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Onward Marched the Silver Knight
By Barbara C.B. Steele
It shone through the crack in
the sky, a high pitched whistling sound proceeding it. Miniscule creatures
scurried below it through the decaying ruins of the city, scrambling over
shattered glass and cruelly twisted iron to reach the safety which never
existed in the first place. Only one stood out from the chaos to catch
its attention - a single boy standing atop an enormous garbage heap, timidly
holding a shining lighting rod in his sun browned hand, looking rather
foolish in a top hat and his father's best tuxedo, which was many sizes
too large for the child.
His clear blue eyes were sad yet fearless as he stared up through thick
curls of blond hair to the sky on which charcoal had been used to colour
it black with a silver streak running down the middle, an especially bright
light in the middle of the streak which grew brighter as he watched. He
held his rod high above his head in his right hand, a magician in a school
production. He dared not look below him for he knew what he would see,
knew what his ears couldn't be closed to, and knew what he had been forced
to run through to climb this garbage heap.
He heard the screams and moans surrounding him, piercing every cell in
his body with their pain and terror. The boy had seen everything he had
never wanted to see on his journey to this place - infants with their
heads smashed, sticky-red piles of splintered skull, one of his schoolmates
spurting blood like a water fountain, his mother gazing at him with black
holes for eyes, blood tears running down her melted cheeks, and other
horrific sights which had seared forever into his memory
And here he stood, holding his lightning rod on top of the tallest garbage
heap he could find. And the silver light was seeping out of the crack
in the sky, his crack, his sky.
The boy shook his head to clear his vision from the tears
he could feel welling up, and took a deep breath in attempt to obliterate
the pain in his chest. He lifted his chin up to stare bravely at the blinding
light. "I created you!" he shouted above the din, waving his rod. "And
I command you to return to where you came from!"
But the light did not fade, instead it defiantly grew brighter
as the crack widened.
He stood taller, and made his voice deeper in attempt to
seem more manly. "Obey my command! Leave us in peace!"
The charcoal black was quickly fleeting from the sky, hiding
far beyond the horizon as the silver light flooded in.
"You dare to defy me??"
He could make out a shape to the light now, it was round,
almost bullet like. All in the width of a moment, all courage went out
of the boy, and the rod fell limply from his hand and tumbled down the
trash heap to rest itself on a woman with her eyes rolled back into her
sockets, the razor sharp slice through her skull having ceased to bleed
long ago. The boy collapsed, a sob escaping from his quivering lips as
he clawed helplessly at a shiny Campbell's soup can, chicken noodle stars,
his favourite kind. The boy stared up at the sky, his eyes widening in
the realization of his fate and his inability to change it. He had been
bestowed with the knowledge to set this horrible chain of events into
motion, but not with the wisdom to turn back the clocks.
Right before the final flash of silver light, he could
see, far above, the clouds part and a tiny patch of blue sky shine through.
His endless blue sky. His heaven.
© 1996 by Babara
C.B Steele
For more information contact the author
Copyright Notice (and morbid legal stuff)
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues
are products of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real.
Any resemlance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental
(or maybe not! )
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be used or reproduced
in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the author, except
in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
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