Cecile

 I'm afraid your time is at hand.

This is what Cecile said to her cruel foster parents.

She was three years old.

Minutes later they were dead.

The girl was alone, but not for long.

Raven-haired Cecile went to live with her kind Aunt Bee, her only living relative.

From the off Bee knew she was a strange and distracted child. 

She would find the infant throwing the chicken bones to see how they landed or fiddling with the tea mash with her finger. One Sunday whilst preparing a goose the Aunt watched Cecile arrange the bird's giblets on a plate, staring in rapt fascination at the position of the wet entrails.

Why have you done that little girl?

To see what I can see.

And what can you see Cecile?

I can see that you're frightened of me. Don't be.

She was right of course. Bee was fearful of Cecile, now four years old and becoming odder every passing day.

Children in the neighborhood thought she was a weirdo and concerned parents told them to stay away from the dark-haired girl.

Aunt Bee suffered. 

Her neighbours shunned her and one by one her friends stopped coming for tea. 

They were alone in a world of strangers.

But they were blood.

Cecile turned five and stared at the moulded cream jelly Bee had made her. 

She watched as raspberry sauce was poured over the top.

It looked like a bleeding half-head.

Something terrible is coming Aunty.

What?

If you do not build a shelter we will die.

How?

Our faces will explode.

Cecile and Bee busied themselves preparing the cellar as per her intuitions. Tinned food and water were stocked and bedding laid out. Bee also reinforced the floor above with large boards, rugs and carpets.

It is time.

They entered the cellar and waited.

A series of deafening booms were heard and the whole house shook. A deep and dreadful rumble filled the air and sounds of countless structures collapsing resonated around the underground room. Thick plaster powdered the pair's hair and water could be heard gushing above, where a pipe had burst.

Staying in the sanctuary of their shelter two more days, eating canned beans and sipping bottled Sarsaparilla, they awoke to the sound of a robin gurgling above.

It is time to leave Aunty.

Bee and Cecile stepped from the cellar into a world of carnage and chaos.

There were no buildings remaining in the street. They had all been flattened to dust and the only sounds were flowing water pipes, gas explosions and dying birds.

Cecile bent down and nudged some bits of crockery.

I see nothing.

I feel nothing.

No-one is going to die Bee.

But why Cecile? Is the war over?

It was never a war Aunty.

It was the Apocalypse.

Everyone is dead.

Except us.

We are truly alone.

The adult and child wandered into the empty street and stared beyond the broken horizon at the thousands of ballooning mushrooms of nuclear smoke rising into the heavens like life-giving rain clouds on any other winter's day but this.