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Sunday

A short story

By Madison JadePublished 3 years ago 3 min read
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Thick dust filled the air, rushing up around us and burning our nostrils with each inhalation of breath. The dense particles doused everything in a cloudy gray, clinging to our skin and knotting our hair, dirtying our pretty yellow Sunday sundresses. Mama choked and coughed as she huddled protectively over me and Annie, her body a thin, delicate shield from the destruction outside. We were curled together, pressed so tightly into the corner it was as though we were trying to melt into it. The silence that now invaded the room was total and eerie, contrasting sharply against the chaos that had come before it. I held my breath as I squinted my eyes, trying to peek under mama’s arm to observe the scene of total devastation.

“Is it finally over?” I asked in a hushed tone, speaking to no one in particular, my small voice muffled by the ringing in my ears. But before anyone could answer, my eardrums were slammed with a reverberating blast, and then another. I pressed my palms hard into my ears and screamed a violent, guttural scream, but the sound was swallowed up by the thunderous roars. The shiver of an earthquake rocketed through the earth beneath out feet, sending us collapsing to the floor in a heap of arms and legs and dresses. The large antique mirror hanging on the plaster wall above our heads swayed before it crashed to the ground, missing us by a fraction, and thousands of shards of silver glass scattered across the cherry-wood floor, catching the hazy sunbeams in their reflective surfaces. A fresh cloud of dust erupted into the air.

I didn’t know how much time had passed before the world seemed to calm once again… perhaps minutes; perhaps hours. The roaring in my ears still made it impossible to speak. Mama stood, and then gently tugged me and my sister up onto our bare feet. I gazed around at what had once been our cozy kitchen. The room that had always been kept meticulously clean was now amidst a battlefield. An inch thick of dirt and soot blanketed the floor and the furniture and the debris, like an undisturbed coating of ash-colored snow. Cabinets were hanging open… a fountain of water sprayed from the place where the faucet had been not two hours ago. The pendant light that usually hung in the center of the room laid in pieces on the dining table, whose five wooden chairs were flung around haphazardly, wood splintering where arms or legs had snapped off. Our fanciest dishes – for holidays only – were now a mountain of broken porcelain behind the filthy, fractured glass paneling of the china cabinet.

With one hand I clutched my sister’s, and with the other I gripped a handful of mama’s cotton dress so tightly that my knuckles ached. Together we moved through the wreckage and over to the window, leaving three sets of footprints in the grime on the floor. The scenery outside mirrored that of the inside. Rows of houses along the street were crumbled and broken; street lights flickered, traffic signs bent, and trees were uprooted from the dirt. The only thing that seemed to have survived somehow was the bed of marigolds that lined the sidewalk in front of my home. Mama and I had planted them not long ago, just as the final frost of winter turned to dew. I had chosen the marigolds because of their color. I remember thinking that they matched our pretty stucco house almost perfectly, as though whoever painted the walls had been trying to create a giant marigold springing up from the concrete. Now, the cheery golden flowers just looked out of place.

The memory was wrenched from my mind as the click of shoes on cement echoed from the distance, moving down the pavement in coordinated succession. A troop of soldiers dressed in ebony uniforms with guns at their hips and bandanas covering their faces paid no attention to the carnage surrounding them as they made their way along my block. Four or five men split off in turn at each house, and I whimpered quietly at every scream that rang through the summer air; at each gunshot that followed. I counted at least twenty-seven bangs before they finally reached us. We didn’t even try to hide.

The shiny steel gun caught a beam of sunlight as they pushed it to mama’s temple, and when they cocked it, she looked to us, tear tracks running down her cheeks, and whispered “close your eyes.”

Short Story
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About the Creator

Madison Jade

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