Glory In The Wake Of Tragedy

Prologue

     Quiet. All around, I hear nothing but the slow warmth crawling over. The sun creeps behind the buildings to my right. The light reveals hideous depictions of what lay in front of me, of us. My two brothers can't make out any form of art from the mangled cadaver laying on the ground before them. My sister stares on with me, watching the crimson soak into the concrete.
     We still hear the laughter. It echoes like a bad headache caught in your eye. The ricochet sits frozen in time and suspended in the air. It all happened so fast, yet now we all are perfectly, hauntingly still. All that remains of the man we followed with all our belief now sleeps eternally, his grey eyes still open wide and always looking forward.
     My youngest brother, Jesse, is first to react.
     "Big brother, why does Papa not look so healthy?" his innocence even now shows no hindrance. He is only eleven, and to see his blue jeans turn brown at the cuffs is a sight I cannot bear. "I don't think that other man said something nice to him. Should we read him the story he reads us for bed?
     "Jesse, let's go." I reach my hand towards him. "We shouldn't be here."
     "Gregg, I don't think he gets it." it's the voice of my sister, Beth, who is only one year younger than me, making her 19.
     "Of course I get it! He just doesn't feel well." Jesse persists to shake the old man, but to no avail. There is no sadness in his voice as he calls to awaken.
     "Gregg, can we go home? I want to sleep." Oblivious as ever, Phillip focuses on what most 14-year-olds do; themselves.
     Time is finally moving as the sun rises over the city we, or at least I, now fear. The streets trickle in traffic for early-morning work and trade. Businesses are flipping over the closed signs and revealing the red "Open" half. Red. That's all I can focus on as all the other colors fade. The yellow flowers that sat outside of the apartment complex, the blue tarps helping patch holes in the striped awnings over businesses, the green grass and all the streets, they are all nothing but gray. Only red remains in the city that I once thought of as home, but now only as a cage.