The world is burning...

The world is burning...

You walk slowly through a small town you don't know the name off... it doesn't matter, there's nobody left to remember anyway. There's no sound except the wind and no movement other than the dust the blows around. The sky is overcast and it seems like it's dusk. You see a faded sign that's hanging above something that looks like a lunchbar. You can barley see the letters, but you think it says 'Joe's'. You glance in through the shattered windows when you pass and see the wrecked interior. You stop and look closer. You can almost see it as it was before; people meeting here, having a cup of coffee and talking about the small events in their life. You scan the room with its bardisk and booths where people used to have their lunch. The floor is littered by shards of glass and broken furniture, you see a couple of plastic trays on the disk. You look away and shake your head... there's no point in remembering the past. You heft your backpack and once more continue your walk along the main street. Everywhere you look you see gutted houses and shops. Some houses are only ruins of burned wood while others are more or less whole. You have seen the same countless times before... You have walked through more ruined towns and cities than you care to remember. Everything is a blur, one day melts into the next. You think it was three years since you saw any other living being, but you can't be sure, there are no seasons any longer... You pass a rusted, wrecked car lying on its side by a barbershop. You can imagine old men sitting outside on folding chairs, holding their canes in their gnarled fingers talking about the past and present while they watched people passing by.

You pass the charred husk of the town library. You pause and sigh deeply while you watch the old, once fine building. The doors are broken and battered, one is hanging on one hinge and the other is lying on the ground in front of the building beneath the stairs. You slowly mount the stairs and goes up to the door that's still left. When you look closer you see a copper plate with the opening times; 'Mon-Fri: 9:00 am to 8:00 pm, Saturday: 10:00 am to 5:00 pm, Sunday: Closed.' Beneath you see a slightly burned, handwritten note with faded letters in a female hand, which says 'Out for lunch, back 1:00pm'. You smile sadly. You see before your inner eye as the librarian turn the sign, lock the doors and go down to Joe's to have some lunch. You wonder suddenly what day it was then, must have been a weekday, but how can you possibly know? The town has been dead for years, you can't even smell the ashes any longer.

You pick up your backpack you dropped by the foot of the stairs and starts walking again. You aren't in a hurry, what is there to hurry to...? A couple of hundred yards down the street you see the town church where people used go to on Sundays. Once again you pause and look at the destruction. The church is wrecked. The once white walls are stained by sooth marks and the proud tower toppled backwards. All the windows are blown outwards and colored glass pieces are laying everywhere. Stumps of trees dots the cemetery ground and the tombstones are all either shattered or heaved aside. You start to turn away, but you see a shadow in the corner of your eye. You turn back and look closer. You see the shadow of a head around the corner and you decided you’d take a look. When you round the corner of the church you see the statue. It's an angel. His head is bowed down as if in mourning... and he probably is. He has his wings folded back behind his back, but you can see one of the wingtips is broken off and lying on the brown, caked ground beneath him. His hands are resting on the hilt of a slender sword. It is sculptured in a gray kind of stone and so well done that it seems to glow in the gloom. You can't see his features from where you are standing so you move a bit closer and look up into his face. His face is beautiful. He looks young, but at the same time kind of ageless. He has certain feminine features, high cheekbones, small nose and his chin isn't angular. His eyes are closed as if in prayer. You wonder at the statue... it's not stained by ashes and is, except for the wingtip, whole. You take a couple of steps backward and look at it a long time. You turn away and look down. A tombstone lay a couple of feet away and you go down on your knees in front of it. You brush away the dust and gravel from it so you can see the inscription etched into the stone:

EVELYN LIND
1997-2036
BELOVED MOTHER AND DAUGHTER.

You bow your head and you remember... Evelyn Lind... You knew her, knew her well... She was your girlfriend before you went to the university. You loved her and she loved you, but when you were admitted to Harvard everything changed. She had her life and didn't want to follow you. You didn't blame her. So you decided together that you should take a break and see what's happened after school. In the beginning there were a lot phone calls and letters, but after some time the calls stopped and the letters became more infrequent. After six or seven months the mails stopped altogether. Everything just went away like last summer's heat. You heard a couple of years later that she had found an other man and that she had a little son. This was so long ago, but the pain is still there. You suddenly see a drop of water hit the stone beneath you and slowly slide down through the dust. You realize you are crying, you haven't cried in so many, oh so many years, that you thought you had forgotten how too. You slide a hand over your eyes and brush away the tears that forms in your eyes. You sit back and you stare up in the empty gray sky. You close your eyes and let the pain and sorrow come. Silent tears courses down your weathered cheeks and drips of your chin unto the grave of your lover so many years ago. The angel stands behind you in a silent witness to your sorrow and the world's end. He bows his head in homage to the last tears of humankind...

You are alone, so completely alone in the world...

Skriven av: Mikael Henriksson