the cities? The residents were oblivious; they were sleeping off last night's party; it had started to break up around threeish or fourish - about the usual time. Vomit and litter everywhere, and more than one fatality; some, from overdose, others from getting caught in a gang crossfire, and ... you can guess why that five year old, laying over there in the corner, won't become a six year old.
Along one of the meaner - than typical mean - streets, a single mom is awakened by her alarm clock. Well, atleast it went off this time - a few days ago it didn't, and she was late for work, and was given her last warning. She made a mental note, to somehow scrape up a few bucks, (if not filtched out of her purse, by none other than :( run over to WallMart ... oh wait, they closed ... one time too many... a looted mess. Last time she was there, to buy milk and cereal for her kids, some of the frig doors were left hanging open - one that kept the fruit juice, the door was hanging by a single bent hinge. Wtf is wrong with people? she shook her head.
She heard the all too familiar mutterings and cursings of her teenaged son shambling into the stinking wreck of his bedroom. Yep, among many of his snarling complaints - some of which, for sanity's, if not physical health's, sake, she chose to ignore. Punk-arse really needed to find other living arrangements - and since daDuh was such a hero (while she, of course, such a ... high body-count) why punk wouldn't simply pack his hefty bag, and crash there ... Wasn't happening, of course, the seedY-bag hadn't troubled itself to so much as sent him a dollar-store card, for the last few baal's b-days, let alone take him to a nas-char(iot) race. So yeah, her son is angry. But she knows the old story; old as baal himself, it's always mom's fault, never dad's. (Needless to say, seedbags be seedbags - old as baal.)
In short, the eggshells laying on the floor, weren't just left over, nonswept - from lack of time, scrambling between two crappy-jobs and general despair. At times, more like disgust. While she could have easily passed the both of them to moloch, something about that - that, which she couldn't quite articulate - was creepy, not natural .... wrong.
Down the street, a hung-over merchant, while setting up shop, just happened to notice four people being led out the city gate. One of the two men leading the four...oh yeah, he was a looker; the merchant had wanted some of that, but got there too late. Good thing, he concluded, as several blind men bumped and bungled their way along. One the them tripped on ... oh, a mostly empty whiskey bottle, and fell on his face. Blood and boogers everywhere, the merchant let out a throaty laugh.
The single mom drew shut her tawdry curtains. They needed washed; didn't help that punk-arse had wiped his grimy paws upon them more than once. Maybe when she got off work, but concluded, there was no point in even thinking of having anything halfways nice, as long as his worthless arse was snarling around. Ya know, the same-old xy entitlement thing :/
She sniffed, wrinkling her nose at a certain highly unpleasant smell, coming from a certain direction. Between punk's snores - as if his breath didn't routinely STINK enough, it must have crapped itself - either too drunk to notice, or just too lazy to get up and trouble himself to walk a short ways down the hall, to the latrine.
Something snapped within her. She was done! Calmly, she gathered a few things, stepped back into her small bedroom, gathered up her fourish daughter, and left the squalid apartment. Where to go? Anywhere, but here. Zoar, perhaps. Surely she could find a place, a job, there; she pondered her possibilities, as she headed toward Sodom's gate - with daughter in her arms, a satchel on her back. She kissed her not quite awake daughter upon her forehead.
The sun was just over the horizon. Mother and daughter were...oh, a mile, maybe two, outside the gate. Sadly, not far enough. Within a brief second, she heard a booming noise coming from the city, but before she could turn around to see what the matter was, a war machine? There had been talk. But it didn't matter; a comet chunk, about the size of a cell-phone...
"The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot entered into Zoar. Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven;" Genesis 19:23-24
"And thou Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell : for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day." Matthew 12:23
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