paint ball tragedy/oil spill

paint ball tragedy/oil spill

fiction
edward w pritchard

For the first time in my life my will became Herculean, as I struggled and schemed to just see my four children one more time.

The oil spill had unintended consequences. Nature responded to the prolonged leaking of oil from a deep fissure on the sea floor caused by drilling by sporadic volcanic activity and strange weather patterns. The oily "paint balls" rain from the sky regularly but randomly pretty much worldwide and everyday life is severely disrupted.There are many deaths in localized storms as well. The oil balls harden as they fall from great heights and it's like being hit by a baseball thrown at about 70 miles an hour, over and over again. It's not a pleasant experience.

The sky has a purplish glow before an attack and where I live the incidents always come from a Southerly sky. Something in the mixture of the oily residue, volcanic influences, and unstable air cause the oil balls to assume many strange and bizarre colors, hence the nickname paint balls. Most of the deaths occur from fatigue or greed because it is nearly impossible to struggle through the pain of an open air bombardment, and people where I live are out in the open air because they are trying to protect their possessions. When the paint balls hit they leave a heavy residue that destroys pretty much everything man made. Nature and trees and things should be OK in a few hundred years or so, at least that's what scientists say. For now however there isn't much green left in the landscaped anymore.

It hasn't been all that bad for me. I avoided most other people because of the risk of infection from the miasma, that's what we call the lung disease caused by the bad air and I have been desperately trying to walk the 20 or more miles from where I used to live to see my four children who live in different locations to the east of me. My house burned down early, in the first firestorm of hot oil falling from the Southern sky.

My left eye is gone. I got hit in the side of the face one day. I was trying to help a woman and her child and a paintball bounced and got me solidly in the face. Since I have learned better how to roll with the hits and I have a strong capacity for pain anyway. Basically i just keep trudging eastward and try not to think of anything but the walking. I am carrying almost nothing so the risk of robbery is minimal and anyone outside, such as me, is usually left alone. It's the settled people trying to hole up and wait out the bombardments that the looters target.

I was very proud of my oldest son. He lived close to me in an apartment. The apartment building burned early, like my house. The shell of the apartment building is beautiful in a multicolored collapse, like an impressionist painting by Cezanne. The paint balls burn in weird colors and the residuals that doesn't burn harden to substance like a melted crayon. Beautiful, in a hellish way.

My son hugged me once and said he had to take off to see his daughter again. She lives about fifteen miles northeast. I gave him my compass that was one of the few things I had took from my house when I left, just before it burned down. The compass still works, but the magnetic poles are apparently shifting. I hope to be able to see my oldest son and my grand daughter again before my lungs give out but that not very realistic. My will is very strong but we must be realistic with our plans these days.

I have survived three fierce storms on the walk to my daughter's house. I am a little bruised and sore but I found a small rock to lay by in the last oil ball storm and somehow most of the hot oil balls missed me. It's hard to breathe and there's is no wind. Maybe it will rain again. Even the black rain would be welcome as long as it's not burning as it falls.
end part 1