Gone. Everything. In one fell swoop.

Maybe it didn’t happen quite that fast, but it sure seemed like it.

I remember everything like it was yesterday. Or, more accurately, I couldn’t forget even if I tried. And I have, tried that is. With every fiber of my being. But the damned tape reel has an automatic replay button, and it blasts through my brain over and over again.

I was just nineteen then. One very long year ago. I’d finished my first year at university and was on vacation between semesters. We were in Mexico at a sorcery retreat when our phones beeped and screamed warning of impending doom. Details didn’t emerge for a long while, but our relative isolation in the Sierra Madre Occidental mountains saved us from immediate annihilation.

We should have remained there, but hindsight is always twenty-twenty.

In an ill-conceived attempt to escape, we finally gave up navigating clogged roads, left our bus, and teleported back to the States. I’m not sure if that was the beginning because it felt like the end of everything I’ve ever known.

Survival has reduced me to someone I barely recognize. Some days, I wonder why I bother, but then I pick up the banner and face another day. Better not to think too hard or pick reality apart. If I did, I’d loose my power and burn down the world.