Senseless thoughts, all within this where that I found myself. Thoughts covered by murky veils, like my consciousness ripped from my body.

Here I float in this unknowable space, trapped without a vessel or my body, just a consciousness floating within a space of nothingness.

My senses blink in and out, like waking up only to fall asleep once again. I find myself seeing fragmented visions of when my clarity is clear, flashing and fleeting moments of sceneries and sometimes just still images.

Among them I see a broken world. Of buildings so high they once were, now they are just crumbling shells of their past glories, stripped to nothing but stones. Consuming this ever broken world is a veil of silent mist, loomed below by a dark and murky sunless sky.

From the collection of flashing visions I have seen a lacking, lacking of things I often seen with humanity. Gone were the cars and anything of technology, bare streets stripped of street lamps and now left with cracked pavements infested with unknown plant life.

In those sceneries I find myself looking at humanity, at their downfall, scared of what lays beyond the walls of their shelters.

Sobbing family and faces of trauma and those of lacking emotions, I see within them a unifying characteristic of exhaustion. Their faces wrinkled and lips bearing not an once of smile. They eat what meager they can, with faces of dead men.

There however are exceptions, small communities of somewhat happy people, striving, living, scraping whatever entertainment and happiness they can still hold on to. Below the murky lights, they gathered around their campfires, some telling jokes, some telling stories, some are dancing, and some doing shadow puppetry.

There are more of them within the fleeting moments, living, and surviving, whatever it all means to them. Seeing everything, it tinted my thoughts with short lapses of guilt whenever I’m awake, such hopelessness that burdens my mind as I’m cradled to sleep, only to experience them again.

Here I lay for unknown time untold, watching the flashes, tortured by my failures, until.

The flashes continued, but different, this time there are many people, each flashes adding more, the buildings passing backwards in time with disappearing disrepair. Still gone are technologies, but back are the people.

Each flashes lengthened and lengthened, showing me of masses scattered among places, hiding, screaming, and dying…until…the flashes are no more.

I find myself lying on the ground, among many people unconscious like me slowly waking up, all of us bare to our skin, not a single layer protecting us from the cold eerie wind. That however is not my concern. Right beside me, I found her, sleeping peacefully as ever as she’s always beautiful. This however is not the time to appreciate her beauty.

Reaching and holding her shoulders, I shook her.

“Hey! Wake up!”

Her eyelids fluttered, a groan escaping her lips as she weakly hold my hand. Slowly her eyelids opened, staring at me with those deep eyes. Evident from her growing grip on my wrist, she’s slowly gaining back her strength.

I gently prop her up, holding her shoulders and supporting her. She turned her head, gazing her eyes all around us, and then back to me.

“This is…this isn’t supposed to be…”

She softly whispered, holding on to me and supporting herself up, standing next to me, unbothered by our nakedness.

I whispered back

“Something must have changed, something big”

She squeeze my hands tighter and nodded.

Focusing more around us, there are nothing but people and crumbled buildings, crushed under their own weight. They’re stripped to only cement and whatever stone used to build them.

The sky looms not with light, but slowly descending mist, up above from the murky darkness that used to be the sky.

More and more people are awakening, their eyes laced with confusion, then surprise, panic, anger, fear, sadness, and myriad more. Among them, we can hear voices, different voices and different emotions.

“Where are my clothing!?!”

A woman covered herself, along with several others, their faces tainted with fear, embarrassments, and anger, each with twisted expressions.

“Jacob!?! Where are you!?!”

Parents, presumably, they weaved through the panicking crowd, their voices loud, straining their throats. Finding no one, the lady cried at his embrace, tears pouring into sobbing, and the man with a face of deep worry closed his eyes and speak words of comfort. They hug like a pair of drenched love birds.

“Who did this?!?!”

“Is this a prank!!”

“Find the cameras, it must be a show!!”

“Mommy! Daddy! Where are you!?!”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“THIS IS THE PUNISHMENT OF GOD”

The collection of voices they are, and of course, the most heartbreaking, among the voices are cries, not of children, but those of infants, many of whom not with their parents.

I closed my eyes, feeling her hand on mine, and her soft whispers on my ears.

“It’s alright, we can’t save everyone…”

I took a deep breath and let it out, opening my eyes and nodding at her, cries still echoing in my mind. A heavy feeling spread from my heart to my stomach, aching, weighting my mind. My hands to my chest, my heart is beating fast, thumbing in guilt.

With my heart weighing on me, I spoke.

“Should we tell them? Even if they’ll see us as crazy?”

She tilted her head before looking straight to my eyes, saying.

“What do you think?”

I looked at her eyes before turning to the people around us, suppressing all the heavy feelings in me: I shake my head, replying.

“No...as much as I want to, they won’t believe us, and it will only bring us trouble.”

“You’re sure about that? What about your feelings? You’ll only feel more guilt”

She leaned closer, speaking quietly those soft words. She hold my chin and turn my attention to her face, her eyes, those brows frowning in worry. But, then again, I shake my head, ignoring the bubbling weight within me.

“We can worry about that later…

“For now…let’s worry about our survival

“And even if we do, it wouldn’t change a thing, many of them will still die no matter our efforts…”

She squished my hands tighter, her eyes locked with mine, leaning forward and our lips touching for seconds of time. She let go and her lips upturned, she smiled.

“If that’s your choice. But remember, I’m here for you “

I leaned close and pulling her closer, our foreheads touching, I whispered softly

“Thank you…”

We held on, enjoying our skins touching together. There, we stay still, until I let go of her with a kiss on the forehead. Looking up, the mist is coming down.

Sharing nods of acknowledgement, we walked off our position, away from the people and into the area of collapsed structures or should I say piles of rubles. Without the support of metals and whatever that are supporting them, the building collapsed under their own weight, and thus forming hills upon hills of broken concrete and stones.

I stepped on a stone, then another, and another, going higher and higher, my hands holding on to them, moving them and testing whether they can support our weight. She’s behind me, following as we continue.

Behind us, I spot their gazes, judging and some with lecherous intent, those eyes watching hers and our body, disgusting. Some followed us, climbing together. We paid them no mind and mind our own.

Soon we reached the top of the hill or perhaps the remains of this once tall building, just one of the many. The scenery here is bleak, overlooking the roads below and the many more piles of rubles. In the distant, some buildings remained intact, but for majority they are now just piles.

Now that all of the glory of technology are stripped from this place, looking at the horizon reveal a vast land riddled with mounds of rubles. If anything, this look more like a desolate garbage dump than a once glorious civilization.

I sat down on a relatively large piece of what should be the remains of a floor, sitting beside her, overlooking as the mist slowly descends, slowly, creeping down. She leaned over to my shoulder, her eyes staring at me.

I just smirk, holding her hand, choosing a topic.

“So, since this world is back…doesn’t that mean?”

Rather than replying, she hold my hand by the wrist and raising it in front of me.

“I see”

I replied, I looked at my palm, green light emanate from it, followed by tiny green particles floating around my fingers. The light dimmed, fading, and so did the particles. I stared at my hand for a moment before clenching it and easing down, spreading my palm open. The light appeared once again, moving from my palm and covering my thumb, seeping into my nail. My nail remained the same, saved for an additional length barely noticeable.

The light disappeared and the additional length disappeared, like fading dust.

I put my hand down and focused before me, the mist already descended lower than us, engulfing the top of the ruble with deep eerie veil.

We just sat there, silence, waiting among the kisses of cold wind. There are nothing more we can say, not that we want to say anything, we just watch, waiting, knowing what will happen next.

A cold feeling and heavy sinking guilt weight down my stomach, sickening, like my intestines tied in a knot. Still, I ignored.

Why didn’t I told them to climb here? Honestly, that won’t save them. Even if they’re here, they’ll still be chased by whatever is in the mist. It can see them wherever they are, and climbing a hill will just make them stand out.

Then, what about us? Why climb here? Honestly, there is a thing there that hated us, despised us, it is disgusted by our taste, of our flesh. But by our special case, it can’t track us like it can track them, and why eat a disgusting meal when you can enjoy some tasty flesh?

That’s probably just my pathetic excuse for my actions, excuses to escape my guilt. I don’t know anymore, probably I’m just miserable and thinking of ways to spare my self.

The mist grew denser, then it came, screaming.

Sounds of fear, hopelessness, despair, so vague, yet I can hear them clearly.

“No!”

“Please!”

“I’m pregnant! Please! Noooooo! My baby!”

“Dad!? Mom!?”

“Help me! Please!”

“My arm!”

“No…please! Please don’t leave me…”

Those voices, joined by the cold sweeping wind.

I didn’t close my eyes nor did I cover my ears, I listened, silent. I stare below with emptiness in my eyes.

Dragging on with time, there eventually came silence and the mist start retreating back to the sky, fading like nothing ever happened.

I took a breath in and closed my eyes, my heart feeling empty, numb, nothing. All my prior hurting is gone, my torn heart covered by this sense of calmness and clarity, my emotions shoved down, nowhere for me to ever feel. My heart fill with emptiness, pumping my body with nothing.

I feel her hand on mine and I smiled at her, easing her frowning a bit, closing in and sharing each other in our warmth.

Turning my focus from her, I stare at what this land have become.

It still remains as desolate, but the street now decorated by smear and pools of blood. The pavements cracked with heavy footsteps, teeming with Flora of unknown origin, feasting on the blood and remains. Sickeningly they bloom of rosy petals, of such tantalizing red, of such morbid beauty. They dominate the ground in carpets of red, spreading with new flowers blooming and new plants growing.

That’s not the end. From rubles grew moss of various colors, spreading like a writhing, living carpet. Eventually they covered everything our eyes can afford to see, covering even what’s under our feet. Such comfort that it offer, like thick soft fur under the soles, softness that’s not worth the end of the world.

More came, various plants of various forms, trees that grow taller and in ways trees shouldn’t grow. The place shift and morph, Flora competing against each other and altering each other further, adapting and changing, until eventually everything stabilized and we find ourselves not in a city, but a thick forest of strange oddities.

I hold her hand, uttering in low voice.

“I guess this is the new world…”

She didn’t reply, only coming closer to me, but I already got what she’s saying even without spoken words.

This is different from my visions, or what happened before, but, I guess it’s our job to find out. One thing is for sure, there is no more hope for earth. This is it, and there are no ways back home, there will only be this place and humans trapped in a world they never hoped for.