American Gehenna

by uselessness

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Thirteen square miles of carnage.

A mountain 12,000 feet high, built piece by bloody piece in this spot over a period of ten years. No one ever imagined it would grow so large.

First, the wreckage of our landmarks. The eschari were indiscriminate, with no particular preference for structures symbolic or functional. The jets of searing naphtha towered high over our cities and everything they rained upon was melted to a puddle in a cloud of toxic fog.

When it had cooled enough for transport, forty-eight enormous convoys carried the molten steel and other unrecognizable amalgamated debris to the site for dumping. The largest landfill ever created.

But it wasn’t our buildings they wanted. The attacks continued and then… the disease. The barbarians terrorized rural farmers, far-removed hermits, and no one was safe; there was no place to flee. When our plague-ridden corpses became our greatest threat of all, Mount Triumph was the designated quarantine zone.

The bodies piled high, and still we had no defense.

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Comments

Average Reader Rating: 4.0 stars out of 5

  1. American Gehenna

    THX 0477's Buddy Icon THX 0477

    Posted 9 months ago

    Eww, and disturbing. A very dark and still mysterious picture. Partly cause I don’t know what a ‘Gehenna’ is, foreign or otherwise. Is ‘eschari’ a word I should know? Feeling dumb, but als feeling the gritty, nihilistic vibe of the story.
    LoA

  2. American Gehenna

    uselessness' Buddy Icon uselessness

    Posted 9 months ago

    Haha, “Gehenna” is a Hebrew word that literally means “the city dump.” It’s used as a metaphor for “hell” in Judaism, because in Old Testament times Gehenna was a well-known disgusting unclean place. Such a word was much more vivid than just saying “the pit of fire” or something. As for “eschari,” I made that up. :-P
    LoA

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