Death By Ghosts a Flash Fiction Piece by Paul Q.

Have you ever looked up at the stars, and caught a glimpse of the gods and goddesses smiling back in luminescent  grandeur? The sky is a bout with infinity, twilight fire sprites conduluting the limited beauty of everything. I saw the backsplash of marmalade diamonds, shining with a juniper tint, clasping around me, like the big emulsion of magnanimous nothing, keeping me caught in the spider's web of the Milky Way. 

    I was a wee boy, no older than seven, not even able to tie my shoes without help. Yet, I was capable of deciphering the great mysteries of the universe in those star-studded skies, especially on a cloudless summer's eve. It was always a fascination to watch those June bugs bounce around in a cacophonous misfire around thwt pitch-black silhouette. The sky was all you needed to look up to with wonder, to put all things into perspective.  That was, until the star fires began to plummet like stunned doves to the pocketed surface. 

    The end times, always threatened to come with fire, it was written on the headstone of humanity, ever since Prometheus stole Zeus' most beloved prize, and allowed mortals to claim it as their own. Maybe those beauties in the sky were not so magnificent as so much allegorical whitewash would have one believe, but were the structures to bring about the destruction of humanity. Death by ghosts. 

  A philosophical question: can the instrument of mankind's destruction be seen as beautiful? Can it be appreciated for being such a disastrous implement, but also for being a regal force of nature? Safe-to-say Man is built with a respect for powers beyond even his control. He can admire his own destruction. You would think I'd hate the stars, the firefights that came crashing into my home, killing all I loved, you'd expect I'd want revenge, no matter the lunacy that would come from a vendetta. No, I still love the stars, even if the gods and their matron counterparts have sent to relieve us of our species. It is more human to admire the beauty of one's enemy, because you then see, destructive wrath, it makes us feel a kinship to our gods and goddesses, because it is a universal trait. 

    So when the firebombs killed so many, harmed continents, cultures, governments, and families, I did not damn the skies, nor the gods. Nor even did I curse Prometheus. I knew it was not the fault of anyone, or anything that destruction was nigh: the beauty of inevitable destruction is a wondrous as a monarch landing on a daffodil.