LAYER 10: DESTRUCTION
I awake to a chorus of wailings on the rising sun. Aimless wanderers crowd the market road, but ash is the only aroma filling the air. Someone approaches me, face obscured by the day's harsh brilliance. As I turn my head to regard them, a tugging tightens in my mouth, and I am reminded of the long tongue coming from my throat, which has become by now twice as rotten and warty. As I pull back, patches of browned flesh pull apart in filmy layers. I fall backward. The tongue has snapped apart. Bracing myself to feel the ground on my neck, I feel on my shoulders a pair of frail arms sustain me from my fall. What remains hanging of the tongue recedes down into my throat, and only then does the shadow of its intolerable taste attack my memory (it was the sweetness of something rotten, nature corrupted).
"Your mother and father have thrown themselves into the ocean. Your sisters and brothers are dead, you were presumed dead too" Old Man Hands's arm descends shakily from my shoulder as I turn to face him. We both brace ourselves on each other, while we keep our heads turned to the ground. The wrinkles on his face, like writing scrawled across a seal. I never understood before what they meant, but somehow I feel now on the edge of understanding. The air of destruction looms in the stagnant air, feeling too natural.
"It's changed quite a bit since five years ago."
"Why five years ago?"
He looks toward me solemnly. "That's when you were last here. Right?"
Wasn't I here just yesterday? But the air reeks of five years ago, or even more. Old Man Hands begins to walk away.
"I've gotten word that the whole world's turning this way. But you wouldn't know anything about that. The last of us are heading to the city, to behold the catharsis of destruction, if anything."
The hotness invades me, I throw up my hands to cover my face but it feels flat and unfamiliar under these fingers .
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