The world is burning, and I love it.

The smoke stings my eyes, burns my lungs, and I cough blood, but… the scent!

The fine granules of dust, the flecks of ash, the certainly toxic vapors… I can’t get enough.

Everything’s spinning, everyone’s yelling, and I’m caught in it. Panicked sweat.

Running now, eardrums perforated, all I can hear is my heart.

My shoes are melting. Ha-ha! Squish squish! Burning rubber by any other name, would smell as sweet.

Oxidation. Our bodies do it, but oh so slowly. Like pulling a band-aid off a little at a time. Much better to just yank hard and be done with it. It feels better.

I stumble and land on something wet. A body? Oh, poor fellow, dead, and his nose gone, along with his head. Maybe they’re together, at least, in death.

The ground shakes, dust rolls over me and I breathe in the ecstasy of it.

The walker stands over me. The poor creatures inside… no sense of smell. No sense of the wonders they have wrought.

As the blackness comes, I know it’s just… hypoxia.