181 Keeping Watch

Each day she watched through her window.

Watched?

Perhaps an exaggeration: a monochromatic nuclear aftermath remaining of the world, blurring into a blindness--loss of contrast and depth of field. Achromatic aberrations displayed a waste-scape stratified in grays.

She imagined a catastrophic graph plotted along different axes: fear, the X-axis; ambition, the Y-axis; a slippery slope of Z-axis--asymptotic jingoism--the wicked stepmother of patriotism.

Another axis, miscalculation, in a hidden dimension, made missiles fly.

She glimpsed a world laid waste. Glimpse? Perhaps wishful thinking for an intact world without missing pieces.

Day after day, she closed her eyes to the ruined, gray-scaled, ashen world--indistinct, hazy, and blurred--watching in other ways.

She listened, hearing only machinations of survival--no grunts, conversations, or weeping sounds of humanity.

Sight navigates the physical world.

Hearing navigates the human world.

The only unmuted frequencies sounded sterile.

She smelled begrudged smithereens floating in on Curies of ionizing radiation. Burning her lungs, they shined in her cells with poison.

Decay happens, anatomically, societally, and morally--regardless of isotopes.

She tasted carbonized, haunting gossamer remnants of the world. Death tasted gritty. There were data in that grit, dispersed binary specks of lives lived, begging defragmentation. Perhaps technology could decipher Mankind's story, one ashen person at a time.

Fine hairs prickled to the thermal fluctuations drawing her curtains in and out--agonal flaps of a dying world's labored breathing. Nuclear winter chilled her joints.

Day after day...

Today was different. She heard chirps, squeals, and laughter. She sniffed inviting breezes.

The world again breathed!

It huffed and puffed, anticipating. She smelled a different burn, a rekindled love affair with fire--for nutrition and calories. She tasted life, not death. Her hairs relaxed. Her joints survived end-of-times climatology.

Outside was different.

They hadn't spoken in months, he in his basement, she facing her window. But her senses announced a new day--time to re-join the world; remake the world--reignite the world.

She heard him coming up, not turning when he entered; never had.

"It's time," he said. She smiled, arising stiffly, balancing with only an inner ear.

"I think so, love," she answered. "Clearly, I see that," reaching for her red-tipped white cane before they walked out through the door, into the open.

__________

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

For Saturday, June 29, Day 181 of the Story-a-Day Challenge

366 WORDS (without A/N)

Title-accompaniment photo was AI-generated but the reality is not!

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There are currently three surviving Vocal writers still participating in the insane 2024 Story-a-Day Challenge and approaching only its halfway mark:

• L.C. Schäfer, challenge originator

• Rachel Deeming

• Gerard DiLeo (some other guy)

Read them. Support them. Pray for them. Don't just see their words--hear them, taste them, touch them, feel them!"