The vision is inseparable from the one that floats before the eyes. A red-on-red velvet sky below a crushing space. Dry grass shivers between gasping winds. Alight and billowing black plumes, the malignant flames creep across stems and wild plains.
Blood and champagne run down his knuckles, dripping onto the web of glass. Shell casings glitter and tinkle on the tiles. Viscous liquids drop into a scarlet pool.
Stacks of bodies. Flesh returned to its default state. Too fresh to reek. Pardoned for all they have done and excused for this final breath.
The occluded sun, tearing up all it has created. Churning back the years. Wrenching the stolen energy, stored in the marrow of the earth, and sending it to the heavens.
The inferno will consume all. Boil the seas. Scar the land. Turning all memory to ash, to be blown in the wind, circulating the unbroken mechanism of the planet. Until the wind falls silent to inevitable entropy and all is forgotten.
Paddy Dobson
16th August 2020