fortuitous odds

[1] fortune told

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The air was an unendurable haze of thick billowing blue smoke. It blanketed every household with a fog that waded through in search of its target. Within that smoke stumbled Yoongi. The minty haired boy still had the gentle features of youth, now hazed over by the toxicity as he brought the sleeve of his shirt up to filter it out.

It was hard for Yoongi to recognise anything within the thickness, yet he pushed forward, screaming the names of his family into the ringing of blaring alarms. What good were alarms when they would attack anyway? The devil's men cornering them within their homes.

As much as he wanted to give in to the search for his family, he knew he needed to prioritise the details of what was unfolding. So he focused his energy toward the men emanating the smoke, searching for its source.

Each step revealed the bodies of his community, children collapsed into huddles of desperate attempts to protect eachother; a naive belief that led to their demise. Each familiar face tore apart his soul, even more so when he had to look away and focus on reaching the reason for this monstrosity.

The smoke was doing something to his mind, tearing apart every memory and vision that held a hopeful future. It was like the very make up of his DNA was crumbling when a new breath spread the chemicals through his lungs. It was a new weapon, forged for destruction just like any other.

The smoke dissipated as he reached the perimeter of his home, skidding to a halt to take in the mass numbers of people sent from the depths of hell to ruin everything they had worked so hard to build.

"You can't do this!" Yoongi's cry fell to deaf ears. He searched through their front-line of protectors for any defining features that could aid in his documenting. The sight of two young boys held within the group paralysed him, the pair tied down by older troops who had locked gas masks over their faces making them unrecognisable.

It was with a subconscious act that Yoongi held his breath, silent terror seeping through as he witnessed the release of the deep blue smoke directly into the masks. A concentrated amount that sent the two bodies into a fit of uncontrolled seizing. "Let them go!" He screamed into the haze, pushing forward with heavy steps to try and reveal who he was watching be torn apart by the hands of devilish men. "Please! Please let me see more!" This time Yoongi screamed to his own mind, feeling the details around him fading, steps getting weaker until the scene of violence was torn away and he fell into a bright consciousness. And with a blustering sob he shot up in his bed, unaware of his hellish screams as the room around him settled and he could see the eery norm of his four bedroom walls.

"You ass!" He cried, gripping his head and tearing at tufts of hair to try and resurface the details of his minds making. With a fear that he would lose it all, he managed to stumble from his bed and reach his desk covered in old sketches. There he began to draw the scene with every minute detail including the hair colours of every person and the faces of the children who had laid at his feet.

It took a dozen papers before Yoongi could pull away confidently and confirm that he had managed to sketch out every detail. With a trembling breath he shuffled the set together and headed from the room straight toward the dining hall where his family would all be situated by this time of the morning. He didn't care that he was wearing boxers and nothing else, hair sticking up in a sweaty mess from the thrashing in his sleep. None of that mattered as he surged down the hall and burst into the cramped room that held a six seater table made of plywood pine and old metal bars. Around the table sat five young adults all curled up and focused on their own interests.

"I had another one." Yoongi interrupted with a panicked urgency, shoving the utensils on the table to the side to splay out each of his drawings in their chronological order.