Salvation of the Skies

There was only one rule: don’t open the door.

An unwritten one but they all followed it. No-one had the courage to defy it.

"We are safe here," their Leader said, his backdrop the boarded-up windows of the hall, sunlight excluded. The candles lent his face an equally benevolent and spooky demeanour, as shadows fluctuated over his features and flames sputtered and blew in draughts that defied the plywood.

Anna believed him. He loved them, told them all the time, that the seclusion was for their own protection and that outside these walls, people would harm them. Here, within the temple constructed by his love, they would prosper until the day when the others would be wiped.

She missed the sun and the space but she feared for her immortality and the consequences of her sin. The Leader would secure her eternal life

But what if the door was opened from outside?

There had been warnings before, shouted from loud speakers, penetrating the gaps, their sharp rhetoric muffled. The Leader gathered them all together, his eyes shining with vehemence that they would not surrender to the others and to let nothing divide them.

When the door burst open with an explosion creating splintered spears, destruction ploughed its way indiscriminately into their temple and brought its bloody boots to bear on all of them. The staccato blasts of gun fire were a response to the shouts of outrage and the screams of panic.

When Anna was led away, numb, from the carnage that wrecked her insular world and tore down her friends, she realised that they could be divided and that the Leader was right about the others. The Salvation of the Skies was now beyond her reach, ripped from her by those who didn't understand.

The door was not enough.