Angry Jasper: Fifty-two

The pressure was unbearable now. Skull boy collapsed screaming, his cries lost to the grinding pressure and the violent shuddering of the planetoid and the strain of the engines. Kate was crawling, fighting with every ounce of strength to pull herself into the locker. Behind her, Jazz managed to shove the boy into locker. It sealed instantly as he slammed the door shut. fighting for air, and feeling as though his body might turn itself inside out, Jazz saw the door close and seal behind Kate as well.

The wounded ship bucked and kicked hard away from the dissolving chuck of rock and Ocean. Jazz screamed in pain. Clamping his hands tight over his ears in a vain attempt to keep his eardrums from bursting. He closed his eyes shot, but felt sure his eyes would explode from their sockets.

Jazz fumbled with the handle of the nearest locker. The pain was excruciating. His fingers felt as if they were swelling outward. Warm blood ran from his nails. Jazz fought one last time, knowing that this was likely his last chance. With all his might he hauled himself into the locker and pulled it closed. He fought for breath even as the door pressurized with a squealing hiss. With that fresh oxygen flooded into his lungs. He gave a long low groan, and would have cussed if he had the strength. Somewhere in the back of his mind he hoped Buzz could wrestle the ship away from the planetoid. His body could have cared less at that moment as he passed out cold.

Maury watched helplessly from his chamber at the center of the wheel as part of the smashed weapon, a piece roughly the size of an old Naval destroyer hurtled straight for him. There was no hope of escape, and Maury knew his fate was sealed. He hung his fat ugly head and moaned.

“Mother f…”

He and his chambers were vaporized by the impact. The wheel structure sort of collapsed around it, sort of like ball thrown into a net. This net didn’t hold, though. It buckled and snapped and ripped itself to pieces, spilling thousands of souls into space, like the Assessor and his wife, Marge. They instantly freeze-dried in the near absolute cold of space, then evaporated into dust. Madame  had just dropped her slacks in the toilet when the calamity flung her out into space, bare-assed for all the Universe to see.

One small chunk of Earth fell steadily towards the sun. Somehow a part of Crawford remained intact. Just west of the train tracks and crossroads was a small ranch. Long abandoned, world leaders had once been summoned there to confer with a President whose name no one could recall any longer. If only folks could have seen that his own brand of politics set the stage not only for the rebellion, but for the rise of the Corporation as well. Indeed, it set in motion the long chain of events that doomed the planet and eventually led to its final destruction.

Crawford fell steadily towards the sun, the little ranch and the graffiti covered gravestone beneath the old cedar bough protected on the dark side of the chunk of earth. The stone was a study in kitsch, with big marble pillars. In the center of the gravestone was a larger than life picture of the long passed president. He was smirking, as though filled with contempt for damn near everyone. Like the Sphinx, his nose had been shot away by vandals.

There was a small shack by a creek not far from the gravesite. It was empty now. The bleached bones of the last of the president’s ancestors were scattered on the floor where he had died alone and in shame. A bible was open on the table next to a pair of spectacles and a dusty tin cup.

It evaporated as cinders and then as constituent atomic particles stripped of character and distinction. Curiously the shack was the last to be consumed. The words on the page of the book seemed fitting, and somehow prophetic:

“And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given onto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death; and with beasts of the earth…”