The ongoing collection Volume IX

 

By J. R. Wagner

TheNeverChronicles.com

       

                               J. R. Wagner TheNeverChronicles.com

The seventeenth day of August, The year remains unknown I woke to find myself in my childhood bedroom. Clean dressed and fed once again, all without my reckoning. Only this journal delineates this room between my actual childhood living space. I stood feeling refreshed and marveling at the recreation. Down to the last detail, the color and texture of the carpet, the toys scattered on the floor, even the drawing I created as a toddler on the closet door were there in perfect exactness. The fear that consumed me has passed leaving a foreboding sense in my gut. I moved quickly to the door and passed through into another familiar space –my tearoom. It was dawn outside the front window. The shadows of sunrise stretched from the lampposts as well as the long stems of the flowers. The bloodhound that usually adorned the hearthrug was nowhere to be found. The cups on the nearest table sat empty, each cup’s bottom lined with damp leaves. The fire had long since burned out. Every so often a wisp of smoke rose from the ashes. In reviewing my previous entry, I am perplexed. Unable to discern any meaning, I must move on in my observations. No others occupied the room save the old man seen previously in a heated discussion with a younger woman. He sat silently in the corner staring off into space. The cup held between his wrinkled hands steamed, releasing the most intoxicating smell. For reasons I cannot comprehend, I recalled the events surrounding the death of my wife. She was the second to fall at the hands of the darkness. We had recently lost our eldest daughter, Arya in a manner that parents should never have to experience –no do I have any inclination to recall at the moment. My wife, Leah, had fallen into a state of depression from which I thought she’d never recover. At the time we had sought refuge in the bowels of an ancient city. Daylight was s commodity most of us could not enjoy. We had managed to find several other families along with a handful of individuals. The young and the healthy would make trips to the surface for food and equipment. They returned only fifty percent of the time. Leah was staring listlessly into the fire as she did every evening. A concussion shook the tunnel in the not far distance. Immediately, Anne and my baby and Sophie were clinging to my legs. Smoke began to fill the far tunnel and I knew our time in

       

                               J. R. Wagner TheNeverChronicles.com

this place was over. I picked up our emergency bag –always packed, always ready, and moved for the exit tunnel. I screamed for Leah. She did not budge from her seat by the fire. I could hear screams. We need to go now, I said to my wife. She turned to me, not even glancing at her screaming children. Her face was expressionless, her eyes, vacant. In that moment, I knew this was the end for us. Another sound echoed in the distance followed by more screams. She turned her head back to the fire ignoring her daughter’s pleas. Other families had left or were running past. A woman fell dead just feet from where we stood, her skin bubbling like a rolling boil of water in a pot. I picked up the girls and ran for the exit while they continued to cry out to their mother. I looked back the moment before I turned the corner. Leah was still staring into the cooking fire as the smoke and flame engulfed the entire cavern. The children wailed long after we reached the safety of our next destination. The old man still sat in the corner quietly sipping his tea. Exhausted, I returned to my childhood bedroom and slept. I had a feeling the old man would be there, still sipping his tea, upon my return.