Prologue

I wrote this several years ago in a class. I might turn it into a book.

An eerie smoke hung fresh in the air. The thick clouds of gray dust were just beginning to calm. The fires had now been reduced to embers and the smell of burnt wood, plants and who knows what else, still lingered in the air. Silence was now coming over this once peaceful place; the quiet after the storm. Lillian looked out over the land which once was lush and green, now a burnt charred muddle. 

A lone tear dripped down her face, clearing a trail through the grime on her cheek. She was stunned, standing there looking with a blank expression on her face, unable to move, to speak, even to think. She was numb. This was not what was supposed to happen. 

She finally moved; fell to the ground, pressing her face to the warm orange dirt and began to cry louder, her tears falling onto the dirt, mixing with it, and creating thick soupy substance on the charred black ground. She lay there for a long while, how long she was not sure, for time seems to stand still during calamity. Her mind then awakened and she thought rapidly “Am I the last one? What will I do? Where am I exactly?”she was so confused and disoriented. 

She thought back to yesterday, before she had left, before the fight she had had with her mother about something so trivial she couldn’t even remember what it was about now. She wished she could take back those fighting words of hatred. “It’s funny how at times like these one becomes a repenting, wishing fool. Not that it matters. Wishing won’t turn back time, no matter how hard I wish.” 

Her mother had always said she was a dreamer, a wishing girl, out of touch with reality, her mother said a lot of things. Their relationship had taken a turn for the worst after her Father had left them for, what her mother called “a dull, babbling coed”. But now her mother had attempted to be younger and vibrant. Their roles had been reversed, and now Lillian had become the parent to her mother, a role in which she had come to resent. This is why she had run away yesterday, unable to take any more of it. Only to return, the next day, to a nightmarish world she had once called home.

Author's Note

Realize that this is an UNFINISHED piece. I realize that it is confusing. But to set the record straight this is supposed to be a post-apocalyptic world.