Something happened and then the midnight sky bled with the embers of a burning city.

Below, a stale crimson fog lavished and hung. The sewers flooded through broken pipes, a viscous water that stank of dog and rot and sweat, an earthy dew that salted the seas of crumbled grain.

Within minutes, they grey remains of death covered the streets, inches deep in a mid-summer blizzard, each unique flake a piece of something that used to be. Leaves, stone, people, birds, glass, metal, wood, rubber, plastic, tile, bugs and worms and grubs. All soot and ash. Crosses, apses, domes, pillars and pews and pulpits. All soot and ash.

Within hours, waves washed the streets. Mildew corpses moldered in fish stew, a fecund boil that begat a fine green salt that dried in clumps and lined the rubble with undulating stencils that parodied the tide…