Through Glass by Rebecca Ethington

Author:Rebecca Ethington
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Imdalind Press
Published: 2013-09-19T04:00:00+00:00

The darkness was everywhere. It touched the once beautiful world I had lived in, seeping its poison into it and sucking the life and beauty from it.

I could see the shadow of color, the faded yellow of houses, the dark white of picket fences, a deep red of an upturned sedan. Even with the light strapped to my back the colors were faded in the darkness, swallowed by the black and my mind was unable to recall what the color had once been.

Green trees that had once stretched to the sky with heavy laden limbs were now cut through the grey of air above me in jagged shadows that stretched and elongated as the protective light shone on them. Skeletons of houses loomed around me, their broken faces screaming in pain from the torture that they had had to endure and the murders they’d had to witness.

Everything around me was bathed in the death of the dim light we had been left with. The life sucked out of it and the beauty stripped from it. The world was cast in shadow, but I had the light that served as my shield, which elongated those shadows into deathly fingers that only made the world look more forgotten.

Everything was dead, all life had been stripped away to open a wound on a now lonely planet.

I didn’t know how else to explain it.

There was no life here, not anymore. The endless stream of perfectly round piles of ash promised me that. I silently stepped around them, careful not to disturb the only reminder that people had once existed; the reminder of what may be in store for me.

Hundreds of them littered the ground around me; they pockmarked the cracked asphalt of the street and clustered around houses, broken cars, and street signs. Circles of ended life, of forgotten dreams. People that the Ulama had ended, that they had taken away. Just like Cohen.

I didn’t want to look. I willed myself to look away, but I couldn’t stop my eyes from wandering. I couldn’t stop the fear and anger from mixing together.

I had gone this way on purpose, turning my back on the black stretch of sky that Cohen had moved into while dutifully keeping away from the skate park where my family had left me forever. I had walked toward downtown in the hope that I would find refugees—others who had found the secret of the light. Deep inside, I hoped that if I walked long enough I would find a sun. Yet seeing this now, I was beginning to wonder if either were a possibility.

I walked down the street, my body dragging in exhaustion as I stubbornly moved myself forward. Every inch of my body ached from the exertion of walking, from carrying the heavy backpack. It all combined in a dull throb that covered every inch of me. I did my best to ignore it, but I already knew how useless it was.

I wasn’t sure how long I had been walking

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