Visible carnage spread out for miles. Lampposts and telephone poles were bent or broken into the slanted efforts of a child’s first letters. Most of the fires had burned themselves out but in a few spots glowing embers remained. There was no telling the true extent of the damage. Bodies, strewn about like road-kill didn’t move except when the remnants of catastrophic winds touched them.

Inside a bowl, where the street had become a sea of boiling tar, a man sat muttering to himself. Each word came faster than the one before it.

“…true sign of an ethical mind is the sense of responsibility. Men and women who choose not to see the cause and effect relationship between their actions and the universe’s reactions are doomed to die in a blaze ignorance. Is this my failure?”

He stood to his feet and dropped the wall that had been holding back his feelings. They overcame him and the first surge of emotion was anguish. Lifting his head, he howled at the sky, “Where- WHERE WERE MY FRIENDS WHEN I NEEDED THEM?”