Writing Challenge Day 5
It’s day five of my writing challenge! Huzzah! It’s definitely been tough so far, also I have had way too much caffeine and my hands are shaking but here we go!
If you haven’t read the last four stories, you can find them here:
Today’s prompt: A couple is driving on the freeway when all traffic abruptly stops causing several accidents. Beings with glowing wings descend from the sky.
Dedicated to a mystery prompt donator.
Day of the Culling
Everyone remembers where they were on the Day of the Culling. At least those who lived.
For me, I was young, newly married. My husband was driving us on I90, we were on our honeymoon.
It was a beautiful day, a long weekend, so the road was clogged with cars—other families on trips and adventures. I kept my hand on my husband’s thigh, wishing we were already at the cabin, already undressing each other.
At the same time, I was a little annoyed at my own eagerness and decision to wear an expensive piece of lingerie which was a size too small and doing its best to burrow its lacy thong right up into my asshole.
I was distracted by all this when there was a loud snap, a resounding crack like a giant plate being broken in two. The radio cut off. My husband cried out, his foot pumping the brake.
Ahead of us, cars swerved off the road or into each other. I screamed as a truck slammed into the back of our sedan and we spun. Metal screamed, glass shattered.
My airbag exploded in my face and I felt more than saw our car get hit again and again.
When my world stopped spinning, I pounded the airbag down. My husband lay limp across the steering wheel, his face painted crimson with blood.
Through our shattered windshield, I could see the road choked with mangled cars, rising columns of smoke, and the faint flicker of fire.
People pulled themselves from their vehicles, staggering, crying.
I tried to wake my husband, calling his name, but I was too scared to try and shake him. I remembered something about broken backs or necks and not being supposed to move accident victims.
Around me the world got brighter.
Then brighter.
Then blindingly bright.
People screamed. They pointed.
From the sky, they came. Everyone remembers what they look like. Who could ever forget. Beings the size of semi trucks, golden amorphous, ethereal bodies with golden, brilliant spiny wings. They descended on the highway, their undersides opening up to reveal pearlescent mouths.
It was beautiful. They were beautiful.
The screams petered out. Everyone watched the—well, we call them Carnivorous Clouds now. Even looking back, knowing what they would do, I still can’t help but think them awe-inspiring. The memory, it burns like molten gold in my brain. I think it’s that way for all the survivors.
Then the Clouds began to consume, draping over cars and trucks, then rising and revealing only cinders behind.
The screaming began again. People forgot their loved ones, still trapped in cars, and fled. I can’t blame them. No one should.
The Clouds were methodical, cleaning the road of the crashed cars and humans alike.
I remember how it felt to watch that. My mind screaming, begging to be spared, begging to wake up from this dream. How I struggled with numb hands to undo my seatbelt. How I kicked at my door but it was too crumpled to open. How the glass sliced me as I climbed out the passenger side window, falling out onto the sun-hot asphalt.
The nearest Cloud cast its shadow over me. The air was filled with the scent of hot copper and salt.
I heard my name called. My husband had woken and he reached for me, his eyes wild with terror. He wiggled himself, bloodied and broken, across the center console and begged me to help him.
Overhead the Cloud stopped, its belly-mouth opened. I fled.
I stumbled over the break-down lane, into the tall grass of the field behind where other survivors hid, weeping, bleeding.
I didn’t look back. I didn’t want to watch. My husband’s screams were quickly silenced and the Cloud moved on.
I lied to his parents and said he died saving me from the Culling. I thought they’d liked that. Better than knowing he had screamed and wept terrified as I left him behind.
The Clouds kept to the highway. I learned this was the case for the rest of the world too later. The Clouds swept down the major roads all over the world, clearing them of people and vehicles. By dusk, they were done and they ascended, coated in the bloody golden rays of sunset.
And the world was left with the cries and lamentations of those left behind. Haunted by the fear that one day again, there would be another Culling.
x PLM
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