Doomsday Diary Challenge

As I walked down the old, abandoned street, I realized I could barely remember what it looked like before the carnage, the bombings, before it all went to hell. To the right of me was the park. The beautiful rhododendrons would be in full bloom and the breeze would blow the petals across the grass. Now, in their place, were broken trees, swing sets ripped from their places in the ground, old picnic tables torn and strewn about. The other side of the street was the Farmers Market. Rubble and turned over cars littered the street that once buzzed with electricity. Merchants selling their wares and customers bartering for the newest in organic vegetables and fried food. I have been asked the question several times since the end. Where was I when someone pushed the button. I was here with my family. We were sitting in the park munching on hotdogs and waiting for next band to come out on stage. Suddenly there was a loud “BOOM” and we saw something hit the Interstate bridge. Then the chaos seemed to take a movement like a slow-motion picture. We watched the freeway bridge, and its cars slowly snap each cable support and slide into the cold river.

The screams, the cries, the crippling fear from so many people at once was quickly drown out by fighter jets flying overhead from the air force base nearby. Taking off before a wave of bombs hit the city of Portland. Our family grabbed each other and ran for our car to get home before the freeways jammed with traffic. Sure enough, the missiles began to fly into the sky over Portland. I watched as the plumes of smoke emerged from the tall buildings, we could see from our side of the Willamette River. Living near a City the size of Portland, we had been as prepared as we could be. But we really had no idea what we were in for. The paralyzing fear that gripped the people was one that would never be truly forgotten.

Home was so different now. It used to be one of peace and security. But nothing was safe or secure. Not since the end 5 years ago. I walked out to the boardwalk, alone, with my hand resting on my gun. There were only 2 families in the neighborhood now. Many had died that day, including mine. I remember leaving her. My daughter. Her reaching out to me with her silver heart locket and telling me it was ok to let her go. She had a deep gash on her leg as we ran to escape the quick forming mob at the park. Over the course of 3 days, it became infected, and she went septic. “Crazy,” I thought. Bombs and bodies littered the world, and she was lost to an infection. I had managed to get her home but, the infection set in quickly. There was nothing I could do. Something inside me also died that day. I lost my faith in God…my faith in humanity. Now I was a shell of my former self. I wore her locket to remind me there was nothing left to live for, nothing worth loving now that she was gone.

I turned away from the water and continued walking home. I’m not sure how many days it was but it felt like an eternity without her with me. They say having a child die before the parent is unnatural. Who they are, I don’t know, but it is true. It was a pain I never got over. One that never healed or faded with each passing day. It only got worse as did the longing to see her.

I walked up to her, where she lay in the ground. The earth was still soft, and I had piled a little pillar of rocks as a marker for her. I don’t even remember pushing the earth over her. I must have, I was the only one there. But the mind is a feeble yet complicated organ. It had decided to protect me by forgetting that which was most painful yet allow the body to finish the task at hand.

I placed fresh flowers on her grave and gripping the locket, I lay down beside her. I remember closing my eyes as they filled with tears and pain, regret and longing. I remember feeling like my heart was slowly, methodically being torn from my chest. It was the days of increasing pain and the nights of fading memories that was finally making a collision course in my mind and shattering what was left of my sanity and my will to live. Then as I sobbed and gasped for air, I had a feeling of dark peace wash over me as my body died from a broken heart.