Stone Angel

On the brink of destruction, just before the bomb hit, she looked up and saw - beauty.

The wind blew the black smoke in their direction. It burned at the back of her throat and in her eyes.

She knew.

Tomorrow the city would be no more than a sad memory - not even that. There would be no more women selling fish in the market, no barefoot children playing in the plaza or neighboors bickering over imagined slights.

It would all be over in less then fifteen minutes. That was all it would take - maybe a little more, maybe a little less. At least the waiting would be over.

She looked up, and she saw it, in the middle of the deserted plaza. A terrible vision of beauty and doom. An angel - one hand on his sword and the other extended to her. Judgement was upon her and she would embrace it.

She hardly noticed when the first bomb hit, or the ones that followed it - shattering the peacefull slumber of the city. It turned into a burning inferno of screaming people, burning houses, the deafening sound of the explosions. Almost like fireworks, she thought.

The city was piled high with the living, the dying and the dead - all clamoring for mercy. But the impassive metal beasts were unmoving.

As everything crescendoed in a medley of despair and pain, no one took notice of the young girl that clinged to the stone angel in the middle of the plaza. Her skirt was dirty and in tatters, her hair hung loosely down her back.

No one saw as the bomb hit the heart of the plaza.

All that was left was the head of the angel, staring sightlessly up at the sky - a web of blood running down the tortured contours of its beautifully sculpted face. The girl was no more.

Silence.

There wasn't a single sound to be heard in that place - no longer a city.

Sixteen minutes had passed.