The Long Night of Luka Mercer
Preface
It almost happened in a dream-like vividness. How the world erupted silently in this disbelief. We stood still, those of us that felt the heat and heard the rumbles and crumbles of concrete spires collapsing above us, those of us that watched at home in some kind of agape position, unable to cry, unable to speak, unable to feel anything but that feeling of the heart plummeting to the acidic depths of your stomach. For those twenty-four hours, we thought about what was to become of us, what was next instead of focusing on the brutality of the harrowing now.
We looked over the bleachers, the stands engulfed in flames and fumes that stung our noses. The sky was tauntingly blue through the patches of soot and ash. Flags that haven’t fallen stood staunchly in the gusts of winds feeding those tantalizing flames, a reminder that, yes, this was reality that we lived through and were experiencing. Those flags were tall, rippling, each a symbol of its own pocket of the world. A pocket of the world that wasn’t this and wasn’t on fire.
We looked over the bleachers, the stands engulfed in flames and fumes that stung our noses. The sky was tauntingly blue through the patches of soot and ash. Flags that haven’t fallen stood staunchly in the gusts of winds feeding those tantalizing flames, a reminder that, yes, this was reality that we lived through and were experiencing. Those flags were tall, rippling, each a symbol of its own pocket of the world. A pocket of the world that wasn’t this and wasn’t on fire.