I said that I never experienced the loss of a loved one

But that’s not true

Every second of every day I become a new person

The girl from a second ago passed away

Ingrained in memory

The only question is how she is killed

My present self is standing among all the ones from before

Dousing them in gasoline

Lighting a match and letting them all burn alive

Their young, smooth skin tearing, split open by the flames

Before being dissolved into ash

Their screams wail and echo

Harmonious, haunting dissonance

Music to the perpetrator’s ears

She finds the fire’s light wonderful

Cruel, yet enrapturing

But she seeks a kinder light

The sun’s soft rays floating just out of her grasp

All the ones from before were “unworthy” of such redemption

The world needed to be cleansed of such devils in preparation for a new world

A new heaven

Even though the landscape surrounding her is inferno

She still feels an empty chill ringing through her body

That only the sun can fill

After the ones from before have shredded into listless dust

After their cries have pattered out

In an increasingly wilting decrescendo

First into lifeless moans

Then croaks like TV static

After all has gone silent

The fire wanes and

All she can see is the beautiful, bright ethereal flood up ahead

She takes a step towards it and reaches out her hand

The warmth beginning to soak into her skin

But suddenly, she sees a dark figure materialize

Backlit by the sun

She feels a sharp pang slicing through her eyes

The light she had wielded with her hands

Now permeating into her vision

Blinding her

As it all slowly goes dark

She can’t see

But she can hear

Her own inhuman screeches

And the truth cacophonously banging against her skull

That she has now become a girl of the past

Bathed in the flames of her own creation