Kyiv, Ukraine, three years ago.
The city burned.
The air was saturated with the smell of burning flesh and smoke — smoke that rose in huge clouds from high flames that consumed the remains of the corpse of a city, covering the evening sky in a suffocating dark.
Buildings were reduced to rubble and debris, and people lay crushed and burned under the ashes of the city. Flames and embers rose with the smoke, wails of pain by the unfortunate still alive through the loud fire. This was a scene of hell — a bustling city turned into a burning graveyard over one evening.
There were still momentary blasts at some places: delayed missiles that went off late, or gas stations or pipelines exploding.
A baby cried painfully, bruised, shaking the body of a dead mother — half of it crushed under the broken piece of a wall. A man, with his legs torn, crawled, leaving behind a trail of blood to reach out to his wife and kids who lay in front of him, burning. Bodies lay disfigured, crushed, burnt in grotesque forms, and the alive cried in vain — while some of them had given up. Like a man who lay looking at nothingness, flames reaching his feet, but he couldn't move because the rods had impaled through his limbs.
Cries and desperate prayers to a deaf god, that will ultimately fall silent, painful yet pointless struggles to survive with whatever of the body they had left; blood, destroyed structures, collapsed walls, shattered glasses, city disfigured beyond recognition.
"Боже," ("God") prayed an old man, wounded, sitting in a pool of blood with bodies lying beside him, flames spreading to him, "врятуй нас від цього пекла, провадь до раю", ("Save us from this hell, lead us to paradise") his hands trembling. That's when with a loud bang his head was blown away with a bullet by a man wearing a Russian soldier's uniform, a rifle in his hands.
Through the fainting noises and dense silence, footsteps were heard. Soldiers in uniforms, with flame protection, and rifles walked through the destruction, stepping on the rubbles and bodies, marching around and killing any person they found alive. Gunshots were heard and several places, erasing what remained of life. And through all these, a whistle was audible, an eerie whistle singing the national anthem of Ukraine; unsettling, sinister, an evil with curly hair and round glasses.
His name was Volkov.
And he walked carefree, whistling, enjoying the view of burning hell around him with a smile, casually holding the rifle to his shoulder. As he stepped on a body, it grunted, still alive. He scoffed and put the barrel of the gun in the mouth of the person and pulled the trigger. It exploded into bits of flesh and bones, which seemed to delight him.
He continued to walk, whistling again, the bodies cracking and crushing under his steps.
That's when he noticed something on the ground, a difference in the uniformity in which the bodies were spread, an area of emptiness. He smirked.
The footsteps and drags in the dust went to the right, where he found, under the the remains of a collapsed building, behind fire and pieces of bricks and cement and debris, was a café still standing, its gates shut. He carefully went to the door and stood beside it, his back to the wall, listening carefully. He heard rustles, movements. He kicked the door on his side open and there were gunshots through the door, behind them he heard sound of scared rustles and movements, children, their mothers trying to keep them quiet, men with guns, Ukrainian soldiers, protecting them. All of them scared and in panic state.
His smirk widened.
He looked around, patient, he had kicked the door open meant one of the soldiers will be walking to the door to check, he needed to hurry. He found a jacket in the pile of rubbles. He pulled it out and threw it in front of the door, they shot at it instinctively, which affirmed their positions and also locked their focus on the jacket for a second, taking the opportunity of which, before they could realize it's a jacket and turn away from it, Volkov barged in and blew their brains off. The women and children behind them screamed.
He looked at them like, a sinister, predator grin on his face.
They were in miserable states – wounded, covered in dust, and trembling with fear, holding each other. Women covered their children, brother and sisters hugging tight, while men covered both. Traumatized, shaken, scared.
Volkov scoffed, "ха! Джекпот" ("Hah! Jackpot")
"Милосердя! Милосердя!" ("Mercy! Mercy!) few begged, hands joined, bowed down, their heads touching the floor, "Милосердя! Милосердя!" ("Mercy!Mercy!")
Volkov smiled and said, "Зрозуміло" ("Granted")
He pulled up his rifle and started firing. The blasts from the barrel overpowered the screams of terror.
But soon, it quieted down.
When he was done firing, there a pile of bodies lying in a pool of blood, holed, disfigured, men, women, children.
He sighed, turned around and walked out and ahead, whistling again. Back in the burning burial ground of Kyiv city.
And someone watched all these from above, on the roof of a building at a safe distance.
His long white hair waved with the wind. He stood majestically, his hands folded in the long sleeved of his Chinese robe, his skin white, eye brows and eyelashes white, pupil red.
He stood there, watching the city burn, a superior, pleasured smile o n his face. He felt what people feel when watching a beautiful sunset, except he felt it watching the city and its people burn.
Kal stood, watching the city turn into a corpse.