When the Flame Turns Blue

7 2 1
                                    



A large explosion of light blinded Danny, making him lift his arm to hide his eyes.

Light from explosions are supposed to be orange, white, maybe even yellow, we all know that.

This light defied that convention, that certainty, that fact that all humans know. This flame  was a shade of blue, ice blue, that colour of glacial ice blue. 

That colour where all of the air has been crushed out over the millennia and the ice is so compressed blue is the only colour it can still reflect.

It hurt to look at.

It will melt you instantly. If you're near it.

It burns at around 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

It might very well melt the Earth.

Danny kept driving; the path clear, everyone else was too busy staring at the sky, where the fire came from.

He had to get away, he had to survive.

It was natural instinct, but it was also his ego that drove him. He was a scientist, he was special, his skills would be needed in the future.

Because, there was always a future, wasn't there?

Danny shifted the car's gear, slowing the car as his thoughts surged in his brain, panic making his thoughts shift, jump, become jumbled.

Bubonic plague had not killed off mankind, Spanish Flu had tried but also failed. AIDS, Ebola, H1N1, Zika, they'd all tried, but we'd given them the finger. Two world wars, a plethora of natural disasters, testing of nuclear bombs and chemicals of a thousand terrifying kinds, none had worked to rid the world of the human infestation Earth suffered under.

Danny had come to the conclusion long ago that people were like fleas on a dog, parasites only taking, never giving back to the host. Now, it looked like the solar system was providing the flea powder the globe so desperately needed. Powder in the form of giant meteors, now blanketing the Earth in blue fire.

But, he had to survive. Because, there was always that one flea that survived, right? That one flea full of eggs.

He drove around a pothole, cursing as his tire thumped the edge.

"Don't go flat, don't go flat." He sang it as a mantra until he'd left a couple of miles behind him and the hole.

He laughed with relief as the tire stayed inflated, his hand reaching down to shift the car into fifth gear. Time to get the hell out of...

The world turned blue, and then was no more.

How We DiedWhere stories live. Discover now