Fruits of Insanity

nameless woman #6

She stared through the windshield, looking at the parking lot of traffic that covered the road. Everyone had the same idea she had. They were going home. She looked at the cars around her and wondered how many of them even had homes anymore.

The world had ended this morning, leaving lost souls combing through the wreckage. Gary in the secretary pool said that he was heading for West Virginia. No one was there, no bombs, no riots. But she had no one in West Virginia. Her parents were dead and she was an only child. The only one who cared if she lived or died was her cat—which made her a lonely cat lady. She was too young to be a lonely cat lady.

She had nowhere to go except her tiny apartment. It was near the fires, and she hoped she’d be able to make it through. She hadn’t thought that people would head into the city after this morning, but maybe other people had the same thought.

As she sat in traffic, horns blaring on every side, jets raced across the sky. She saw tiny figures falling and floating down on her side of the fire. Paratroopers. Were they coming to fix things? She wished she knew what was happening, but the news channels at work had all been dead and the net was down. Even her phone had stopped working.

She tried the radio again, but it was still static. She didn’t know what was going on. It scared her more than ever. In the movies, the hero always figured out what had happened immediately, hearing the pitch of the falling bomb, sniffing gunpowder through miles of weather. Seeing the fireball in time to race for cover. The ignorant bystander was the one who died. Someone who didn’t know what was happening. Someone like her.

People were getting out of their cars, standing and facing the fire, pointing at the paratroopers. She tried to see but it was too dark. City council hadn’t replaced the streetlamps here like they’d been promising since three elections ago. She slammed her hand down on the horn in exasperation. Too late to complain now. There were worse issues to deal with.

The figures were getting closer, which was odd. They should be going toward the fires, that’s where the problems were. She got out of the car without even thinking about it, staring up at the sky like other drivers all around her. It was like they were heading straight for her, but that was just silly. A trick of the dark. And they weren’t people shaped. She couldn’t tell what they were, but they definitely were not people.

All around her, people screamed and ran away from their cars, but she didn’t notice. Her eyes were caught by the thing floating down toward her. No parachute, just a jellyfish looking thing whose tentacles waved at her, gently, hypnotically, until they touched her.

She went down without a sound.

Prompt 6
the week of September 6

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