a prayer from the night before HST signed the atomic papers to prompt V-J Day…

by David Kirkpatrick

now i lay me down to sleep

i pray to god my head to keep

if satan comes before I wake

i pray to god my head to take

This morning the sky held a new color. One I'd never seen before. Yesterday it looked like a bloody cloth flecked with old puke. Today it had this radiant something. Brighter than the sun and colored what you could roughly call bluish, but that didn't really do the hue justice. There just isn't a word for it.

Who'd a thought that Pakistan would explode the first nuclear weapon in anger since the US hit Nagasaki. It's been three days and there hasn't been a retaliatory strike, but things are still fucked up. The ground is fine, my city is fine, but the sky is fucked up. It looks almost palpable. It certainly doesn't look like air anymore.

Actually, the cloth pattern could almost be described as a tight spiderweb today. Apparently the entire globe lies under this thing. There's been no communication for the last two days because the breach in the atmosphere let enough cosmic energy in to wreck the entire electric grid. Computers are down. Cel phones don't work, and my loft is lit by candles at night.

If this keeps up much longer I may take up religion.