06 September Smoke · 6 of 11
The wind rattled the washed-out grey clapboard skeleton of the house as we, the four of us who remained, sat huddled and shivering on the floor, clad in scraps of clothes, faces stained with dirt and track marks of long-dried tears.
Bones were at first piled neatly in a corner, then later carelessly scattered over the dirt-covered floor. We didn’t kill each other. No, we waited for those who died from the slow death of starvation before we ate them, roasting the meagre flesh in the fireplace. We were too hungry to waste any nutrients.
Dianne chattered her teeth and gurgled. I was too weak and slow to stop her, the energy to stand long ago spent. She pulled at the remains of her hair, keened, and stumbled out the door, the angry wind mercifully slamming it behind her. Our three pairs of eyes peered over the windowsill. She faltered over the grey craters of pockmarked land, devoid of all grass and vegetation, her hands in front of her as though stumbling in the dark. The wind had consumed all plant growth.
She didn’t get far before its acid began to eat at her. The wind moaned in consuming pleasure. The skin of her legs bubbled and frothed and dissolved until muscles, tendons, and finally bones were exposed. The wind ate her screams, directing the sound of her voice back to us. My skin crawled from hearing her agonal cries. She turned and her eyes bubbled and melted, its liquid, like scorching tears, sliding down the remains of her face. Like Lot’s wife, the acid wind turned her body into salt and scattered the grains to the four corners of the lifeless planet, all its resources we humans had taken until there was nothing left to give.
As with us, the wind was all-consuming. It wanted what little was left, the three of us huddled in this paltry shelter, just as we had devoured the earth. Our time was coming. The wind, and we, could do nothing but wait.