Shadows

Shadows

            The people of the city were happy, sad, tired, energetic, young, and old. People were crying, people were laughing, and people simply were. But no matter their mood, age, or sex, none of them knew anything was amiss. In fact, nobody but a select few on Earth knew what was going to happen

It was a beautiful day; the sun was shining and pumping its heat into the air, all the while spreading light throughout the Earth. The sky had a few wispy clouds here and there, thick enough to be able to see the beautifully marshmallow white, yet thin enough to see the bright blue of the sky above.

In the gigantic park in the center of the city, the green grass was swaying to its own silent music, rhythmically moving back and forth. A naked foot crushed some of the grass, getting some of it stuck between the toes and some dirt along with it. That foot belonged to a little girl, no older than four, who was laughing hysterically and running away from her father, who was pretending to be a monster that would eat her.

In the alleyways, it was filthy. The dirt clung to the walls like glue, and there were people’s wastes in the corners. In one of these filthy alleyways, one that was a block down from that park, there was an ecstasy dealer preying on a helpless teen that was going through a hard time, and needed a friend. He would have been a friend for sure, but he would have gotten the teen addicted to ecstasy and eventually cocaine, which would have resulted in him overdosing where his friends would have found him two days later.

There was a building a few buildings down from the alleyway which had been abandoned years before. In this building the floors were sagging and about to collapse, the roof was about to fall apart, and the walls were covered in mold. The windows were all broken by teenagers who wanted to destroy something, and the door was extremely rotted away.

Inside this building was a pimp who was beating one of his clients who had tried to keep some extra money for herself. He was yelling at her about how she shouldn’t have done that, and how she made a huge mistake, while she was screaming and sobbing out apologies with tears running down her face.

Her face was bloodied and battered, and she was crying even harder. But nobody would help her; everybody just ignored her screams and kept walking. She would have died from getting beaten too bad, had the pimp been given a chance. But instead, she would die a different way.

At the same time, a dad was chasing his little daughter. She had to have been no more than six, and the mom was yelling after them and laughing. The daughter was squealing up a storm, and the dad was laughing and yelling “I’m going to get you!” He picked her up, and raised her high above his head. Her dress was flapping in the wind, his coat was as well. And then, as he was about to put her down, it happened.

It started with a roar. The roar was so loud, and so vicious, that it tore through people’s ear drums making them completely deaf. Then, a split second later, the entire city was washed with light, heat, and death. On the outer edges of the city, the laughs and tears turned to screams of pain.

The family of three had their shadows immortalized on the walls of the building behind them, which was the same building the pimp had almost killed the prostitute in. The pimp and prostitute also had their shadows burned into the memory of the interior walls. However, the skin had burnt off all of them, and they had died instantly.

The little girl and her father had been vaporized, because they were right beneath the blast. Their shadows were burnt into the ground. It hadn’t been a full size, or full power nuclear bomb, so it didn’t level too much of the city. However, it had been powerful enough to kill almost everybody in it from the heat.

Forever the shadows will remind those who see them of the travesties of the war, and forever the memories of the little children, the wives, the husbands, the fathers, the mothers, the brothers, and the sisters will be immortalized in shadows. In shadows they are remembered, for in shadows they died.