The Four Horsemen
an excerpt

Life, that which our body fights to maintain even in the hour of darkest consequence. Even when we wish it would simply give up. The darkness so inviting over the pain of the current world we wish only to fall into it. The disaster of the 12th sent cries long into the night air, people pleading to various gods for redemption, and perhaps, if they were so merciful, a way out. Gasping, clawing for air with lungs rigid, we climb from the abyss to find ourselves once again in darkness, only this darkness we call Earth. Corrupt and beaten we pull ourselves to our feet, only to face the world once more, with hopes that the abyss will lighten our paths.

But if the body has yet to experience life, how does it know the abyss is not home? How can we possibly learn to breathe if we were never taught to live? Never given the chance…

Coughing and choking she came to life. Breathing was difficult, for dust rattled deep in her lungs. Everything hurt and she cried out in pain, no passion behind it. Simply the wish to scream, the jolt to yell. Raising a hand to her unfamiliar face she felt at the cuts and scrapes that had begun to scab, one down her temple, and another perpendicular on her eyebrow. Her hands were dirty and stained with blood, knuckles cracked and raw. She touched them gingerly, jumping at the electricity of nerves that flew up her back.

For the first time the young woman gazed at the world around her. Memory eluding her, she remembered nothing. But how could one remember a place so familiar when it has been desecrated so terribly. Streets and houses that once made a homely subdivision existed now only in the memories of those who had seen them in their glory. In the rubble of the streets she sat, pain tearing up her back, watching with a solemn honesty and naïve ignorance, watching life.

“Devon!” a woman cried in the streets, searching for her son. “Devon!”

The young woman felt an urge to respond.

Humans band together in times of terror with a concrete hope, dragging from the ruins of hopes and dreams those whom they care for most, and those they have never really known a day in their lives. For we can say that we know a person, to be with them the odd hour, talk about personal things when alone or simply be in their presence, but we never will truly know the person until their lives are dangled before their eyes. We meet the real person the day death comes knocking, and most of us never truly get a chance, because by the time we realize it, the moment has passed.

And so she watched, watched people meet those they had known their whole lives for the first time. Some cried, others laughed in joy to find their loved ones alive, others angrily stormed the streets, uncertain and lost, answering the knock of death with a furious passion, and stepping through the door out of desperation.

She watched the world revolve around her. And wishing to be part of it, she climbed from the rubble, stumbling under her weight, legs unsure of the ground they treaded. She trudged through the rubble, ankles threatening to give way at any moment. Her leg pained her greatly, and she moved her fingers to the glass that protruded from it, tearing it heartlessly from its nest within her leg. The bloodcurdling scream which followed woke her completely from her daze. Stumbling further, she clutched for reality, but it slipped form her fingers, her mind searching desperately for answers…but it was the simplest question that plagued her most: Who am I?

Into the world she fell, scared and innocent as a newborn.

And it was all yellow.