“Ughhhh...” The groaning echoed in the darkness, and he felt a dull pain throbbing in the back of his head. As he wheezed to breathe, the pain would ripple down his head and into his neck. He then realized he was breathing, which meant he was alive. That was impossible. His thoughts were all jumbled up, but the last bright flash still was vivid in his mind. So was the desperate laughter, the echoes of which still bounced around in his head. Even as he tried to sooth the racing thoughts that suddenly spun like a hurricane in his mind, he couldn't believe he hadn't been blasted to oblivion.

  Slowly, he began forcing his eyes open, while trying to make sense of the foul smell that dug into his lungs with every breath. Thoughts of having fouled himself tumbled around with the disgust of maybe having fallen into animal shit. However, as his eyes opened and his blurry vision began to slowly come into focus, he found himself looking at what he could only describe as a pile of garbage. Scraps of cloth, mud, animal bones, and what looked like a rotten corpse of a cat lay in front of him as flies swarmed all over the pile. If he could have, he would have immediately turned away, but the pain he felt only climaxed with every movement of his body.

  Forcing himself to slowly turn his head, he realized that it was night time, and what little light was around him was most likely from the moon. That meant almost half a day had passed, but even as confused and messy his thoughts were, he did not understand how he was alive. The nuclear blast should have turned him into cinder, if not torn him into pieces, never mind turning the city into rubble. However, as he turned his head, he saw a standing wall. Dark and looming in the night, it seemed like any other wall of the building he had been living in. There was something off about it though, but he couldn't concentrate enough to figure it out.

  Tears leaked out from the corner of his eyes, as he winced trying to move the rest of his body. Little by little, he pushed his body to respond to what he wanted it to do, and he was finally able to go from from slow tremors to moving his arms, enough to push himself off the muddy ground. Breathing heavily now, he began to pull himself over to the nearby wall, aiming for a spot where there was not as much refuse lying around. Even so, the slimy feeling all over his arms and chest from the wet ground still made him feel uncomfortable.

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  As he finally reached the wall, he realized what was off about it. The bricks that made it up were unevenly stacked with some kind of crude mortar filling the gaps. He wasn't exactly an civil engineer or architect, but even he knew that the wall was crudely built. However, his aching body was more important at the moment than some issue with the wall. Crawling over to it, he flipped himself over, so his back was resting against the wall. The effort cost him another wave of pain, and he closed his eyes and clenched his jaws as he tried to hold in a sob.

  When he opened his eyes, he could finally make out more of his surroundings. From what he could see, he was in between two buildings of some sort. On one end was a dead end with the other opening up into a street of some kind. Past the opening, he could make out more buildings, but a low level fog seemed to be drifting in, as much of what he could see was obscured. He struggled to remember what had happened to him, but every time he tried to recall the last moments before the nuclear blast, his head would feel like it was about to burst. Rubbing his face with his right hand, he took deep breaths, trying to calm himself.

  He knew something was wrong. It was obvious. There was no way he could have survived, but here he was, wherever here was supposed to be. Around then, he realized something, that had been right in front of him but which he had ignored, as if it was normal. His hand, as grimy as it appeared, was much smaller than he remembered it being. That wasn't all. Looking down at himself, he realized his entire body was smaller. The body belonging to what might be a young adolescent was covered in rags, unlike anything he had seen before, but what scared him was that the body belonged to him. “Wha....”

  His voice trembling in fear, he grabbed at his clothes and felt over his body, trying to bring some understanding to the madness that he was feeling. Just as he was frantically clawing at himself, the alleyway lit up even more as though the moon was finally coming out from behind the fog. He looked up in fear, remembering the last scene of the monster that had dominated the sky, but what he saw left him speechless. His black eyes dilated, leaving his mud stained, gaunt face gaping in shock at the pair of moons glowing brilliantly in the dark night.