December 23, 2012

He looked at me as if he needed some help. Did I care? Of course I did. Did I have time to help him? No. And even if I did, would I? No. I kept running as frantic people bumped into me from left and right. Here it comes. The gas permeated through the air and infected civilians with fractious qualm. I could feel my legs getting heavy, my heart beat slowing down, my arms getting weaker… I fell to my knees and my hands to the ground. I tried to catch my breath, but it felt as though my breath had caught itself. I was choking. 1

I looked down at my pale hands against the eroded plain and could see my veins bulging through my skin. My arms began to shake and my elbows buckled under my weight. My face hit the ground hard, but it did not hurt. I could not feel anything. The only thing I could do was listen to eventually hear a long strenuous beeping sound through all the screaming of crackheads, work at home moms, street ballers, and Wall Street punks, all I could do was lie there and watch as hundreds of pairs of Chanel, Stacy Adams, Air Force Ones, and even bare feet passed me by. One child fell next to me, her breaths became shorter than mine. I had seen her once before… in a grocery store I think. Someone came back for her… too bad they were too late; I guess it’s fastest on the too old and the too young. Nothing is worst than dying a slow death. I had stayed awake through the deaths of dozens in my sight… or maybe they had just fallen like me. It’s ironic that I will never know. It is our own fault that this once vast metropolis had now become a bounded wasteland.2

As the dawn approached I could feel something on my back. I could not turn around to see what it was. I had hoped it was a rifle, a pistol, something, anything to end this… but it wasn’t. Two military officers had turned me around, “Sir? Pick her up, I think she’s alive.” one grabbed me by the shoulders, the other by the feet. They carried me to a truck and laid me next to and on top of some bodies, if they were alive, I do not know. I felt a sharp pain in my side… I think that it was a needle… a big needle. 3

“The captain’s seeping!” Someone said. I could feel an infiltrating rush coming over my body… It was the closest I had been to peace in months.4