Minute Four
Frank is omnipotent. The city is silent as a mausoleum. Millions shrunken to ashes by the first brutalising impacts, portent of billions more. Explosions tear people up like cartoon characters. Frank rages but the eardrums which might hear are already perforated. Matter reforms in hideous jigsaws. Unheeded screams surf on the torrents of mushroom cloud. The ground, the air, and sky are gunmetal grey. They leach into each other.
Minute Three
The wind becomes sticky. The sky turns to marigold. Children tumble and frolic in a playground. Frank’s breath bowls a toddler who struggles to rise. Wildlife senses danger and takes flight. There is nowhere to fly to. The low rumbling thunder of Frank’s belly laugh underscores howling sirens. People dine and sleep, walk and run, drink and make love, live and breathe. Power becomes powerless. A grotesque dominoes match begins as automated systems launch missiles against imagined enemies. The ravaging genie refuses to return to the bottle.
Minute Two
Suits and uniforms jostle like headless chickens in bunkered boardrooms. Lovers twist and turn entangled in satin, skin to skin, aware only of each other. Frank’s invisible fingers pry open the windows. A budding artist puts the final touch to a future masterpiece. Logic and reason are left for dead by fear and patriotism.
Minute One
The wondrous sound of a first cry is greeted by the boundless joy of proud new parents. Laughter rocks the room as a flushed new mother beams while a frazzled father shakes. The scent of just baked bread fills a dawning village street. Sun rises over miles of ready golden crops. Teenaged eyes meet in tentative discovery. Lovers linger over heady espressos and risk their lives smoking Camels. A sky dawns as a distant siren bawls a warning too late.
Before
Frank ate a hearty breakfast. He felt a twinge in his side as they boarded the Airbus. The company had recruited only the cream in the early years. When markets dropped the cream was skimmed. Halfway through the flight he sensed spindly tendrils clasp and squeeze in his chest.
Nuclear power station plus dying pilot is a zero sum.
Eamonn Harrigan is an Irish writer. His work has appeared in Salmon Publishing, Word of Mouth, and Crooked Shift, and his novel Where the Dead Go was published by Solstice Publishing. He has been shortlisted for the Harper’s Bazaar Short Story Competition and the SaveAs Writers Prize.
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