When a thousand suns rise again, I will be redeemed
In my reality, hell was not below the ground. No, it was on the earth.
I opened my eyes. Deep under the surface, time loses its meaning. The room was bare, cold, and empty. The grey and rough concrete had become our second skin, a protective layer shielding us from dirt, dust, and the immediate threat of death. But it was a repulsive, unhealthy skin covered in a lichen that you want to be free of forever. The light penetrated under the crack in the door. It had little effect on the brightness in my room, and was just as dim and bleak as my existence.
Like every morning, my mouth felt dry and bitter and had a disgusting metallic flavour. The burning skin sensation hit me unbearably across my broken body as if someone were holding something fiery to my arm, leg and back. This everlasting pain has become my most faithful and hated companion, leaving me wondering how I ever manage to find sleep at all.
I sat upright in my bed if you could call it that, as it was made of old fabric scraps we found in this artificial tomb. It all had to happen so quickly. What have we done? This question had become as much a part of my life as the old ache and disgusting taste in my mouth every morning. Despite the pain I felt, I stood up. I felt dizzy. I could just about lean against the wall. Furthermore, I had to throw up. Twice.
After a while, I felt so much better that I could perceive more of what was happening around me. Standing and keeping my hands on the wall, I listened to my surroundings with closed eyes. Someone turned the pedals on the dynamo machine in the next room, which was our living room. The energy-spending dynamo caused an almost comforting, calming and soft hissing sound: ‘Shhhhhh’. It reminded me of the ‘shhhhh’ a parent makes when it brings his child to bed, but it would rather not sleep yet and instead prefers to wind up its toys to listen to a child’s melody.
My sweet child. My son. No dryness in the mouth, no bitterness or agonising burning sensation on the skin could cause as much unbearable suffering as the thought of my son. If I could, I would cry, but I knew better than to do that. I had to get out of the room.
As I had suspected, good old Linda was sitting on the converted bike and running the dynamo. We met her on our way here in the worst of the chaos. She was sitting on the road, frozen with fear. If we hadn’t picked her up and dragged her along, she would be a shadow now. A black silhouette on the melted tarmac. Perhaps that would be better and far more humane.
“Morning,” I said, dragging myself to the chair beside a small table. It was an old wooden chair that was quite uncomfortable, and I wondered who the hell thought it would be a good idea to put such a chair in this godforsaken place. But whoever it was, they probably wouldn’t be alive anyway. So, you could say he paid for his sins. I chuckled, “The lucky bastard”, I muttered.
“Linda?” I looked at her more closely this time. She had always been slightly stocky, but I recognised how thin and fragile she looked under the many layers of old lumps that protected us from the eternal winter. Her white hair was tied up in a messy bun, and a few strands hung loose on her head. Linda was probably once a charming woman, but nothing was left of it after the fire, all the death and loss. And when I thought that, I noticed that Linda was crying. She cried silently. Sitting on the bike that had been converted to generate electricity, she cried with her eyes wide open and her mouth agape. It was a pitiful and, at the same time, profoundly upsetting sight.
“Linda? What’s wrong?” I asked again. She responded and didn’t answer me. But it was no longer necessary. I knew what it meant. Now it was just me and Linda down here. I knew what to do, so I dragged myself into the neighbouring room. Michael was lying on his bed, and an unpleasant, sweet, familiar odour filled the room. That was the smell of death. With what strength I had left, I had to get him upstairs. We had no room for the dead here. He was so light, so fragile when I picked him up.
With the shell that once belonged to a friend, I took the lift, which had its power generator and was only switched on in an emergency, up to hell. Because in my reality, hell was not below, under the ground. No, it was on the earth.
When I opened the doors of our bunker, second skin, sarcophagus and future grave, to my surprise, it wasn’t snowing. A heavy rain lashed through the remains of my former world, wiping away the last ashes of what was once alive forever.
I put Michael down and knelt on the ground. The rain brought back memories of when I still saw myself as a living person and not as living dead as I am today. Me, in the rain, on the porch with my son. We played guitar and sang Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”.
“Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?”
I was on my knees in the middle of hell in the middle of acid-heavy rain, and I screamed. I screamed louder than I had ever screamed in my life. I wanted the thousand suns from which I escaped the last time to rise again. I wished that I could finally find my salvation in their light. I screamed.