A darkness shrouded the abyss of the world from the depths of hell crawling through the gates of judgement which the fires engulfed. With a flash in what little consciousness remained, a lantern guided his soul to revisit its body and provided a light that was blinding even behind the lids of his closeted vision. Pierced by a blood orange hue, he opened his eyes, but it was difficult to do. Sapped of any strength, he laid where he had landed, as if he had descended from the heavens that had become the single-toned skies his back was faced against. Bright like day, it was easily mistaken it to be. Hollow of life, on an earth that did not seem like so. Laying on the shallow sea that was fed by the mad rivers and creeks of red, a liquid too familiar. Everything was a blur as he relied solely on his sense of touch. His hands and face felt the cold of the ground and the grit of the unfinished tarmac and old concrete. Around was nothing but a spillage of splinters from where the spoiled ash and remains laid. There was no life. Soundless without birds’ caws. No pets called for home. Leaping from ruins to ruins, feline shadows lived their second lives. Readjusting the resolution of his half-blurred vision, he remembered that the sun had long already set, but only that he was confused because of the cowardly moon hiding behind the skirts of her black clouds where gods rested at night. Since the forces of the devils struck, his ears had been ringing and his mind had not yet settled. Running heavy breaths, at the tip of his mouth, he could taste a canvas of blood sliding down his face. Searching around him, there were only flames raging over homes collapsed. Storms of wails and hurted cries echoed against one another as wooden beams crashed down and silenced their final, hopeless shrieks. Embers sparked and fireworks danced around corpses warm. With mothers wrapped around their children whose fathers feebly fought, all suffered the same fate of becoming a crushed loaf of flesh. Hundreds who once lived on the street were transported to the courts of the gods, waiting to be judged prematurely. There were few, but still there was one nonetheless, that the boy spotted in their last breaths of life. It was a thing that appeared neither human nor too dissimilar to himself, clawing its way out of its house that was supposed to be their promised haven. Charred and in a coat of fire, its skin melted onto the pavement of a front yard, exposing flesh that was cooked to the bone. Collapsing, being granted the luxury of death, its fall tossed a handful of cinders into the air as the boy looked on. In shock, he could not turn away. As blood darkened his vision that became ever more impaired, there was a single being that appeared out of the devastation, clearer than anything else in his eyes.108Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDzINrE5qbF
In the paradise of death, the world became an augmented reality of hell which had arisen from the caverns of the deep earth. There stood a tree of a thousand limbs as substitute of usual branches, cut from the murderers who were boiled for a thousand years before another punishment would be granted to them. Glaring with a thousand eyes, gouged out from the torturers of ancient pasts who suffered the same fate as their victims for another millenia. With bark made from canvases of skin sewn together, they were flayed from preachers of lies whose tongues and bodies were melted under the pour of molten rock. Roots made of spines were torn from the greatest of men to give the tree, the size of a prehistoric oak, the prestige matching the father of gods’. Absorbing the nutritions of blood in the sea that it had sucked dry, quicker than storm drains could filter away by the gallons, it had no lungs, at least it seemed, for the being to speak. Yet even if it did, there were no signs of a sentient mind that would suggest it was living. Forever trapped in a state of a medium, the tree found the child laying before Him. Bubbling and surfacing, there it grew a single mouth, cut from some unknown soul. It widened into a pleased smile, and all His eyes pointed to Arminius, burdening him with voices of the damned. Whose hands once belonged to bodies, then taken as trophies by the tree, reached down wanting to take the boy for its own. In horror and instinct, he shutted his eyes, and destroyed any thoughts of the other worldly image of the tree. The clashing noises of the screeches of ghouls subsided, and as he slowly reopened his eyes, there was nothing of their meeting that remained. All returned to normal.108Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6bsZkY188h
He searched for the creature. But all there was were his milk bottles smashed with its sweet contents invaded by the metallic taste of the voluminous blood. His earphones dangled around his neck, unplugged from his audio player that had been shattered several paces away. The bag that he wore fared no better, ripped apart, with books and electronics within gashed and burned. For what was enough to have given his heart a jolt, it gave him the idea that it was perhaps best to find help knowing he would not survive without any aid. Then, in a moment, there was a screech who called for him with an ear-raping voice that gave the boy the strength to rise. Trembling, Arminius gathered his hands on the road, but when he tried to hold the ground for traction, his right arm would not respond. Looking down, his limb was burned, with its skin fused with the cloth of his shirt and jacket. Half his hand remained relatively well and intact, but from his thumb and his finger beside it, they had been shattered. For someone whose bones had dislocated and had surfaced, there was an uncanny calm to him who felt nothing. In fact, for the boy, it mattered not to the adrenaline that flooded him, who thought the painlessness was rather helpful. As he prepared to rise, however, his core gave way. Collapsing, Arminius gasped for air being strangled out of his lungs. Struggling to breath even shallow breaths, although his lungs had not been pierced by anything, when he laid on his side and ran his hand down, the boy’s eyes met the culprit of his question before it could be felt. There, a short beam was impaled into his flank. Wedged and leaking, every movement would rip the wound awide even more. Finally, upon seeing of such misfortune, the pain suddenly came rushing. Breaking the barriers of adrenaline that once sealed his troubling thoughts away, it sickened him. His mind was at a breaking point. With a headache more severe than most he has had before, at the same instance, he was reminded more by the need to urgently move. Weeping with screams from the depths of his spirit, he gathered himself and lifted his body. If not for the aura that he had stockpiled for over ten years, then it was the ballad that the god of death sung that kept him away from the gates of judgement. From the ground, laying to a kneel, he worked through a journey past every checkpoint, taking small steps at a time. Regaining his breaths on each percentage of progress, Arminius ushered a final cry with all his might and a mountainous will raised his head to the lights in the skies. Thanking heaven, without his hands, with one holding onto the beam, not letting it slip from his body, for once, he might have been thankful for the training that he once believed to be himself subject to total terror.108Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5sVs2JSXRl
