out tentatively. Trembling insulated fingers gently landed on soft flesh.
The head moved immediately upon his touch and suddenly the man was confronted with a pair of panicked eyes meeting his own.
He fell backwards onto the cement in horror. “Oh shi- guys, get over here!”
It was an intense three hour helicopter ride back to safety. The specially trained soldiers did their best to keep their battered souvenir awake and breathing, though all too often he would plunge into unconsciousness. It was shocking enough that they had found a survivor, let alone one who had survived for two weeks without medical attention not to mention basic needs like food, water and shelter during the freezing cold nights. The journey was rough and turbulent and several times the men were sure they were about to lose their patient due to shock, but by the time they landed and were met by a waiting ambulance crew there was still breath in those pained lungs.
Those same panicked eyes darted around in confusion as he was hauled off to hospital at top speed, flashing lights and wavering consciousness distorting his perception. There were people in white coats fussing over him and pushing things into his skin, though he couldn’t feel it. He lost time frequently as bouts of unconsciousness overtook him and he descended into dreams of fire and brimstone. Twitching unnervingly in his sleep, the man relived the blast in the same way he had whilst hiding behind the wall of a demolished department store for days on end. The noise from the bomb as the screams of those around him still pierced his brain during sleep and images of a great white light pulling away his cosy little self-constructed world assaulted his memory constantly.
A coma was induced to spare him pain and for several weeks he had an array of surgeries performed without his knowledge and was pumped full of enough drugs to put Heath Ledger to shame. It was only after a number of skin grafts and invasive operations that he was administered with an elixir that slowly brought him back to reality. He had to be held down by five nurses as the white light from the florescent globes above took over his vision initially, slowly clearing until his eyes adjusted.
The first thing that he noticed was that he was wrapped up like a mummy in tight bandages except for his eyes, nose and mouth. Morphine numbed the pain significantly, though he could still feel a burning sensation enveloping his body. As he calmed down, the nurse at his side spoke softly.
“It’s alright, you’re in hospital,” she told him gently. He nodded slightly, eyes taking on a more subdued look at his surroundings. He had a private room with a television in the corner and a few brightly coloured paintings of nature that contrasted with the morbidity of such a place. There were so many machines hooked up to him that it would have been frightening if not for the potions coursing through his veins. The nurse spoke again.
“Can you tell me your name?”
His lips twitched as he tried to make out the syllables, but in his drugged up and pained state it was hard to speak.
“K-Ke…” a coughing fit overwhelmed him as the nurses in the room quickly attended to him, administering drugs and pushing his convulsing body back against his pillow. The one next to him put a straw into a cool glass of water on the bedside table and brought it up to his lips. The patient drank it down so quickly that he immediately vomited it back up.
================
If you noticed some inconsistencies like lips suddenly being present after being ripped off, I assure you there is a reason for this that will be explained in the future.
