By Aziz Al-Mutawa

The world revealed itself to him in the highest levels of distortion.

Smiling, he gazed upon the neon blue sun that rested behind white-grey skies.

Snow colored birds flew as high as they could in beautiful murmuration.

Must have been a hundred of them!

They flew as if he was one end of a magnet

and they were the other.

The clouds descended on one side and then elevated quickly towards the heavens.

He observed this rapid motion with great fascination,

 the clouds were close enough for him to touch.

What he found unusual was his difficulty in adjusting to the color of today’s clouds.

They were usually dense cotton black layers painted across the sky.

Today they were beige,

 a pale gamboge color, he thought to himself.

He looked down from where he was gazing

 and just like the flocks of birds that flew away,

The people on the streets ran in mass hysteria.  

They ran in every direction that wasn’t his,

They stumbled and trampled on top of each other,

like a circus in which he was the only spectator.

The world is burning! The world is burning!

Can’t you see the smoke!

Just like that, the city ignited right before his eyes,

Yet still he stood,

Watching,

As flakes of ashes floated down swiftly on his head.

Sir,

He heard a voice behind him calling, calmly.

The voice came from a woman in a black hazmat suit,

There must have been a hundred of men and women in hazmat suits behind him.

The plague has spread, sir.

She continued.

It is out of our control and we are going to have to put you in permanent quarantine.

The ashes, he thought.

They have turned to grey,

As the fire rose up from his ankles.