My Ghost Looks Back By David Ludlow The person I used to be is smoldering under the charred ruins of a once pretty yellow, single wide mobile home. It had a nice carport with a small wooden deck. That deck was crude because I built it myself. I managed to do it even with my left side limbs messed up by a stroke seventeen years before. My carport collapsed after the blast wave hit our neighborhood. It all started with a boom close enough to startle us and everything shook. I had not yet comprehended its origin. The mushroom cloud was not visible from here. Soon a bright light so intense it blinded me for a few minutes. My efforts to cover my eyes were useless. Even in the trailer, I could not get away from it. Then, something I believe is called a blast wave, blew through our mobile home park community. It must have devasted everything for twenty miles around. It flattened my mobile home and eventually every mobile home in the park. I had been knocked down but found a way to crawl out. Luckily I was not crushed by the roof. I fetched Lilly quick and held on to her. I found her under a board. From the way she was unsure in her movements I think she was also blinded. I told her, “Stick with me cat, there’s no where to run.” Her usual spot was destroyed. Dazed and confused, but physically still in one piece we sat on the roof peak of my home that was now at street level. The flying glass fragments and splintered wood that came at us from everywhere had cut me superficially on my left cheek. It bled lightly. I held onto Lilly so she didn’t run away. As I sat I tried to collect my thoughts. When walking to grab Lilly, I heard the shattered glass crunch beneath my feet. A nail pierced through the sole of my sneaker, penetrating my already unreliable left foot. I was bleeding more now, leaving a crimson trail where I walked. I had no choice but to stay put until help arrived. The air was full of floating dust. The desperate appeals for help from the few other survivors decreased as some slowly perished, pinned beneath the ruins of their homes. I could not help anyone. A few minutes later everyone’s luck including mine, ran out. A roaring, searing sound filled my ears and an unrelenting heat enveloped us. Soon after came an unimaginable tsunami of dark orange flames at least two hundred feet high. It was rolling directly toward us. We could not escape. The gas lines made the homes in its path explode in big blasts. One, then the next, home after home, on both sides of our road. I hugged my cat Lilly, I knew for the last time. As it got closer, the wall of flames stole our oxygen. Lilly and I just waited, then there was nothing. So many dead, but so few new spirits emerged. So much for God. The heat wave had turned my body into a charred mannequin. It was not unlike a tree in a forest fire. Anything metal like my collapsed carport melted right down to the wind chimes. Now they were nothing but melted black tubes. Their musical tones just a memory now. No birds chirping, a few incinerated deer lay smoking in the black scorched field behind the house. Most of the over seven hundred trailer park residents died. Thos few new spirits, like me, were left as unsettled souls that miss the warmth of their body. Oh yes, I never told my name because my name is not important. When they find me the toe tag I get will say, “Unidentifiable due to radiation burns.” Maybe dental records will help if they are not destroyed too. The chances are my charred body will rumble and break as they try to fill a body bag with it. if there is someone left around here to do that job. You know, this day had started so hopeful. There was a great breeze with plenty of sunshine. A woodpecker perched on the tiki torch I had screwed to my deck. The neighborhood kids rode scooters outside, one always falls on their ass. My neighbor Sarah and I are both up in age, but we are good neighbors. It was Friday, trash day. Sarah was about seventy years old. She was a petite lady, always smiling. She was fair skinned, with long brown hair that possessed the expected streaks of gray. We made a game of helping each other retrieve each other’s emptied garbage cans. It’s a thing we started during the winter bad weather days. It was nice to ease the other’s burden a bit. This day held promise, with wind chimes gently singing as the breeze moved through its pieces. Lilly my gray ten years old cat, was lunging on the lower level of her cat castle. She was waiting and meowing for her food. Keeping to our daily routine, we both ate breakfast. Not long after that Lilly and I would be dead and unrecognizable. My heart sank when I heard the explosion. Lilly running into the bedroom is my last memory of her in the house. Our political leaders had been bickering over the Ukraine and Russian war that was now in its tenth or eleventh year. I can’t keep track. But on a news report I remember the Russian president on television screaming like a crazy person. He chastised his leadership for being timid in their conduct of the war. The translated speech said, “We are not going to lose this war! Russian mothers that complain about their sons dying need not worry much longer this will come to an end soon.” Putin continued, “the west that support Ukraine will soon know we mean to punish their suppliers. We will make the American people unwilling to continue. They will bury many of their own. A lesson in every grave.” At that point our president was just beginning her second term. She was finally getting off the fence about a preemptive nuclear strike to end Putin’s nuclear capability. In congress, the adversarial bickering blocked any progress being made. About a week before the missile hit, She pointed out to congress saying, “The United States policy of never striking first with a nuclear weapon may leave us open to devastation.” It was a prophetic statement. The republicans fought to keep that restriction. In their thinking, it would help keep a democratic president from looking too decisive. Especially a female president. Hopefully now they will listen. Fallout from the strike will reach Washington D.C. in a couple of days.