So Swiftly Ended by Aaron Redfern (win 10 ebook reader .txt) 📕

I

Sunday August 20,

They are coming. A wind of change, a killing tide, the end of the world as we know it. Oh, damn. I always get lost in explanations. There is too much to say. There’s something that you all need to know, and I have to write it while there’s still time. I have to record it here in the tiny, fragile hope that someone is going to read it and be able to stop them. It’s too late for me; life could’ve been so different, but... No. Focus. They’re coming. The thing you have to know is--


II

She left this morning. The smell of her skin, which covered every inch of this place like dust, is fading, and no amount of science or art could reform it. Love is such an inexact science, art just an attempt to fill the void where something could be with the ghost of imagining. I let myself believe that I could grasp an answer, that I could master it. I always do. It’s futile, but a thought of her swims endlessly in my mind, the memory of her breath warm on my face, whispering light.

I want to make something perfect.


III

From the top of the hill the last man alive can see another empty town. A barn stands still but strangely untouched nearby, and beyond it are the dark pits and ruined walls where the bombs fell to try to stop them. The sun is crawling toward the ground like a retreating dog, reddening as it goes. Pearly pinkness tinges the edges of all things. It’s pretty, but no one else is left to see. He thinks about peace, and how things were never this quiet before.

There are shapes, dark and fast, coming up the slope of the hill.

Text: Aaron Redfern
Publication Date: 03-27-2012

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