Autonomy (part 7) A Dystopian Adventure Story About the End of the World [Written by Matthew Munsey]

Suddenly, an explosion rang out, piercing the silence left in the wake of Trip’s somber words. The window set in Trip’s wall was for a moment illuminated so fervently, brutally red that the three could do nothing but remain frozen, equally doused in what felt like a sinister mixture of both terror and awe. Barb moved first. Springing to her feet in a frenzied, almost manic lurch, she all but sprinted to that now flickering and dancing kaleidoscopic view.

“What do you see?” Jack spoke with an urgent awareness bordering on violence. His tone only grew sharper when Barbara remained mute. “What the hell do you see down there? What the fuck was that?” He was almost yelling, frozen as the baptisia stalk in the heart of coldest winter, cemented in place by icey earth and nature’s own unshakable desire for it to remain alive. It seemed apparent that in his terror he had forgotten he could move.

Jack’s words had fallen on deaf ears. Barbie hadn’t even flinched since she had set her gaze about that horrid, bubbling glow. She only stared, her jaw hung loosely, agog, somehow ascue in her unbridled fear. Jack could just barely see her eyes. They looked like smoldering, twisting glass marbles, their natural blue distorted, all but abandoned in the ravenous glow that emanated throughout them. They looked to Jack like what he imagined hell to be, on those nights when he sat up smoking, and drinking, and wondering about his own immortal soul.

At once, as if a gust of wind had overtaken her very being, or perhaps a vengeful god had decided to run his fingers across her supporting strings and twist, Barbie's body violently shook. In this moment, this tremor of soul that brought her for just a second outside of herself, to a place uninhabited by those not familiar with the spiritual or the divine, a word escaped her chalked and traumatized lips.

Never had she spoken his name with such a resonating tone of agony. Not when he had gotten loaded and crashed that damn scooter she had loved so much into the Rock Center fountain, not when he had chucked that four iron at Dave Blumweir’s kid’s head. Hell, she didn’t even sound this defeated when he’d called her mom a fucking cunt. And that was bad. This was worse, it had to be. For a moment further, Jack could only stare at his wife in horror. Slowly, as if he were in a dream, he went to her. Looking out over the horizon from this lofty perch could only have been described as a nightmare, if but there had ever been one conceived of such devastation, of such visceral, undeniable truth. Just down the road, it couldn’t have been further than a mile, the old Snelling building was falling in on itself. Steel girders hung loosely like palm fronds out of every orifice of the colossal frame. Fire scratched and trailed it’s sooty fingers back and forth across the face of that damned building as each of its’ thousand eyes wept, taking one life for each boiling tear that fell. The streets around it’s failing carapace were molten. The building itself seemed as if it were alive, twisting and buckling, an animal in it’s death thralls. Agony incarnate. Momentarily Jack considered the fact that if it were an animal, it would be kinder to just put the thing out of it’s damn misery. At this, as if compelled by some wicked force Jack let out a slight, but ringing chuckle. His stomach was in knots immediately. Thankfully, Barbara had not heard, or perhaps even had understood. How had she stood and looked for so long now, without making even a sound? But how long had it been, really? Jack did not know. He only knew that he himself could bear the sight no longer. He wrenched his eyes from their pitiful position and allowed them to, mercifully, hang about the form of his wife. Bathed in the stunning glow of the inferno below them, she looked nothing less than an angel, standing resolutely in the face of hell’s deepest might. Slowly Jack reached for her body, and finally she moved, just an inch, but towards him, and into his outstretched arms. Together they stood, staring not at the death, at the destruction, at that living hell that was below them cast surely out of some long forgotten tome meant to guide immoral men from their own desires - but rather, at each other. Jack held his wife as he had not done so in what had felt like years, and she him with passion of equal force. Together the two lovers stood, barely breathing in one another's arms, silhouetted firmly by that hideous orange glow that even as they rocked and soothed in apparent safety, continued to consume life without remorse or recognition.

Trip’s melodic and ever cheerful voice rang out. He was yelling, but Jack and Barbara could hardly hear him. In their terror they had hardly noticed it, but the sound was deafening. Like ragged nails made hard by the passing of time and use being run continuously over a freshly hewn blackboard. It was the old Snelling building. It was screaming.

“Guys, both of you take one of these, we’ve got to get the fuck out of here!” Now really projecting his voice, but still barely audible, Trip held out to each of the two lovers what looked like an entire campsite wrapped up on a set of straps. “These backpacks got everything we’re gonna need out there, but we gotta go now, this shit is fucked!” Dumbstruck, each of the two held out one hand, the other still firmly wrapped around one another's waist, and accepted what Trip had to give them. Tugging these new burdens onto their backs wordlessly, still looking only at each other and still arm in arm; the lovers slowly skirted that ghastly window and its determined glow as if nothing else in the world mattered besides the two of them, and the two of them staying the fuck away from all of that out there.

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Dear Reader, I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to read this story, and to let you know how much it means to me that you did! If you enjoyed this story (or hated it), please do not hesitate to let me know in the comments section! If you did enjoy this story, it would also mean a lot to me if you would be so kind as to upvote, resteem, and generally just let people know that you thought that what you read was worthwhile! Thanks again Reader, and I hope to see you next time! -Matthew Munsey