(Also see the project I made last year for my Macbeth creativity assignment. I'll post a video some time of the video I made to go along with All Quiet on the Western Front.)
I stood shocked in
place, holding on to the smooth, cool metal of a store. I didn’t care what
store, just so long as it was out of the way of that. A cloud was exploding between the buildings, billowing white
dust, swirling currents falling down like snow, yet suffocating everything in
its path. I stepped away from the door and exposed myself to the cloud. I
tilted my head up to bring my nose out. A loud shrill formed across the street,
and another, and another, like dominoes hitting each other they continued. The
cloud came nearer, and I could now smell the dust, like the shreds of a tree but
burning too fast to be wood, maybe like a burning spice my mom used to make
when I was little in Iran, spicy and undesired, like the rub she often put on
chicken when I was hungry. I could taste the food she told me she could only
afford. My mouth felt dry, and a clump formed in the back of my throat.
I readjusted the
cloth wrapped around my head, when I was pushed. Hard. I let out a grunt as I
hit the pavement below, already speckled with the white powder. I look at the
face above me, still on top of me from the impact. He got up quick, and was
telling me something. I couldn’t hear him though, all I could process was a
siren going in the background, then another, and another, and more. I swiveled
my head, and started to get up when the man took me by the arm. He was
bleeding. No, wait. Yes. He was bleeding, but it fell on his arm across the
tattoo of the Christian cross imprinted on his wrist and his blood fell to my
fingers, warm and sticky. Slowly everything that was silent was coming back.
Why was it so loud?
The man was
yelling at me now. “Let’s go! You’ll die!” He pulled me into the closest store,
a Starbucks. I could have smelled the sweet roasting from a mile away, letting
the idea drip into my mouth, giving me a false burst of caffeine. Once inside,
I could see what was left behind. A pile of stone and metal, curled and
deformed, stood still in smoke down Greenwich street, surrounded by remnants of
the dust. I pressed my nose against the glass as the freckles of dust soon
became patches, and I couldn’t see any more.
I turned around
and everyone was doubled over, covered in the dry powder, holding their
stomachs as they coughed dryly, or their eyes as they shed quiet, wet tears. I
went over and stood in the corner, watching a mother across the room wipe the
powder off her toddler as she cried and asked about her father. The mother just
shed a tear and said, “I don’t know.”
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