The Boy with the Bell

I didn’t know what to do. I ran through the ruins of what had once been New York, dodging flames and crossing rubble. I didn’t know what had happened, but I couldn’t afford to wait around. I had to escape, I had to find my way out before he, no, before it, could…

I saw it then, standing in the middle of the road. It looked like a little boy, but I wasn’t fooled. I turned, and I ran, and I hoped that I could escape. But the sound of the boy’s little brass bell sounded out. It pierced me, it hurt me. It was the ax that split my skull in two. It was the searing flame that melted my eyes like wax. I saw the world crack, not the buildings or the ground, but the very fabric of time, space, and reality, crack, and before the gap of the fracture consumed me, I saw the cracks growing, never to stop until the world was shattered.