THE END by Steve Savage "King of the Beasts"

I don't know who or what or why it was decided that there would be just five of us in the Pilot's Cabin of the ship where we stood, looking toward New York City, the Home of "Ground Zero." It was just beyond the horizon in the far distance.

We Five were: Vladimir Putin; a young couple in their twenties, or thereabouts; Anna, and me.

Not one of us spoke or looked into the face of another. There was no need. We knew what we would see.

Unobserved, behind the Curtain of our agreed upon Reality, lurked an impatient Violence, awakened from its Dormancy, anxiously awaiting its cue to smash through the crack in the Created Shield of Illusion which restrained it.

There was no warning. The ferocious, all-consuming Blast was magnificent in its Entrance. We all looked on with a strange detached horror as we witnessed the instant explosive dissolution of what was once the Reigning Queen of All the Cities which have ever existed as "World Capital."

We were humbled into insignificance before this Mighty All-Destructive Power.

"Mr. Putin, how could you have done such a thing?" I asked.

"How could YOU have done such a thing?" he responded.

I knew immediately exactly what it was he meant. The thought crossed my mind that those who do not remember History will be doomed by it, but what about those of us who do remember History and are sickened by it?

Yes, in the past, we rallied together as we remembered the Maine, the Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, the Gulf of Tonkin, and 9-11. Now we'll be asked to remember New York City. But there will be nothing to remember. Retaliatory forces are already at work to repeat this scene over and over again, throughout the world.

A Tsunami-like nuée ardente, a pyroclastic flow in the aftermath of the Blast, was diverging from its center. We knew at once that there wasn't time enough to escape the most extreme limits of its deadly destruction.

Putin very calmly walked across the cabin to go below deck to wait for Death to claim him. The young couple didn't seem to really sense the gravity of the situation. I thought to myself that they would never know the joys of parenthood, love growing stronger through the years, sharing life's experiences together, the ups and downs, tears and laughter.

I led Anna to a bunk on the port side of the Cabin where she could lie down. My first inclination was to lie beside her, but I left the ship and began to walk through an apocalyptic scene of charred ruins, burning building structures in grotesque array; tongues of the fire's flames were everywhere. There was no day nor night. I was alone in the midst of Hell.

Off to my left, slightly behind me, I could see that the roiling Pyroclastic Death Cloud was almost upon me. As I stepped off the walkway into the street, my clothes caught fire and began to burn. I was engulfed in a Dante Alighierian Inferno, which was burning away every remnant of the dross which proved my existence.

My material being was reduced to less than the size of a postage stamp, and then. . .

I WAS NO MORE.