Immortals

Waking up was one of the hardest things I ever did. My head hurt so bad it was as if a whole hive of black hornets had descended on my brain and left me to deal with the aftermath. My mouth and throat were just as bad and felt like I’d walked through a dust storm in blinding heat.

Opening my eyes, all I saw was red. Everything around me was up in flames. Bodies drenched in blood had painted the ground crimson. My own clothes were bloody and torn from where I had my insides slashed open.

I reached up to feel the wound that had caused my death, but it was not there. The blood that had poured out of me was still on the ground, but my body did not have a scar. Was I a ghost? I pinched myself and could clearly feel it.

I was alive. I did not understand how, but I was.

I lost my footing as I tried to stand and fell face first back to the earth, but not before seeing the lifeless bodies of everyone I had ever cared for lying on every side

I couldn’t believe it. It was not true; it couldn’t be true that I was alive while they were dead.

I did not realize that I was sobbing until I heard my own hiccups and felt waves of tears falling down my face and landing on my grime caked hands.

Tears still falling, my mind turned to my life. I could see every face and place every memory. I remembered the time I had hid on the orphanage roof and inadvertently been caught in a windstorm. I laughed halfheartedly. That had been a horrible day. I had never handled anger or loud noises well and that day another kid had been so mad at me that they yelled in my face about how my parents had truly abandoned me and would never be coming back. Overtime I realized that they were right.

I also remembered happier times. Such as the first time I had baked a loaf of bread. The proprietress had tried to teach me, but no one liked it. Still, I hadn’t given up and soon I could bake the best bread out of anyone. We would even sell my bread to people for residual income, the same people who were lying so close to me now.

Near me were the bodies of what appeared to be children. Perhaps the same children that, on reaching adulthood, I chose not to leave. Yet, that did not matter anymore. They had each breathed their last breath. I would never again experience the warmth of their hugs, hear the music of their laughs, see the joy in their smiles, or be the one they turned to when sad.

My brain could not comprehend what it was seeing. To it they were all still alive. If I walked down the lane to the orphanage, then I would see the little ones running to me.

There was a war in me. I had to go home. Yet, what if they were all really and truly gone?

Once more I set my feet under me and stood up. Somehow managing to hold my balance, I began to walk. Each step was more difficult than the last as I did my best not to tread on decaying human remains and to on no condition gaze at the now lifeless faces.

Smoke stung my eyes as I walked. I struggled finding the lane between the smoke, tears, and destruction. The entire town was one blazing inferno.

We had all known that the war was continually getting closer to our tranquil world, yet I never expected this. This meaningless cruelty and destruction. And for what? Land, power, the throne? None of it could possibly be worth this. Perhaps they meant to make an example of us. The ‘this is what we’ll do if you keep resisting’ sort of thing.

At long last, I stood facing the orphanage and it was in that moment I knew that I should not have gone there. Nearly everything had been gutted by fire and what hadn’t yet, was in the process of turning to mere ash and dust.

I sunk to the ground; my headache worse than ever as I felt myself give out. My body was without injury, but my mind was not so fortunate. My mind wanted to shut off and my body let it. I could not, would not try to comprehend what lay around me.

I laid there on the ground unthinking for what must have been hours. It took that long for me to discover any will to move.

Standing shakily, I began walking to the stream that ran just outside of town. The proprietress would not let me inside the home looking the way I did. It was likely fortunate that I could not see myself. I must have looked like the living dead; which I suppose I was.

The sky still had that reddish hue, a reminder of something that my brain knew wasn’t true. If I had seen it from a distance, and not known what it meant, I might have considered it beautiful. The shade was so deep and vibrant in red and orange.

By the time I reached the upstream part of the stream I had reached the end of my strength. I smiled at the water. It was the same white and blue it always had been. It was lovely. I didn’t dare go downstream where I was sure to find dirt, grime, and blood.

My shoes and clothes looked horrid. It was painful to take them off. The once pretty greens and yellows were now a splotchy brown and red and the blood had glued them to my flesh in some places. Knowing that there was no one to watch, I undressed to wash both myself and my clothes. Once I got them off, I pulled them with me into the water and tried to scrub them clean. It was a laborious process, one that was hard work with slow progress. Once I was satisfied that I had gotten out all that would reasonably come out, I hung them up to dry and focused on cleaning myself.

The water felt perfect against my skin, washing away all traces of the horror from my outer body. It was cool and clean, just like every other day I had bathed there.

Getting out, I pulled my clothes back on and tied on the green belt embroidered with flowers, that had been given to me as a gift, around my waist. It didn’t cover the gash in my clothing over my midriff and I figured that I would need to get new clothes sometime in the near future.

I began my way back to the building that I called home. It was not as laborious as my first trip back to the orphanage, but with my wits greater about me I noticed things I had not before. There was the broken-down wall that led to where the baker’s shop used to be, a dog lying dead in the grass, and a limp hand coming out from underneath a collapsed doorway.

When I got there, with clearer eyes I saw the roof and windows completely gone and all walls scorched. I tried to see more, yet the smoke still filled my lungs, sending me into a coughing fit, burned my already crying eyes, and assisted the oncoming darkness. It was hours from the invasion inside the town walls, which had happened in the late morning, and I was tired. The fire had long since consumed everything available to burn, and so I went inside among the rubble. As I laid down, I noticed the floor was almost as cold as a metal lamp left out during a winter storm and just as hard. But it was home and I willingly let sleep claim me, praying for sleep without dreams.

Unfortunately, my wish was not granted. My dreams brought me back to relive that very same day, the moments before what I knew to be my death.

It had been a quiet morning. As usual, the children had woken me due to their ‘quiet’ giggles.

Rising from my cot, I had dressed, embarked downstairs, and begun my morning work. I had prepared myself and the children some morning breakfast of porridge, before going out to pick apples from our apple trees. I loved those trees. They were tall and beautiful with apples hanging delicately from their branches. The children had loved them. They would enjoy them for snacks, treats, and meals. We would make apple juice, apple sauce, baked apples, apple pie, and the like. Then, before we could completely tire of apple things, we would take our apples and baked goods to market. People liked our apples and knew them to be for a good cause.

After we had gathered the apples, I had headed to market to sell them. It was a beautiful clear day, much like any other. People were going to work, stopping for a bite to eat, or merely coming to market to get their ingredients for the day. It was calm and peaceful, save for one of the village boys who was flirting with me. I was flirting back.

While he winked at me and I laughed, suddenly a loud cry came from the city gate. We turned to look, and my body froze. Laying in the gateway there was the gatekeeper, dead, and above him were tall bloodthirsty barbarians with cruel smiles marring their features.

The city square broke into chaos, people running in all directions, screams filling the air.

I tried to make a run for it, but my way was blocked. I tried to climb over the booth, but I tripped and fell. I laid there for a moment, before getting up and trying to run away again. I pushed through the crowd, working my way away from the center of carnage and trying to get back to the orphanage, to let them know what was happening and to get them to safety, but I never made it.

An arm suddenly wrapped around me and pulled me back, spinning me to come face to face with the man that would be my killer, his hand moving to wrap around my neck. He was tall, with dark prominent eyebrows and shoulder-length wavy black hair that flew around his face. He had a slight amount of facial hair and was undeniably handsome, save for the crazed look of bloodlust marring his face.

His arm gripped me tighter as I tried, in vain, to escape.

He chuckled lightly to himself. “My my. Don’t we have a fighter here.” He gently lopped a finger around one of my curls. “I love your hair. It reminds me of the phoenix, do you think you’ll have their luck?”

“Can’t.” I choked out, spitting in his face. “Phoenixes have to die by fire in order to come back.”

Chuckling, he tightened his hand around my neck, making it impossible for me to say another word. “I might have given you to the fire, but you’ve changed my mind. You’ll serve a better purpose.”

Pulling out his knife, he plunged it into my stomach.

I gasped. The pain was indescribable. This was how I was going to die.

Giving me a leer, he pulled the knife out of me allowing my blood to splatter to the ground.

“Time for you to die.” He whispered in my ear, before plunging the knife right into my heart.

Breathing heavily, I started awake. I tried to calm my breathing, but it was so hard. I was so scared. I curled up into a ball, hoping beyond hope that I would be able to get some rest, but knowing that my night would be a sleepless one, one filled with the death and violence which plagued my mind.