What if a parallel world had an Armageddon?
I get up and go on my regular run through the park, across the bridge, ending up at the water fountain. A marble monstrosity of the warrior, Genghis Khan with his hands on his hips, quenched the thirst of many runners. It was hideous, some local artists joke on modern heroes. I take a sip and stare at my reflection in the basin; I was ugly with my bulbous nose, and greasy hair, pathetic. My face starts to distort and is replaced by a young woman’s face, as I touch the water it ripples, she grabs my wrist and pulls me into a watery tunnel, I lose consciousness.
I awake in a post-war zone, where a graveyard of bones, swords and shields litter the freshly stained red sand. Something has stripped the meat off their bones. A scorpion carrying an eyeball startles me, I step backwards, and the dense sand makes it difficult to move. I collapse to my knees; I didn’t know where I was, but death seemed to of taken the land. The sun starts setting, casting a shadow across the desert, there was no sign of civilisation, I was alone. Rubbing my dry eyes, I lie on my back and surrender myself to the sand and stare at the purple sky, with its swirling clouds. The sky flashes bright lights with loud booms making the sand ripple. The clouds form a whirlpool, giving birth to thousands of tiny winged creatures. I see a wandering camel in the distance, the creatures swoop down and create a cloud of sand around the animal; only the bones of the animal remain. They fly into the clouds shrieking, forming patterns like starlings, then make a beeline towards me. This is how I’m going to die; I realise I hadn’t accomplished a lot, I close my eyes, anticipating my end; hands grab my ankles and yank me under a blanket of sand.
I awake on a bunk bed; the air smells damp, I sit up and bang my head on the bed above.
‘Ow,’ I rub my head.
‘A cup of tea will fix that’ A women the spitting image of my wife appears from a hidden room and grabs two tins.
‘You are safe here, Joseph.’ She hands me some clothes and smiles.
‘Where I’m I, what were they and who are you?’ I say as I change my top.
‘I’m tammy.’ She disappears back into the other room.
I look around, I’m in an underground bunker, with a fabric tunnel held up with branches leading to the exit.
‘Do you like my home?’ Tammy asks, handing me a cup of tea in a tin.
‘Cosy,’ I say spotting the bucket and roll of toilet paper.
‘Your lucky I found you, that battle scene out there was Armageddon, a battle between rival towns, which went on for days, until the flesh bats consumed them. Nasty things, but if you can catch one, they taste just like chicken.’ She sips her tea.
I am challenging myself to write a 500-word post a day for 30 days. I will choose a random word from the dictionary and to make this challenge more complicated; I will use the same word to create posts on Twitter and Instagram. I will create a haiku for twitter and post a photo on Instagram. If the word I choose is too obscure to make a post, I will choose another word.
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