It’s All Inevitable
written by: Stephen Patmore
A shadow loomed over my desk from the approaching plane. Its growing bulbous metal nose darkened my family’s framed smiles whilst brightening the lights of my mini USB Christmas tree.
My knees screamed as I jumped up the moment glass erupted, pebble-dashing my face with biting shards and drawing freckles of blood across my cheeks.
The plane kept coming. Its wings tearing through walls and supports, filling the air with plaster snow and icicles of steel. Something hit the back of my head and flew off over the top of me. Amongst the floating spots in my vision, I saw it was Dave, my boss, with blooming buds of blood spreading through his white nylon Santa beard. His right arm was gone. I watched his body bounce against a pillar decorated with flaming Rudolph paper chains, wondering if the cracking sound was his bones or the building’s. Both were hurt beyond fixing.
Alarms cried out. Red lights flashed through the fog of dust, turning the office into a Christmas funhouse frenzy of stumbling zombies. Their arms out, blindly searching for safety. Their screams, fresh and loud one minute, faded to silence the next as they fell through the missing side of the building.
Grit and plaster itched my eyes. My face was sticky with congealed lumps of blood and powder. My head hurt. I dragged myself up onto dizzy feet and tripped my way over the debris of the wounded office.
There were so many people surging down the stairwell. Crushing each other against the railings, against the walls. Bodies falling, trampled over by hard, pounding leather soles. The alarms, deafening now with nothing but hard concrete to bounce off, added fuel to the flames of panic beating against us all.
From above, cracks like the rifle salutes of a military funeral shot out. Someone screamed, “It’s coming down. It’s all coming down.”
The woman in front of me was thrown forward when a steel pipe smashed her skull open with a wet thud I felt vibrate through my chest. Balls of fire, spitting hotly through the air, fell all around us. On us. The matted bauble of a man’s elf hat caught aflame. He ran down the stairs, slapping at his head, barging through people, pushing them over the railings.
Metal groaned.
“WATCH OUT.”
The vivid pain flaring through my head stole away all noise.
My eyes shot open.
My desk.
My office.
Dave, in his Santa outfit, strolled past me, carrying a sack over his right shoulder, whistling Silent Night. And then a shadow from outside slowly washed over it all.
I ran for the stairs, making it before the windows could explode and paint my face with those same freckles of blood. But Dave still lost his sack. The screams followed just the same. The alarms. The crumbling building. The fire. And all I could do was pray that, once again, I would get the chance to open my eyes to this nightmare.
- It’s All Inevitable - December 14, 2023
- The Cracks Through Which the Beauty Grows - June 24, 2023
