ChemCloud Horizon

Every night at midnight, the purple clouds came out to dance with the blushing sky. It had been that way ever since the accident strangely the illustrious and eerie coloring it made for a mystical beauty that was equally deadly. we lived in this tiny little place that seemed like it was the perfect utopia our town called east Palestine, OH was a rural community that my parents felt would be the perfect backdrop to raise my younger sister Kaitlin and me.

They called the little town a slice of heaven but in all reality it's not even a township it's more of a village and at the 2020 census there were a record total 180 people in the populace. You never expected anything crazy to happen here and that was probably why my father chose to move us here from Cincinnati; with the goal effort of opening a franchised restaurant. We were going to sell hot wings in front of a ton of big screen TVs with every kind of sports programming imaginable. Yet what happened with the train car derailment sent us on a journey that none of us would have expected. What had become the largest environmental chemical catastrophe in the United States' history seemed to happen right there in our little slice of heaven in a corner of Darke County. It was weird how it all came about.

A normal day just like any other, and then suddenly there was a huge and ominous mushroom cloud that has kept these bizarre clouds centered over us for days now. But the way they behaved at midnight was especially strange, and notable. Tonight, I intended to catch it on camera and share it with my steadily growing following on Twitch. Yeah, yeah, I’m a standard seventeen-year-old gamer, is what you’re thinking, and I guess in some ways it’s true but touching grass beneath these clouds after seeing all the dead fish seems a little ignorant if you know what I mean?

“Drew?” I heard Katy call out my name and shook my head slightly as I pulled down my headphone from my ear,

“Yeah?”

“What are you going to do?” she asked hesitantly. It was like she was afraid of my response and I knew it was because of how she had found Rodney. Rodney was my sister’s Bombay cat and he was the first casualty of the air pollution that we could account for. I still wasn’t sure if it was because of him catching a bad mouse or fish or if his own water and food supply had been contaminated. We had been quick to get him inside and to keep the food and water we had unpolluted. My parents had even rushed to buy water bottles and gallons so we wouldn’t have to use tap water. My mom also griped and complained about not taking baths or showers with the water supply possibly tainted but finding Rodney as we did was just too much. I glanced around the motel room and sighed,

“All I’ve wanted from day one was to go back to Cincy, and I remember telling dad Cleveland would’ve been better than this. Now, we’re on the fast track to becoming the next Helltown AKA Boston Township in the state.” I remarked.

“You didn’t answer my question, Drew.” Katy leaned into the wall and crossed her arms over her chest; a tell-tale sign she wasn’t budging until I confessed. I laughed, and shaking my head I let out a loud exhalation before I finally found the words to speak,

“Kaitlyn, mom would kill me if I took you with. Just watch the livestream and find out.” I winked, tugging my headphone back over my ears and turning back toward my videogame. It was just two more hours. Two more hours, and I would get evidence on camera of the way the purple clouds just stayed, dancing to and fro in the sky in a mystifying way that worked almost like the flame magnetizing the moth and it was with that thought in mind that I knew there had to be more to it.

There just had to be…