UNTITLED

               Juan Ignacio remembered the war he and his comrades had waged against Heaven.      

               He could still see the spears the angels used, made of light, made of lighting. He remembered watching them arc from a point in space unseen, he remembered how they could level a hillside.

He remembered his station on the top of a mountain, anxiously waiting for days, then firing  desperately, aimlessly, at a passing cloud.

                Most importantly, most vividly, he remembered the day the Lieutenant Melquiades, on a cloudless day, took aim at the sky and shot the sun. He could not remember what happened beyond that, however, as it had been too dark for him to see.

                Upon waking, Juan Ignacio discovered that the world had been reduced to a formless and colorless clay. It seemed as if the mountains had shrunk, as if pushed to a point beyond the horizon. Where trees once stood were uneven bumps of changing size and shape. He saw what appeared to be a village, oblong masses along crooked rows, but he was uncertain, and unwilling to entertain the implications.

                It was only an approximation of what was, he thought to himself.

                It would be better to consider them separate, to consider his world gone.

                Juan Ignacio discovered that he himself had turned into clay.

                He was now permanently dressed in his fatigues, though absence of browns and greens from the world rendered it little more than a wrinkled shirt . Straps and packs had become rectangular mounds permanently affixed to his body. His left arm folded in on itself and fused together, giving it the form and function of an amputee’s stump. His right arm was his most intact limb, his hand now permanently joined with his rifle.

                Realizing now that he was buried up to his waist, he could not feel his legs.

                As the world heated anew, the clay surrounding him would harden, and Juan Ignacio would regain the sensation in his legs . He spent the next week carefully, meticulously chiseling his legs from the earth, and when he confirmed that no pieces were absent, Juan Ignacio broke out in a sprint . No direction in mind, Juan Ignacio chased what vestiges of humanity he had retained.