I Am Ruin

No-one could remember when the words began appearing on the architecture of modern civilization. It was a hideous graffiti, painted without care of style or aesthetics. The words dripped a heavy black ink that ran as if slowly applied to the surface. The style was not artful and it had a homogeneous consistency that suggested the same author. The message was unsettling and filled with rage as if the words themselves were sentient. I Am Ruin the words read, the implication was ominous and malignant. It wasn't noticeable at first, the placements were haphazard and random, not robust but thin and crooked. It was only after it was too late that people made any sort of connection to the writing and their arrival. Memory cannot recall where they came from either or when exactly things began to change, there was no big show of it. It was a reconnaissance operation and then an infiltration, an operation of stealth and silence. Did they arrive or were they born of the earth? A question never to be answered.

He could feel his heart beat in his throat, it was heavy and guilt laden. He held back tears as he stood in his empty house for another night. He walked the halls and touched the door handles to the sorrowful rooms in a terrible ritual. he could not bare to see the beds where his family once slept and played. It was by edict that families were to be, "dispersed" as it were. He could still feel their tiny hands slipping from his. He could still feel her arm clutched to his waist. His ears could still hear their cries. He shuddered to imagine their fate. He had no idea where they were, a thought that doubled him over. He collapsed in the front room at the entrance of the house where they were taken. He could not contain himself any longer. The sounds that escaped his throat were a mixture of sorrow and rage. He needed to find them. He hated himself for not acting, for not defending his family. He had frozen, whether it was fear or a mental glitch that prevented him from fighting was of no consequence anymore. It didn't matter, he hated himself all the same. It had been a year since they revealed themselves and shortly after is when they enacted the dispersion. Each night since, he had carried out the same subconscious ritual to exhaustion. He had slept wherever it was that his grief had exhausted him to sleep but he awoke in the morning outside, always outside. He struggled to get to his feet, he was stiff and sore. His eyes burned from the tears he cried the night before. He was cold and wet from the morning dew. He turned around to face his house and carved into the front door he noticed something he hadn't any time prior. That insidious phrase, I Am Ruin. His blood boiled with rage as fresh tears filled his eyes. He stormed forward past the opened door and into the house where he tripped over his own feet. He fell to the floor and laid there in defeat. He clenched his teeth and ripped fists full of carpet from the floor in response to his fall. His eye caught something by the coffee table a few feet from him. He crawled to it and found that it was his heart shaped locket on its chain. it was one part of a set, he had one and his wife had the other. She wore hers around her neck but he kept his in the night stand next to their bed on his side. He wondered how it got in the living room. He assumed perhaps it was his youngest son who took it out of their room and dropped it there next to the table. He grabbed it and opened it to reveal a photo of him and his wife on their wedding day. He quickly closed it and gripped it tightly in his fist. He glared down at his fist and shook with hatred at the thought of his family in the hands of those monsters. He jumped to his feet and ran to his closet where he pulled down a box from a shelf. In the box was a Ruger Blackhawk 357 magnum wheel gun and a box of ammunition. He opened the breach and loaded the weapon. He then headed towards the front of the house. He stopped dead in his tracks as he got to the door. He turned his head to see the carved phrase right at eye level. His eyes examined the words with a sudden fear, as if they were alive and looking back at him. He knew they were quite mortal and susceptible to injury but he had also seen the mass graves of those who did fight back. He hesitated to follow through. He had to find his family though, "get it together!" he said to himself angrily. They look like us though he thought, "how do you fight something you cant see?" He said aloud. No! he said between his teeth. He gripped the weapon's handle with resolve and concealed under his jacket. Out he went, in the same clothes he'd worn for days to start his fight, his answer to that terrible phrase, I Am Ruin.