Birth Pangs

There is a scream.

It is does not belong to a human, this scream.

It does not issue forth from a living throat; no, it is a sound far more base than that.

This scream is a primordial wail of the earth, of existence itself being torn asunder.

It is the death-rattle of safety; the whispered epitaph of hearth and home.

The wail of the banshee afore the whimper of the grave.

Eyes snap open, unfocussed.

Birth pangs.  Shattering.  Crying.  Thrust forward, the last restraint proving to be no restraint at all.

Vision swirls.  Do you spin, or does the world spin around you?

Sightless eyes see too much.  Were those faces, obscured in a cloud of snow so fast – so fast – they never existed?

Push.

Push.

Pushed?  It matters not in the end, the result is the same. The cocoon is breached. The last illusion bursts in an arterial spray of tinkling glass.

Cold air against feverish-hot skin.  No more safety.

It is almost refreshing in its own way, blinding daylight glistening off the approaching abyss; comforting, almost.

There is a scream.  There are several more.  They are human, this time.

Clarity; clarity in that last descent.

+++

“Jesus,” he mutters, watching as they pour from the surrounding buildings, their oohs and ahs of feigned sympathy small payment to witness a macabre spectacle such as this.

“Poor bastards,” he says aloud, the words as meaningless as the event itself.  A nearby old woman, her wizened, bitter-lemon face twisting into what she no-doubt thinks is a conciliatory expression, grunts at him.

He hesitates a moment, wondering what is appropriate.  What should he say? What does the old hag think is appropriate?  Should he offer to help?

He hunches, withdrawing.  Hands in his pockets, he turns and lurches away, unable to admit even within the caverns of his own tiny mind that his inner conflict is meaningless.

All he wants is to do nothing at all.