The Start of the New World: A Narrative Fiction

Sometimes I feel as if I have invisible kites hooked to my body. As I speed down the road, they fan out behind me and to the sides. Kites that find cliffs, walls and corners not only possible but cleansing. Flying through them, all the dirt clogging their pores gets struck and left behind. All the solids that hold them down are knocked out in one breath, in one long swing of dizzy loops and wide flows.
As a kid, you ever run through a forest of yellow lit leaves and blue blobs of shade with your arms spread wide? Each little branch on your level finds you and smacks out your debris. Every high note of the finches or caw of a crow sizzles the fat out of your head. The oxygen heavy air expels pollution from your lungs in a rush of misty condensation, and you live for the first time in days.
I knew it was over when we heard about the radiation spilling into the ocean. Poison that would out-live us by millions of years had been working its way through our chains, settling in at the bottom, swishing with the tides and the fast flight of minnow. Swallowed by whales, slugs and sea stars, it kept hidden. Until now. We'd turned a corner and I'd missed it. I'd thought Armageddon was begun by a bomb or earthquakes. Maybe even a rising sea of melted ice caps from across the world. The greenhouse effect? We’re made to fail anyway, eventually.

This is how I know I lived before; I dream it. There are white curtains that flap and shudder from the wind. The dawn colors them pastel peach, violet, and blue. I could smell trees and rain and hear the songs of morning birds coming through an open window.
Sometimes I'm sweating in a hot car. There’s a lot of us sitting in rows on black roads. Stuck in traffic or rush hour, though nobody is rushin...

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...sure, the hissing pump loud in the room reminding me of my dreams. I despise myself as much as the damn cat had. This is a night of screams, groans and raw hate. This worthless mutant child threatens my Helen and makes me an accomplice before it’s even born.
Then the child is here, slick red and wrinkled, thin but strong. She writhes and yells at first but then quiets. Her chin quivers with cold while I wash her clean. She is perfect, no abnormalities. Her fingernails are seed pearls. I wrap her in our softest blanket and lay her on Helen’s unmoving chest. With a grunt, the baby opens puffy blue eyes and gazes at me.
The stare is heavy with comprehension. It cracks thin lines into my teeth and weakens the bones of my feet. Together we have spilled the blood of our beloved. Such a thing is not forgotten. I touch her cheek with my finger and give her my old name.