The Death of my City

At a quarter to three the sirens go off. The city has been evacuated already. The sirens are only a precaution, a warning to any strangers left behind, to leave while they still can before there is nothing to leave. A decade ago, the scientist of the world created a machine that allowed them to create controlled earthquakes. It was a product of an experiment gone wrong. But the leaders of this new world decided that there were uses to this mistake. Breakdown towns and cities that were what they believed ‘backwards’ and rebuild them from ground zero. That is also the reason why I sit alone on this hill top under my favourite tree overlooking the place that holds all my memories. If this city dies, it will take me with it, because, if we have no past do we even exist? The sirens go off again at the ten-minute mark. I can see the clock ticking on the tower of the train station like a machine counting the last heartbeats of a dying body. I see my house where I lived, the school where I learned, the park where I played. Each street and corner a landmark of the person I am today. As the clock strikes three a rumble starts from deep within the city, heaving its last breath as the clock tower crumbles and dust flies everywhere. Everything crumbles. Dust covers the sky. The machine flatlines. The body is dead. The paleness devours everything.