The Risen

Ash billowed mercilessly into the night sky, debris falling to the ground in massive fiery bundles, competing for the rubble filled lot which once held Gotham’s most luxurious hotel. Blood pooled in numerous patches, limbs torn from their owners, lay crushed and broken - scorched clothing, misplaced jewels with smoke still swirling about their dull faces littered the panicking street. Screams echoed into the dark, crying out for loved ones that would no longer answer back. The stench of burning flesh rose from the ground in cruel torrents, blanketing the street in agonizing certainty that their lives – those that were left intact – had just been violently altered. 

Sirens wailed in the distance. Slowly they grew louder; slowly a filthy hand pushed up through the wreckage. Finally a wrist, finally an arm; grasping, pulling. Her head was spinning, her body throbbing under the weight of the ruins. “Someone help me.” The inaudible words hung in the dead air as if they knew they were her last; as if they knew and didn’t want to leave her to die alone. “Someone help me, please.” Her ears were ringing, her eyes fighting to open against the debris that pressed into her face.

Sirens wailed in the distance.

Pins and needles stabbed through her legs, piercing through her deadened flesh to the bone. Her lower body filled with warmth; the pungent fragrance of blood perfuming the still air in her tomb. Warmth caressed her unbound hand, gripping it tightly. “Are you alive?”

“Yes.”

“If you can hear me, try to move your fingers.”

“Help me, please.”

“We’ve got life! Over here, guys! Let’s move this beam!”

Freezing air consumed her body, forcing its way into her lungs as the crushing weight of the building is removed from her. She gasps and sputters, finally breathing, finally seeing. Her eyes absently gaze at the starless sky; its blackness – it is oblivious and unforgiving. It shifts under her scrutiny as she is lifted from her accepted fate, disregarding the mutilation that has occurred just under its face. She is tired.