It seems the world has ended today, the world that mattered. A blanket of ash, a cloud of smoke, the crunch of charcoal beneath our feet creates a rhythm out of screams and bayonet thunks, weaving a melody.

How did we let it get so dirty?

How many of us are too dead to help clean up?

We cannot tell who are the culprits, they look just like us. Their children are our children, their adults are our adults. Run, run, throw what you can at them, all we can do is to make them chase someone else.

It started in a mall. The food courts, the game stores were all alight with consumerism and they started to kill. We still don’t know why. It must have something to do with the mayor.

We can’t stay together, we’re sorry.

There was a giant with bulbous skin and a smile that screamed mental dysfunction, murderously inclined. He passed us by, leering, and we knew we were lucky. But poor Johnny was on the toilet, and that is where the creature went. He begged us not to leave him, but his pants were down, and we were alive. We locked the door, unlikely to delay it long, but maybe just enough. We ran away before we could hear the screaming.

We saw the mayor only once. He was having a party at the top of the mall, watching us be slaughtered below. We weren’t invited. But he looked down, as normal as normal looking can be. Fire and bones went crackling away.

All we can do is run and pray that some of us will survive.

Why would they do this?

Those children?

They’re children.

Ellen Webre has a reputation for being a creepy poetess, haunting her local poetry reading with the tentacles of her mind and dreams of the bizarre. She is currently a screenwriting student who likes fantasy and magical realism. Some of her works can be found in literary magazines like Vine Leaves and Cactus Heart.

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