Story: Old Hymns
By Old Corp
I write every day. This is what came out on the page today. Do you think my muse might be taking oxycodone?
The man and woman left the bomb shelter and walked into the late summer afternoon. The needles of their rad counters were pegged in the red. Fallout was drifted like snow, but the sky was the most delicate blue and it made her cry. Smoldering trees and houses and unidentifiable lumps of protoplasm. But the hills were intact. The bay gleamed in the distance. Pyres of smoke from burning ships. Smells of woodsmoke and cooked flesh. A Pacific storm had hit right after the bombs fell, and most of the fires were out. They made their way to the local park. His nose started to bleed, but they went on, their footfalls raising the dust of civilization. The park was obliterated so they made their way downtown to the domed stadium. It was amazingly intact. They went inside and followed the sound of singing voices. There were thousands of people inside and they were singing old hymns. A fat man in a Hawaiian shirt pressed hymnals into their hands and led them to a pair of vacant seats. They sat and sang. They sang for hours and days. People were dying, the very young and the very old slumping down in their seats and succumbing to the silent waves of alpha and beta and gamma. But the voices sang stubbornly until the world reversed course and the buildings sprouted from the rubble and the fires were sucked back into the sky and the blasts were removed from recorded time and the missiles flew back to their silos and disassembled their elements back into the Earth. The people sang until they grew bored of singing, and then they started it all up again.
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Story: Old Hymns | 2 comments (2 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
Story: Old Hymns | 2 comments (2 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
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