Ability

Chapter Five

Miles and Lennox walked the entire way to Lennox's house in silence. It was obvious that their surroundings had created too much to think about or provide any justification for the horror show they were walking through. The asphalt was soaked in blood and ash, large shards of glass and metal lodged between car windshields and buildings and even into the earth, and with every step they took, there was a crunching under their feet that Lennox prayed was only broken gravel and nothing else. Crators were left steaming and near by homes and skyscrappers seemed to be missing large fragments of their structure. As they walked, Lennox could see familys being reunited or sobbing at being ripped away, lonely strangers walking around aimlessly to find something to belong to them, a child holding his knees in silence sitting next to his wailing mother under an awning made of scrap metal that was lodged into the ground as she grasped as the ash in the street. Lennox turned her head quickly to avoid being rude by starring and partially to prevent Miles from seeing the tear streak her sooted cheek. Lennox's thoughts began to remind her of her mother, before they had moved here and before her dad had passed. Lennox gripped at the ring in her jacket pocket, wishing her fingers were as small and dainty as her mother's.

Footsteps moved down the hall and closer to her dark door. Light fought its way inside the room and created a small outline of light inside her door frame.

"Lennox? Lennox dear, are you here?" The man peeked his head in around the door frame as Lennox quickly closed her eyes so her father wouldnt know she was up and hour passed her bedtime.

"Honey, you're going to wake her and she has school in the morning." A gental voice spoke up, her mother. The door began to close but Lennox still strained her ears to hear what her parents had started saying in the hallway just outside her walls.

"I know. it's just with these late shifts, i hardly see her anymore". Lennox''s dad exassperated. "shh, i know. I know." Her mother said and although she couldn't see them, she knew her mother was holding her father now, like she always did. Her mother specialized in calming her father down when nothing else could. Her intuition was strong and she'd always known when something was wrong and that allowed her to always understand those who couldn't understand themselves. "It'll get better. We just have to keep doing our best. For her."

There was a long pause before the door cracked open again, "i love you". A whispear belonging to her mother or father, maybe both. And then the door clicked as the voices retired from Lennox's doorway and her's room fell back into silence as she drifted off to sleep,

"Oh my-" Lennox expelled a gasp from her lungs and stopped dead in her tracks, Miles stumbling into her abrupt halt. "Whats wrong? What happened? Are You Okay?" Miles asked as he frantically looked of Lennox for any injuries. It was apparent that Miles had been paying as little attention to his company as Lennox was. "My..House." She said through stumbling words. About a block away was the apartment district of the city and nearly every single one was destroyed into portions of what couldv'e made an entire house if all were put together. But they weren't, instead they remained pieces of what once were blocks and blocks of homes and lives and familys and posibilities.

"Which one?" Miles finally spoke up after a long moment of silence in the most gental voice he could manage. Lennox began walking, knowing that if she answered him. she wouldn't be able to stop the flood of tears that were building up in her eyes or the pressure in her throat. Her walk became fast and eventually broke out into a run. Lennox ran with so much force that her heels hurt everytime she touched the pavement. Pushing the air in and out of her nose helped her breathe through the knot in her throat but they did nothing for the tears now falling from her eyes. Lennox slowed to a stop infront of where her apartment once was and quickly wiped her eyes before Miles ran up next to her. She tried breathing in and out but it was shaky and jagged and made her hink for a moemnt that she might pass out because the entire bottom half of the aprtment she had lived in was charred and burnt black. The burnt walls revealed how the fire began to eat its way up the walls from the bottom. Though, depite the nearly disentergrated bottom floor, the other two floors on top appeared to be salvagable.