This is something I posted a long time ago privately. I found it again and made it public while also updating the time. Thank you for reading.
I heard the children crying last night. I saw the place I had called my home for many years, as nothing but ashes and still burning embers. The air was putrid, with the stench of burnt and rotting corpses. The skies were dark, and they had been for days. Night was only interspersed by short periods of twilight. The trees and grass, the flowers and shrubs, they were all dead. The earth was scorched as if fire had rained down from the heavens. I saw a mother with her child. The child was dead, but the mother was too hysterical to notice, she merely sat there and cried bitterly. I tried to tell her the child had already passed on, but she denied it. I couldn't blame her for doing so. I left my neighborhood in search of hope, and some sense of civilization.
As I walked through the streets of the town center, I saw broken and blasted shop fronts. Buildings both great and small had been razed to their foundations. These streets that had once been filled with life and happiness, were now only filled with despair and death. I found no comfort in the sights I was seeing. The Willamette sounded strange to me last night. I walked to the edge of the road, to see what was making all the noise. The blasted rubble from the hillside had blocked most of the river. I saw homes and shops, car and road, all stopped up in front of the flowing water. The water itself had turned red and black with the mix of blood and ash that had found its way into the flow. A voice that seemed to call for me, caught my attention. I turned to see a foreign yet familiar face upon a barely standing body. It was a friend, or at least what was left of my friend. She was wounded horribly, and even from my vantage point it was obvious she would not survive long. Her clothes were tattered and bloodied, but they did not hide the large gash in her side, that seemed to be a pit of despair for my heart.
I rushed towards her in the hopes that I could at least comfort her. She spoke to me asking what had happened, who was responsible for this. I didn't know whether to be honest or to tell her a lie in an attempt to ease her suffering. I told her the truth soon enough. "We are the responsible ones. Everyone of us is guilty for this atrocity. This is punishment for our avarice, our apathy, our supreme lack of respect for the feelings and wellbeing of others. Not just you and I my friend, but everyone who ignored the crimes our nation was committing across the world. Everyone who selfishly chose money over the good of the needy and the weak, is responsible. I am sorry it is not a comfort dear to hear this, but our nation brought this war upon itself. Humanity brought this suffering upon itself." She looked at me sadly, the expression in her face nearly broke me into tears, but I had to remain strong, at least for a little while longer. I could not let her know how scared I really was. She spoke to me again, "Thank you for telling me the truth, even though it is saddening, at least in these last moments you and I can at least learn the lesson we should have known all along." I could not hold back the tears any longer. I tried to speak again, but it was difficult to find the words to say, "I...I am sorry it has to end this way..." I gulped down the lump in my throat in an attempt to speak more clearly, "I am sorry, but I don't think I can save you." She replied softly, as her breathe became shorter, "I know it is the end for me Matthew, but I am glad at least you are here." Her pulse was growing fainter and faster as her heart vainly tried to keep her body alive. "I don't want this. I don't want this world to be this way. I don't want to see anyone else suffer, especially you." She missed those last words. She was no longer alive to hear them.
I wandered the streets after that in a state of disbelief. My friend had died in my arms. My home had been destroyed, with my whole family inside. Darkness had consumed this entire place. It had swallowed up a great many souls these last few days. Death walked the streets out in the open, as if he had been welcomed. Funny, that he really was. War is an invitation for death to reign freely, even over those whose time truly had not come. The children were still crying, but this time I heard the voices of many others along with them. Whether they were crying over pain of loss, or pain of injury I could not tell, but either way they were crying over real pain.
I saw survivors fighting over scraps of food or warmth. I saw that civility was no different than barbarism, once the abundance had been taken away. I saw one man strike down another for a blanket. Worse yet, I saw many survivors toss their lives away in suicide as well. Despair truly ruled here, and my heart was blackened.
Downtown Portland was even worse than the rest. This was where the real battle had taken place. Bodies of American troops and some foreign enemy were strewn about everywhere. The weapons they had used to wage war upon one another were mostly damaged and destroyed. Aircraft meant to fly, were blown to bits that littered the ground. Men and women who did not want to be a part of the fight, were shredded by shrapnel and direct fire. There are no words capable of sufficiently describing the carnage. Several office buildings were alight with fire, yet still standing high in the sky. They eerily reminded me of candles I used to use to light my house during power outages. Other buildings had submitted to gravity, many of them toppling onto their side, creating even greater havoc. I think what was the strangest though was that no cars were moving about, no emergency vehicles, no police cars, no humvees or tanks, not a single vehicle at all. It really wasn't unexpected though. The gas shortages the last few weeks had ended with a complete depletion of all commercially sold fuel. Everything had changed so much in such a short time, I could not believe it.
If it had not been for the fires, the city would have been quite dark. Due to the light though, I was able to navigate the city streets and even several the areas nearby. I was walking near the waterfront, when I saw a man huddled up on the ground. He looked to be in trouble so I ran towards him in an attempt to offer aid. He was crying feverishly as he lie there upon the burnt grass and mud. I asked him if he were okay, but he did not seem to hear me. He simply lied there crying. I wondered whether I would be reduced to such a state eventually. I am not ever sure how I managed to keep moving about. I had a distinct feeling of emptiness inside me. I am not sure how else to describe it. It was like some great void, that was slowly swallowing up my center.
I stopped at the edge of the interstate. I began thinking to myself in questions. Why was I moving about still? Why did I come here? I saw a mother with three of her children hiding under a nearby bridge. They were huddled close to one another, with a look of distress in their eyes. As I walked towards them, their signs of fear visibly increased. I stopped a few paces from them, and asked whether there was anything I could do to help them. The mother asked me to leave immediately. I turned away and said I was sorry as I walked away, without any clue as to what to do.
I walked along the edge of the interstate for a while longer. My heart skipped a beat as I heard the roar of a supersonic jet fly above me. I quickly dropped the ground preparing for another bomb to be dropped. I don't think it dropped any though, because I never saw the explosion. I kept walking forward, I kept moving forward while my body ached, my mind ached, and most importantly my heart ached. One foot in front of the other, I was traveling somewhere, though I did not know my destination.
Eventually, I came to the place I should have known I was going all along. It was Portland International Airport. To say the place was annihilated would have been an understatement. Portland airport used to have a small airbase, with a few fighter jets and some personnel as well. The airport must have been one of the earliest targets struck in the battle. Most of the fires had gone out in the last two days, but the ground above the blasted fuel storage sites was still burning steadily. I was walking towards the base when I tripped and fell onto the pavement. I had walked a long way and fatigue was finally getting to me.
Suddenly, everything was bathed in a bright flash of light. I turned away from the light and shielded my eyes, but it still seemed brighter than daylight. The initial shock of light passed in a few seconds, and I turned towards the light's origin. I saw southeast Portland being swallowed up in a massive explosion. I broke out in a cold sweat as I realized how many lives were expiring at that very moment in such close proximity to myself and I was powerless to do anything about it. I was powerless...utterly powerless. I don't think it was possible for me to have felt any more anger, despair, anxiety, and a whole slew of other emotions at one moment than I did then.
War had come to my homeland. It was a great and terrible beast, that had swallowed up the lives, and more importantly the souls of millions. War had destroyed so much good, and created so much evil. I wondered if war's hunger could ever be satiated. The great philosopher Immanuel Kant once said, "Even philosophers will praise war as ennobling mankind, forgetting the Greek who said: 'War is bad in that it begets more evil than it kills."
This is my dream. I have been having this terrible nightmare every night for almost two weeks now. I am beginning to wonder if the nature of this dream is more than just a dream. It has such vivid detail, and every time I dream it happens exactly the same way.
I suppose my hope is that this dream is not prophetic. My hope is that people can learn from the past. My hope is that people are not so evil that they are doomed to be destroyed by their own evil. Now that I have finally finished writing out this dream perhaps the children won't be crying tonight? Perhaps, the youngest and most innocent of us all, will at least be able to sleep peacefully? Perhaps, even those who bear the burden of knowledge and duty to others, will be able to sleep peacefully knowing the world is changing for the better?
