Traversing wintery planes everyday. Trudging back from work everyday. Slinging the coat onto the rack everyday.

The bitterness of daily monotony bites into my skin. My soul feels the sting of the never ending labour.

My daughter runs downstairs to greet me, throttling headfirst into my unmoving torso.

I am a man of few words. And although she cannot see it from her height, a smile breaks across my face.

A warmth in the ice.

My compatriots were in a spectacular uproar.

Those of class and status fumbling to undo their cages, those of power and reputation scrambling for aid.

But this outcome was a long time in the making.

Like a potter’s clay shaped into a vase, it was unrecognisable at first. The feeling of it was strange to describe, but eventually it become clear.

Change was coming. Evolution would rip apart the hierarchy. Tables of order would be overthrown. Laws would be shattered. The balance of the strong over the weak would be overthrown.

Oppression seldom leads anywhere positive.

The storm is coming.

Stallions, ponies alike whinny at the sound of the car doors closing nearby, the soft thudding of boots headed in our direction.

I breathe calmly, and deeply.

I am ready to compete. I am ready for war.

The couple was really bloody unhelpful.

Sputtering and stammering all over the phone. Me and the lads could barely make out what they were terrified of, much less prepare for it.

So we took the lot. Grenade launchers, rocket launchers, one of the tanks, the whole artillery.

Believe me, if you’ve seen what I’ve seen, you’re taking the artillery. In this day an’ age of genetically mutated vegan faff crawling out of your sandwiches, your home, your bloody neighbour’s outdoor swimming pool, you can never be too damn prepared.

We ‘hoorah’ onto the ground in alpha formation, ready to breach the house. We’ve already cleared the street of their lush-living inhabitants in case it gets ugly. Boy do I love it when it gets ugly. Just letting some real firepower loose on the bloody things and causing a real right rampage—

My radio kicks with a sharp piercing blast.

“LOOK ALIVE! 3 o’clock-“

Good lord above. This one’s huge.

“Prime the armoury!”

Guns ready up around us as the weapons begin to warm up, charging until ready to fire as we watch the living horror crawl out of the porch facing window.

I’ve never seen one as bat-ugly as this one. Spider looking thing about the size of a car, weird looking set of eyes and…well whatever.

It’s dying anyway.

“Ready…”

The mutant braces itself as if it’s gonna…

Oh shit.

“LOOK OUT IT’S GONNA JUMP—“ I blurt out, but the incoming order cuts me off.

“FIRE!”

A thundering blast of our entire arsenal releases into the general unfortunate direction of the giant spider, shaking the ground under my boots.

I’m not even looking there anymore.

It’s gotta land somewhere. It’s gotta be somewhere, gotta be close, gotta be—

“6 o’clock on the tank!!”

The squad spins around just as the offending creature slams into the tank, sending it skittering across the road and thudding into what was previously a beauty of a motor, teetering before steadying back onto the treads, barely avoiding flipping over.

I pull the trigger on the railgun.

A soft rumbling sensation filters through my hands as a beam of light cracks into the beast, before the roaring sound of sparkling energy plumes into my ears.

It’s over already. The big grizzly thing slowly slides onto the floor with a thud.

That’s why I hate railguns. Too damn efficient. Didn’t even get to fight the bloody thing.

Buck pops up from the tank’s hatch. “Holy cow bud you nearly damn killed us!”

There’s a pipe-sized hole through the middle of the tank. Must have just barely missed my boys inside.

“Nawh I knew you’d be too busy soiling yourself over that dent in the tank from our new friend over there to be front and centre.”

We throw around some unsavoury sailor talk before heaving the now deceased thing onto the truck, strapping it down and heading back to the base.

Boss said we’d never find one of these anywhere in the city.

He owes me 30 dollars.

Me and Buddy stumble into the rocky ruins, hunting for whatever it was our client was in hysterics about.

Something of immense value yada yada. Just another job to me and Buddy, but apparently the absolute motherload for our employer.

Anyway.

We navigate into the halls of some sort of important and very dated looking temple, its worn down textures and splitting marble a telltale sign of it’s apparent age.

Mother Nature made herself pretty comfortable here too. Had to kill a few hostile occupants of the insect and reptilian variety to get in here.

We’re walking past a load of old rickety chests and tightly locked golden coffins as Buddy stops suddenly enough to make me spill my instant coffee onto the floor.

“Wha- what’s the big idea-“

Well, I’ll be.

Straight out of something you’d see in some type of children’s fairytale. A levitating stringed looking instrument with a strangely long neck, shimmering nylon strung tightly across the bow and two symmetrically carved holes in its base was slowly rotating in the crevice to our left, humming with a sort of low rumble that made my insides relatively uncomfortable.

“I’d uh, I’d assume that’s it there.”

Buddy turns to me, an expectant look on their otherwise usually blank face.

“Uh, no. We definitely aren’t touching it directly.” I was hearing a whispering voice that sounded like it was ringing in unison with the seemingly neutral ambience in the room, and it was making me increasingly unnerved.

I get that it’s special, but maybe it’s locked away down here for a reason. You had to have a very very specific set of instructions to get in here, and I’m not particularly interested in being possessed by some random of ancient artifact.

Buddy’s anxious body language also appears to be growing disconcertingly restless.

“Fine. Use the glitter gloves, put it in the kevlar bag as fast as possible without damaging it, and let’s get the hell out of here.”

Buddy frowns.

“This is your speciality, not mine. I get us in and out, you handle the technicalities.”

Buddy shoves on the gloves, grabs the instrument with more aggressive emphasis than I would have preferred and places it in the bag.

“Great. Now we leave.”

And then we return to hand over whatever this subtly chattering instrument is.

I let out a long sigh.

Honestly, some days I question whether I’m cut out for this line of work. One of these days I’m gonna get yanked into an alternate dimension or something.

A cloth is finite.

Limited. It is bought, used, then discarded. Eventually the fibres will fray, the colour will drain, and the punching holes within its fabric render it’s purpose useless.

Our people were worn out. And their resilience had waned from a scream to a whisper.

War does that to you.

At least, it did to them.

I already know they are dead. I attended the funeral, listened to the priest give his kind words about the family as I fumed in the chair, feeling a helplessness unlike any kind of futility I’ve ever felt before.

But I still had the key to the house. A place I had desperately wanted to visit, but the relentless road of corporate city life demands never permitted me the time to do so.

I step up to the door, insert the key, and press open the door.

It opens without any resistance, the internal locks already broken apart however many months ago. Nothing of my childhood remains; the rustic smells replaced by an arid ash laiden aroma, the wooden floor cracked apart and fractured, the kitchen panes splintered and torn to shreds.

The living room wasn’t even intact, a gaping hole in the wall leading outside to the rest of the ruins outside.

It is as I figured.

Nothing about this place feels like home anymore.

For one reason or another, tears form in my eyes. I will never have the childhood nostalgia I once dreamed of, to visit my parents old and elderly to proudly present them with their grandkids.

I’ll never see my past in the same way ever again.

And after really digesting that revelation, something on an intensely deep and spiritual level broke inside my soul.

Sorrow.

It’s what I would feel had I not felt it for my entire life.

The death of family. The loss of purpose. The rupturing torment of grief.

It’s numb to me now.

Crying. Madness. Suffering. Terror.

Constant exposure to poison dulls the pain.

So when I eventually received news of the death of my parents in a tragic accident, I couldn’t summon anything within me.

Because in my eyes, in many ways, they had died a long, long time ago.

My eyes fly open.

It’s pitch dark, which is already weird. I never wake up before my circadian alarm clock of 8am.

Nope. Don’t need the WC either. Why the hell am I awake?

I look over to my bedside - which I can’t see - and don’t sense anything strange or unusual.

Whatever. I drag my annoyance to the pillow and attempt in sink back into slumber.

No. I heard it for sure this time. Something is in the room.

I angrily get up, becoming increasingly frustrated my precious and rather sacred bedtime is being disturbed (which massively helps, I’m incredibly terrified) swoosh the lightswitch on,

and there, on the other side of the room, is a levitating monk.

Or a wizard…monk. Of slightly indescribable appearances. And they aren’t saying anything, they’re just pointing at the bedside table-

What the hell is that?

It’s an obsidian coloured matt black sphere with textured scales running from the base to the tip. Almost looks like some kind of big tech prototype for an easter egg that can talk or something.

And there’s that sound that’s been destroying my sleep.

This dull thunk. It’s so loud for something so small, but it’s definitely coming from the egg thing.

A hand grips my shoulder.

I turn around, inches away from the monk’s face. I nearly jump into the ceiling out of shock, but the stunning effect of the surprise paralyses my fight or flight.

The monk opens their mouth, looks me in the eyes and very, very slowly says:

“April Fools.”

April Fools?? This was a prank? And who was this-

A loud poof interrupts my thoughts as the monk, the egg and the weird sparkly magic in the room disappears.

What a wild Thursday night.

Do not disappoint me.

I pace back and forth, calling out to you with everything I have. My legs tire with fatigue, constantly traversing the wooden floor but still you do not appear.

I begin to feel doom, the impending ominous feeling strangling my organs, slamming into my stomach and causing my body to tremble.

Perhaps you will not come to my rescue. Perhaps you will abandon me, as I once was. Perhaps you will not-

A door opens. Footsteps hurry downstairs.

And there you appear.

Hope rushes into my soul, pouring itself all over my previous bitter anguished thoughts - like how I was going to deliberately defecate the floor in honour of your silly delay.

Hope truly is the bridge between despair and joy.

You mumble an apology before reaching into the cupboard and swiftly pouring a bowl of the finest cat food money can buy, and I push you out of the way to begin satiating my hunger.

Stupid human. Why must you so needlessly complicate such a simple routine?

When I am done devouring my breakfast, I will proceed to devour your curtains with my claws of destruction.

Such trivial foolishness.

I struggle in school, yet you laugh at my failure.

You demand I wake up, screaming that I arise to repeat the same endless loop of repetitive pain.

You mock me, ridicule me, belittle me. You tell me I’m worthless. You shove me around and poke a finger in my face.

But one day, I am driven by fear to I abandon what little pride I have. I ask you for help. I beg you for advice.

I come to you in tears. Broken. Shattered.

My soul, tarnished. Bitterness overflows my soul.

I searched your eyes for anything you had to say. I wished for you to do anything. Something.

To mock me, to insult me, to at least acknowledge me.

But you turned away from me in silence, got up and closed the door.

And in the quiet stillness of your departure, a deep, guttural torment tears its way into me.

Your words wound me deeply, but your silence destroys my hope.

I hoped you would one day learn to love what you brought into the world. I hoped you would eventually come to appreciate my company. I hoped we could someday face life together.

But I am condemned to be scorned for as long as I dwell under your roof.

Mountains are falling from the heavens.

The horde screams out in terror as another piece of the sky crashes into the ground, flattening all those unfortunate enough to be nearby.

The ground shudders constantly, the very earth juddering to its core as any and all shelter we once called home tumbles into the ground.

It’s too fast. Too huge. We stand no chance of survival.

Deconstruction is everywhere, chaos reigns supreme, and all we can do is pray to whatever god may hear us for some kind of a miracle.

“Billy?”

Billy stops looking at the garden’s ecosystem falling to pieces and looks to his mate.

“Yeah?”

“You just killed another one of ‘em snails. Try to watch where you drop those bricks cause I don’t like the slime on me gloves.”

Billy can’t undo what is done. He will carry this guilt to the grave.

He offers a mumbled apology to the annoyed builder who turns around and continues with laying the concrete for the walkway next to the house, takes one last look at the panicking insects running around the tarmac, and turns to unload the next round of bricks.