A Thousand Suns

*Dazhbog save us, everyone*

*Will we burn inside the fires of a thousand suns?*

*For the sins of our hand,*

*The sins of our tongue*

*The sins of our father*

*The sins of our young*

*No!*

We all prayed collectively, outdoors, under the bright light of the mid-noon sun.

*Dazhbog save us, everyone*

*Don’t let us burn inside the fires of a thousand suns*

*For the sins of our hand*

*The sins of our tongue*

*The sins of our father*

*The sins of our young*

*Oh… L*

A scream cut our collective prayer short. One that came from the skies above us. A scream rising and falling in its tone that came from the sun itself. I looked up and the light of the sun burned my eyes, obscuring my vision. I kept on looking; for I was faced with the crown of my lord. The longer I looked at the sky above me, the clearer my vision became. From the heavens fell a thing, taking a shape resembling that of a man as he inched closer to me.

The mysterious man from the sky crashed to the hot concrete at the center of the crowd. His body collided with those of people below him, creating a sickening thumping sound. The crowd collectively gasped loudly. What might’ve seemed like a miracle at first turned out to be an act of the dark gods from below. The man’s fall crushed to death a few of our people, as they stood right below his trajectory. Moreover, once closer to the eye of the beholder it was clear as day to all that the man was an abomination of sorts. His body was clumsily stitched together, different shades of skin color adorning his various body parts. The man’s face was the most hideous feature, one eye massive and yellowish in tint while the other was small and slanted, lacking an iris. The nose of this man was awfully twisted into an uncomfortable shape. A severe overbite showed his jaws were carelessly stitched together. It was a makeshift doll, a golem of sorts. We all stared at him with a mixture of awe and disgust.

The man looked left and right and spun in his place. Then he started screaming violently at everyone to run away. His ungodly appearance alone seemed to have dulled all of our other senses as we remained fixated on his form, blatantly ignoring his pleas.

We all started paying attention to our ears when his body emitted the continuous sound of vomit coming out of his throat in rolling waves of bile and agony. He urged us to run once again, screaming like a wild animal, shouting profanities and threats to our lives. It was too late by then. The man’s body started convulsing violently, and the crowd gasped once again when the first growth erupted from his gut. It flew out of him like a fat, withering worm. Another growth sprouted like a mushroom cap out shoulder. Another followed suit, and then another and another. His body slowly became an ever-growing mass of cancerous matter that sprawled itself wherever he could. When I saw the first ones running, the man was a mountain of purple flesh pulsating in and out of itself. It was about to erupt like a volcano of innards and gore. Yellow venous lines ran across his inhuman form, with blackish liquid coursing through said lines. More people started passing by me, running somewhere, screaming. Panic gripped the crowd, but I remained transfixed on the alien creature. The fleshy mass inflated like a balloon before contracting violently into itself, before expanding and contracting twice more.

With a very distinct pop, an alien sound I haven’t heard the likes of before or since, a symphony of light broke through the venous pile. It was brighter than anything I’d ever seen before. My feet moved on their own accord. My body started running without my permission as the symphony of light seemed to expand wider and wider with each passing moment. I ran with my eyes practically glued to the abomination. The light grew brighter and encompassed more and more of the city behind me.

My body kept on running on its own, even though there was no chance of escape. Eventually, I tore my eyes off of that thing. I could feel the heat of the light touching the back of my neck. I knew there was no chance of survival. I knew this was the end. I could practically taste the photons forcing their way into my throat. I could hear the whistling of this unearthly fire violating my eardrums. The heat caressing my back was becoming painful, the light was blindingly close to my eyes.

Then it stopped, it disappeared as if it never even existed. My feet did not dare to slow down. They kept on pushing onward. The light was contracting back into the form of the fleshy abomination. Sucked into its shambled form as if into a black hole. I looked back once more. There was another flash of light. One brighter than a thousand suns. Pure white light, unblemished, unrefined, absolute nothingness. My eyes were assaulted by a million shards of burning hot glass at that moment, and my body was pushed to the scorching concrete by shock wave blast. The cold white engulfed me, engulfed everything even before I could let out a pained scream. Everything turned unbelievably hot. I felt myself liquefying as the radiation shredded my cellular structure. The light bled into a flash of absolute nothingness. Where everything just faded into an existence beyond black emptiness. The depths of hell weren’t as pitch black as this moment of nothingness.

Somehow, I survived the blast. I opened up my eyes, feeling nothing. I tried moving, but my body wouldn’t listen, not below the neck anyway. A painful sensation gripped my heart. A pair of hands composed entirely of dry ice gripped my lungs and I felt myself drowning in my own saliva. Before me, there was a crater that wasn’t there moments ago. All around me, the city was a burning hellscape. The surrounding buildings were partially liquefied, melting away before my eyes.

I caught a glimpse of a man whose entire side was burned off into nothing. He was half-man, half shadow. The man was somehow alive, gurgling on his own boiling blood. My remaining blood caught on fire and started freezing over in my veins simultaneously. I tried screaming, but no sound came. I could only watch and wait.

I watched and saw shadows of people carved into the concrete all around me. Entire families incinerated by the heavenly fire with nothing but a shadow splashed like a cruel reminder of their former existence on the ground. One shadow was splattered across a window that was slowly crumbling under the weight of its own existence. The shadow was bisected in half at the midsection. I could almost make out the details of its sprawling innards. The shock wave must’ve torn through this person. I felt a tear stream down my face. It felt like a knife cutting through my facial skin. I closed my eyes, attempting to stop the tear but to no avail.

The sound of gurgling forced my eyes open once more. A parody of a human stood over me, its arms hanging in front of its form. Its skin melted off, hanging awkwardly on its skeletal frame. The creature stumbled around aimlessly, attempting to screech in pain. The muffled gurgles made it seem even worse than it had been. Lacerating tears cut through my face. I couldn’t take it anymore. My blood froze over inside of me. I closed my eyes, hoping to just die, but something collapsing right next to me shook me awake. A fire tore through my face, arms, and torso, forcing a scream out of my mouth. I saw dust fall out of where my throat should’ve been.

In front of me, the charred body of a person collapsed on its knees, disintegrating before my own eyes. Turning into specks of black sand in soot. Feeling the world slowly fade around me, I attempted to raise my arm once again. Just as finally pulled it into the air, a light breeze tore effortlessly through it, turning it into nothing but dust. I couldn’t even feel it.

Everything went black. I was sure that was the end, as I couldn’t feel the scorching rays of the sun shredding what remained of my skin. The mixture of heat and frost within finally dissipated, and I was at peace with myself finally.

A deep demonic growl shook through my entire body, light a bolt of lightning. I woke up, sore and shaking in my own bed. The ghoulish cry of the nuclear air-raid sirens woke me up from one hell to another.