Love Daddy

The room was pitch black Jason couldn’t see anything, as he stumbled in the dark he could hear crackling like the sound of a low flame burning in a fireplace but still no light to be found. He called out for his wife and children but received no reply. “Stacey! Ella! Bobby!” he screamed. Only hours before they had been resting comfortably in their beds dreaming of times long past, of green fields, people and dogs playing in parks and the lovely hello’s of friendly people walking by one another on the streets. A time before the darkness of war, the horror of the screams in the distance of someone in agonizing pain then softly drifting off into nothing. The silence sometimes worse then the screaming, because at least you knew they were still alive.

He could only think of the last time he saw his beautiful bride lying beside him, caressing his chest and enforcing the fact that he could’ve done nothing to prevent the death of his oldest daughter so many years earlier. On the anniversary of her death his mind wandering with images of her dancing in the field of their home, the light bouncing off of her silver heart shaped pendant he gave her for her thirteenth birthday. The very same pendant his wife now wore in her memory with the inscription, “You are the shape of my heart. Love Daddy.” How could they possibly know that Ewing’s Sarcoma was destroying her from the inside then, only to leave very little of her left a few short years later? The memory always tearing his heart apart once a year every year until he fell asleep that night, his wife’s hand on his chest with Ella and Bobby safe in their beds, only to awake the next morning to darkness. Life seemed one miserable blow after another. Waking to darkness and rubble, searching franticly, screaming for family and for help but seeing nothing, receiving no reply. Then he stumbled past a doorway of what once may have been the basement door only to find the outside world on fire all around him, the remains of his neighborhood in shambles. As he walked through it all he came across a pajama top that looked exactly like the one young Ella always wore, the little white and pink Unicorns dancing all over it slightly stained with blood. His mind went into overdrive as he pictured all of the horrible possibilities that could’ve befallen his family, the days and months of political bickering and division that had lead up to this morning had been so hard on everyone, all of the protests, the violence all across the world. All leading to one government being overthrown by its people and one of them releasing only a single nuclear warhead, a chain reaction of fear and vengeance leading to the destruction of all that was sacred to him. Then in the distance a shimmer of light, a reflection of the fires catching his eye, he walks quickly towards it climbing over the rubble looking over the bodies for a glimpse of recognition of family or friends but seeing only horror and death. Until he finally reaches the point of light being reflected by a sand box in someone’s yard, the sand had been turned to glass. His eyes searched feverishly for anything else knowing they had to be somewhere. As his view peered into the darkness he could see a group of four or five people gathered together in a kneeling position holding onto one another if as to support each other from falling. And as he got closer he could see the shape of a heart pendant tucked under blood matted blonde hair, and as he moved that hair back the profile of his once beautiful bride took shape before him. As he fell to his knees stricken with grief he could see the inscription, “You are the shape of my heart. Love Daddy."