I stood high upon a hill and looked down to see the city that had given birth to me. The city that I had spent my long childhood summers basking in lazy sunshine and the scent of freshly mowed grass. The city where I had gone on my first teenage date. A nervous wreck, a pimply bundle of nerves. The city where I had seen the most beautiful woman sideswipe a brand new BMW I had finally saved the money to buy from my hours of working in a drab office full of boring zombies. The city where I married this woman and planned on living the rest of my life with her. The city where my children were to grow up. The city that was my life. The city that was me. The city that was no more.

I cried. On my knees I went, like a praying lost child, and I cried. I cried for my family. I cried for my friends. I cried for the city. And upon the smoky, dust-filled winds that swept through the remains I heard the city cry for me.

It loomed in front of me yet held no malice. There was no soul left to it. It's tall buildings lay shattered and torn to the blackened ground. The lovely green trees set along the side streets no longer screamed that they were alive. Instead they screamed as the fires lit them up like a row of burning torches. Torches laid out so I could find my way back to my home in the dark skies above me.

A week ago I had driven away from this place in my beloved BMW. I had driven away contented. I had driven away a full man. Now I have walked back ravaged. I have walked back a empty, soulless man.

"Let's go out this weekend and play War Games," my close group of friends had said. I now look upon this as a horrible irony. An irony that I will give my life to have never taken place.

To the woods a few miles away from here we did run, like excited children with new toys. We were grown men pretending to be soldiers. Pretending that war was fun. Running in groups, hiding in tall trees waiting to shoot each other with silly little balls of red paint. I would shoot my friends and they would be dead. Then they would arise again, a red splashed Lazarus, and laugh as the games continued. I use to shoot my friends. I now have no friends. I have no one.

"Hide there and wait," said one pointing to a small cave hidden behind loose foliage. It made sense to me then. A sniper hidden from all besides myself. I waited for movement. My air pistol filled with fake red death awaiting my command.

I heard a noise. My trigger finger tensed as childish thrill ran around my body. Then a sound blasted above the treetops. I looked and saw a mass of huge birds fly off. No, they were not birds. They were dozens of planes. I stared in awe at the sight above me. I thought it was great, when I get home I will tell my wife about what I had seen. It never crossed my reeling mind to ask who they were and what they were doing here.

Another noise came running through the foliage towards me. The face of the enemy popped out into the clearing before me and I shot. A great burst of red ripped across his chest. I laughed as he screamed. He kept screaming. He still screamed as a bright light encompassed the forest behind him. He still screamed as the force of the light threw him to the ground. He still screamed as his limbs blew off of him and flew away like tattered, bloody rag dolls. He screamed and then he screamed no more.

The light covered the land. The light covered my life. I was thrown back into the small cave and then there was no more light, no more sound. Nothing but blackness filled my mind. Slowly I drifted away into arms of nothing and nothing held me firm to its loving bosom.

I awoke with a pounding headache. It rocked my body with throbs of pricking needles. "I have to go home," I thought. That thought echoed through my head as I made my way out into the woods. What used to be the woods. There was nothing left but shouldering trees toppled over in chaotic bundles. A charred body lay in the ash grass in front of me.

It wasn't the burning woods that I noticed. It was not the oozing corpse that called to me. It was the silence. The total utter negation of all sound. I stared in shock. Then I ran. A blur of images is all that I remember.

More dead bodies lay around the broken woods. My BMW was a charred husk. The road twisted and turned as I ran. And as I ran the silence followed. I ran from it. I ran for my life.

It is now dark and I stand upon a hill looking down. Was it a nuclear holocaust? No, it was not. It must have been mass bombing. But does it really matter. Nothing matters anymore. I don't care who did it. I don't care why it happened. I just care that all is gone. All I have worked for and lived for has been annihilated.

I am now walking through the cracked streets. Looking at skeletal remains of what once was. Hunger tugged at me. An urging hunger that was driving me mad. That urged me to quench the growing beast raging war within my guts.

I have seen merely a few lost souls, such as I, wandering the streets. The vacant look of the undead are all that lay in their eyes. There are no tears, no sobs. Just the wide eyed staring of the soulless.

In a pile of rubble to my left I see a shambling figure plop itself down on a chunk of broken concrete. My hunger is becoming worse. It is trying to control me. I must not let it, but it is weedling it thin fingers deep within my brain.

I get closer and suddenly it strikes me. The man in front of me used to work at the small convenience store that I always went to. I forget the name of it, but it does not matter anymore. He used to tell me to call him "Deck". His name was Bill but his talent at card games quickly gave him an odd little nickname. To be named after a deck of cards, this had always struck me funny. It all makes sense to me now. I never really knew the man. In fact, I didn't even know his last name. And now he sits before me. One of the last things that used to part of my life, one of the most insignificant thing that is all I have.

He clutched in his swollen hand a package wrapped in a bag of plastic. Slowly and painfully he opened it and withdrew one of its contents. Almost as if in slow motion he was raising it to his opened lips.

I suddenly went limp. My mind no longer in control. The hunger has found it's opening and now has possessed my soul. Like a wild man I leap over the rubbage strewn around me. Looking down I notice that in my right hand I still hold the air gun. Through all this I had totally forgotten about its existence.

Standing in front of the man I quickly raise it and fire. He looks in astonishment as his chest erupts with red tendrils. He throws himself back in surprise and snags his foot on a burnt tree limb. Without a sound he falls and slams his head against the very slab of concrete he was sitting on. With a wet crunch his head split open as his blood mixed with the red paint drooling towards the ground.

I run to him and look down at the dead man. He is still wearing his name badge for his store. It reads simply "Hello my name is BILL ADENCE". The piece of bread he was about to eat hung loosely between bloody lips. I grabbed it and shoved into my mouth and, without even chewing, swallowed it whole. My demonic hunger is finally being quenched. I grab the loaf in his hand and tear it open.

I begin to laugh. I laugh hysterically. The laughter does not echo. There is nothing left for it to echo off of. My laughter increases to a maddening height as I wait for the dead man to stand up, like a red splashed Lazarus, and laugh with me.

I laughed harder and harder spewing bread crumbs from my spasming mouth and finally I scream to the city,



"I DON'T MIND STEALING BREAD FROM THE MOUTH OF DECK ADENCE."



I laugh more as I stagger into the remains of the convenience store. I fall against a long wooden table that used to hold all the baked goods. All my wounds slowly dribble onto it as I laugh.

Suddenly the bread in my mouth lodges in my throat. I twist and I turn but all to no use. Blood is on the table and the mouths are choking. All the questions I have ever wanted to know become apparent to me as my life slowly ebbs away. Let it. I do not want it anymore. I will once again become part of the city. The city that cries for me.

I was a pretend soldier in a pretend war. I am a bleeding corpse in a real war. I am the city.



I AM BREAD