When he woke in the woods in the dark and cold of night, he’d reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. The warm body, the soft breaths, the gentle rise and fall of the child’s chest, all served as a reminder that this life was real, that he wasn’t back in that hellish place, amongst the anguish and choking screams. Instead, he was trapped in a nightmare of his own making, preferable to what came before but bearing its own kind of torment. Then, he would smell the child’s sweat and hear the child’s heartbeat and swear to himself that the child would never know the true horrors of this world. The child would know peace.

Categories: Fiction Friday

Tags: fiction, Fiction Friday, flash fiction, post apocalyptic, random, scene, Short Short Story, snippet