Every instinct of mine was forcing me to turn away from the wall that had sprung up in the middle of the road. Turn around and walk in the other direction, turn towards the stench and find what it was, turn anywhere, but not towards the menacing looking wall. But my feet didn’t listen. Through the searing pain, they seemed to mindlessly disobey what my instincts were telling them. I wanted to scream, as walking hurt so much. But it was a pain in my lower back that drew my fingers to it. I rubbed the spot, touching the skin drenched from the rain. But the moisture I felt was more than that – it felt like pulp.
Was I bleeding badly? I looked at my fingers. Yes, it was a bloody pulp, but it was not just blood. There was dirt in it, brown, green dirt, mixed with my blood. I smelled it, to check if that was what was causing the stench. It was not.
The urge to cry increased with each passing moment, but I refused. It was not possible that I was alone. Everyone must be there, somewhere. I just had to keep looking. No way was I completely alone in this gray world.
I kept walking towards the wall ahead. The road in front of me held chaos on its narrow strip – signs of an explosion, but not one caused by arms or bombs. There were pieces of what looked like human flesh, but it looked like they were torn apart by savages. Crushed glass, broken bottles, shattered mobile phones, it was all there, scattered like feathers from a pillow pulled violently apart. The taste of mud still lingered in my mouth; more than the taste of mud, I believe it was the taste of knowledge, that there was mud, and probably worse in my mouth, but this was no time to worry about that.
I reached the wall. The wall extended, endlessly it seemed, to my right and to my left. It was high, with bricks laid haphazardly all the way up. When I touched the wall, I was pushed back. I had a vision of myself scratching the surface of the very same walls until my fingers bled. I shook my head to get rid of the vision and saw, I hadn’t been pushed. I was still standing in front of the wall, arm extended, palm raised to touch it.
What had I seen?
--To be continued--Copyright Petrichor and Clouds 2013 at petrichorandclouds.blogspot.com Please do not reproduce the material published here.
