The Smell of Disaster

The air in London is changing; I can smell it. As autumn thickens the city sky with fog and rain, I can sense a looming cloud gathering.  I can't see it, but I know it's there.  

I've had this feeling before, and it never plays out well. It's a scent I've come to recognize as impending disaster, an outpouring of suffering that sprays from the earth like blood from an arterial wound. It means there will be chaos. It means there will be pain. 

Like the smell of decay draws flies and and carrion crawlers, this encroaching doom attracts things darker even than my kind. Shadow-winged and owl-eyed, these beings beyond death seem to flock when large numbers of people are about to suffer.  I've only encountered a few in my long night, but each time I have felt a dread I never knew in my breathing days. 

The city's pulse quickens. I watch the living scurry through each night, and as the life they carry quickens my child flesh, I am reminded of how fragile it all is. I think of who I was before I was dragged into this underworld, and it seems almost like a dream. 

But I know the price of forgetting. So I will remain close, feeling the warmth of life in the air and on my skin, all while smelling the fetid, putrefied stench of disaster drawing ever closer. 

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