Fall

Her eye followed the leaves falling to the ground--at the rate of approximately four to five centimeters a second, brilliant colors of fire, smoke, and charred flesh. The chilled wind she ignored--though the light dress she wore provided no protection, no warmth against the harsh, raw cold of Fall--the season in which everything deconstructed, torn down, became dead.

Eyes of others bore into her, through her dress, to witness her inadequate, bony, nude body. Pedophiles--burning up in their overly clothed figured stared at her in morbid delight--knowing, aware that she knew what they were thinking. When would they burst into flames, from the suffocating warmth their clothes provided, into the colors of the leaves--of fire, smoke, and charred flesh?

Never. The moment would never come, she was attached to the path, from magnetic wafers slipped into the soles of her shoes by the government and ones applied right where she stood, under the park pathway. She could never flee while her antagonists screeched in agony--

"Kaeja, did you lose your jacket?"

The voice spoke to her, and her papery hands moved upwards to rub her arms.

"Here," a weight on her shoulders, and her eye bore straight ahead at an elderly man guiding his beast on a rope. He looked away a second before, acting innocent, but she knew--she knew--his beast was straining to attack her, to feast on her remaining eye. "Let's go home."

"Home gone," she responded passively to the voice, bringing her hands upwards to cover her ears.

"No," the voice said calmly, and a face appeared in front of her--a hat attempting to hide his face, and sunglasses to make his eyes unrecognizable. "It's okay. Let's go home. I was worried about you."

"Trent...?"

His teeth were pearls. "That's right."

"They didn't take you?"

"Why would they take me?" She faintly registered the weight on her shoulder as a jacket, as his hands tinted with color moved to pull the weight further around.

"Because you're the only good one..."

"I'm not the one good one, Kaeja."

"But--" his pearls revealed themselves again, into a brilliant smile. "Okay..."

He grasped for her hand, one remaining over her ear to drive out the voices--and he led her away as the antagonists burst into flame, to become deconstructed, to be torn down, to become dead.

Author's Note

Thank you for viewing. I'd appreciate your thoughts on the prose.