REGRETS part 1
    Like every morning, I awoke at 6 a.m. to get ready for work. I tiredly shuffled across the tan carpet into my bathroom to shower. As I stepped into the steaming hot water, my muscles slowly relaxed while I washed my body and hair. By 7 a.m., I was out the door with a steaming cup of coffee. Before I left to work, I said goodbye to my two kids and my wife, who had all jut woke up. As I walked out the door and down the brick steps of my porch, I ran a hand through my thick, jet-black hair and let out a sigh and chose to ignore my wife mumble ‘You care more about your job than your family. Would you even care if we left?’ She said it constantly. She never would leave, though.
    The sun was slowly getting higher in the sky as I sped down the unusually empty highway. As I got closer to the city, tall buildings came into my view, and I drove up an exit ramp. I pulled into the parking lot, into my usual parking place at the side of a tall building, and pulled my key out of the ignition. As I stepped out of the car, a loud bang went off from behind me. What was happening hardly registered before I felt a searing pain in the top of my left shoulder. I was falling down and I heard a loud screaming. It took me a minute to realize it was coming from my own mouth. I was down on the ground writhing in pain and my own blood was spilling beside me and all over my clothes.

***
A bright light blinded me, as I pried open my eyes. Everything was blurry, as I looked around. My muscles where stiff, from laying still so long. I was disoriented, and confused. I wasn’t aware of where I was at first, though as I turned my head slowly to the right, I looked at the window. The blinds where opened, letting in shafts of light. I squinted, as the sunlight hit my dilated pupils, blinding me once more, making my eyes ache. I looked over that the side table. A dust covered photo lay face down on the table, beside a vase of wilted flowers. I was confused. Had they not just been set there? How could they have turned brown, and dead, and the petals fallen off to that much of an extent in a mere few hours? I didn’t understand it. I remembered then, when I saw the equipment beside me. The monitors, the IVs, they where all dead, still, not working.
    What had happened? I managed to stumble out of the room, and down the hallway. The walls where covered in blood, and several torn apart bodies lay there. My stomached churned at the sight. I didn’t understand. Where where the doctors, where where the employees? Where was everyone?
    Shoving open a door that led to the outside of the building. There was nothing out there, or rather nothing that I could see anyways. I heard things though, and smelled things. The overwhelming stench of rotting flesh hung in the air, and the caws and screeches of crows filled my ears. I was standing in the middle of what looked to be the ruins of Atlanta, Georgia. What used to be a lively, beautiful, warm city was now a ghost town filled with dead bodies and the screams of people in pain. My knees buckled, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Had we been bombed? Another terror attack, this time on Atlanta? I didn’t know, and I had a hunch that I wouldn’t want to find out.