Reflection

New prose writing:

Reflection

It seems all wrong somehow.

I scan the wasteland before me. Burned out cars; bodies left in the positions of their final agonies; one other person still alive, but dazed, wandering through the rubble numbly, walking nowhere.

It isn't the death scene before me. That is right, a product of the time and place, fated.

Some acrid chemical pervades the air, so the deep breath I take in burns to my core. I sit down where I am; the debris around me hugs closer. I lean over, look into metal shards that used to be structural, and unanchored tears come. I try to think about it all – a plan from beginning to deadly end; a triumph for people who can't believe that the variety of this world might not be a conspiracy, a personal affront targeted to insult them. A siren calls distantly.

I rub the tears into the metal with my sleeve. Rusty shards of my reflection stare up at me, bright, startling, awash in perverted sunshine.

-issa.