The words echoed like lingering strobe retina-burn as I cautiously made my way down the wet, uneven concrete lining the busy road. I was. I was waiting. Hoping. It was impossible. It was cold. The wind sluiced off the rippling puddles in the road and shivered through me. Cold. And the lingering strobe flickered on and on every time I blinked.
~~
I felt ill. Seven souls wiped out in one fiery moment of mechanical catastrophe, and such awful, awful beauty in those expanding clouds up there in the Florida blue.
My head hurt. The strobe made me nauseous. Dribble of storm-water down roadside drains and the hiss and roar of passing traffic was a chaos I didn’t need and that strobing, impossible prayer just kept drumming and drumming inside my head.
I caught myself on a streetlight before I tumbled to the ground. Cold sweat pricked down my back.
A light caught my eyes as I slowly opened them, first left, then right. A red light against a black background. A pub. More noise and chaos coming from that direction. Chaos I didn’t need. Those seven souls were now nothing but atmospheric chaos, mixed with melted steel, gas and the vapour of rocket fuel, destined to spend eternity blown about by the seven winds.
Are you hoping for a miracle?
Posted: April 5, 2014 in Short stories, starts & writingTags: Short fiction
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Just so you know, this was written on the spur-of-the-moment as I sat down in a bar/pub down the road from our place in Bandung. I’ve been meaning to come in and check the place out, sit and have a beer, check the vibe of the place, since we first arrived… ten-and-a-bit months ago!
I’ve done it now. It’s a bar. That’s about all. I drank two large Bintangs. I feel like I need to stay up and rehydrate now…