1000 Days

The demonic sun bursts forth with greater solar flares than ever in human history, its vicious fiery tails whipping closer and closer to the atmosphere, melting and drying every living thing on its exposed surface, once a jungle bursting forth with greenery as far as the eye could see, and now even deserts pale in comparison…1000 days of no rain.

              Jameson, an old man who worked massive oil patches, is now seeking for the oil that will bring forth life and plenty…water. He’s been pushing and probing further and further down, surveying the land for months, to no avail, only to reveal small gas pockets here and there that nearly set the sky ablaze.

              “Dammit, why are you so stubborn? Just give me a drop. Just a drop, okay? Come on!” He curses at the sky, devoid of any moisture, the cracks on the ground deep and hollow. Scratching his old scruffy grey beard, and wiping his overalls with the salty sweat from his hands, his grip has become weaker as the probe slips as he tries to turn it manually. He finds that talking to himself helps him cope. He’s dealt with stubbornness before; his wife drove him crazy for 50 agonizing, happy years, until she passed away last year from heatstroke.

              If he could survive that, this would be nothing short of a walk in the park. He attaches one more probe on top of the other and hammers it down further, with no end in sight, hope completely dead to this part of the world. “I know you’re there! I can…” He notices a faint smell in the air. Like…rain? What is it?” He grabs the hammer and sledges down the probe further, as the fresh smell becomes more and more apparent. Jameson has always had a nose for things. He could smell fresh cut grass from a half of a mile away when there was grass anyway.

              He can sense something in the air, not sure what it is, but some small change is coming not from below, but from…above? The sky changes from a light cheery blue to an ominous, greenish colour, an emerald colour, as the air starts to change and shift as the wind suddenly picks up. His wind chimes, which usually sound pleasant, now sound ominous and distorted. “Tornadooo!” He screams at the top of his lungs by himself, not a soul in sight, as he scrambles and rushes to the cellar of his humble home, on his hands and knees as he’s almost within reach of the door. He stretches his right arm to unlock the lock, as he clumsily worms his way inching closer to the door, swinging them open with his body swinging off the door, and jumps into the cellar as the doors swing open violently, as he furiously, with all of his remaining strength, pulls the heavy wooden doors towards the doorway, shuts and locks the cellar behind him and pushes the bar through looped metal to fasten the door.

              He passes out from exhaustion, as the violent cone shaped wind tears through absolutely everything in sight, the noise so deafening that he wouldn’t even be able to hear himself think. Suddenly, a powerful metal pole punches through the door, the hole around it keeping the door sealed, missing his foot by a mere inch, as the wind intensifies, tearing the roof off of his old house, shingles flying every which way.

              Hours have passed, and Jameson finally wakes up after having a small nap, refreshed and ready to deal with his current predicament. He carefully removes the bar that braced the doors, and slowly unlocks them, as he pulls the metal beam out of the damaged door. It was in fact his last probe, and he notices a faint smell of moisture again behind the door, something like rain, but not sure if that’s what it is. He slowly pulls the probe out, struggling to get it out. ‘That’s okay” he thinks. He’ll use the sledgehammer to knock it loose. He opens the other door carefully as he steps out onto the field, sees debris littered as far as the eye can see, junk from other houses laying there, dead animals, and…what’s this? The ground…is damp??

              He looks at he spot he’s around and notices moisture, the cracks in this little spot are filled with liquid, but is it what he thinks it is? He smells the damp ground…it smells putrid. “Oh no”. His forehead wrinkles further as he knows what that is. It must have been the swamp water from nearby, the one he used with his filter to have enough to drink from. Now, even that is gone.

              Now what? He sees someone in the distance…A little girl carrying bucket of what only seems to be clean water. “Hey over there! Do you need help?” The little girl, who seems to be no younger than 10 is pushing a cart that appears to be full of a clear liquid. Could it be? “Yes please! Dad says we need to expand, so we’re looking for new land to grow in. The old man just laughs heartily “If you think you can do something with this mess of field, then sure, why not?” He continues laughing sarcastically. “I’m serious, mister. My Dad is coming to grab the rest of our stuff. The storm destroyed our land. We need somewhere fresh to start.

              “Ok well I mean if you need to live here for a while, you’re welcome to stay. Say what are you doing with this water?” It’s for me in case I get thirsty, and maybe even to water some new plants. See?” She pulls out a bunch of seeds out of her pocket: cucumber, tomato, even potato seeds to help grow a new crop. “Wait a minute! I recognize those. Are those Papa Johnson’s seeds?” “Yes, that’s my Dad.” “Wow, I can’t believe it! This is unbelievable.”  “This might be the break I need” he mutters under his breath turning away from the daughter of Papa Johnson, one the wealthiest commercial farmers in the state.

              No more than a fortnight later, Jameson hears the loud roar of a massive truck rolling up unceremoniously in front of his little shack where the little girl, who was sound asleep, was awakened by the noise outside in the early light of the purplish sunrise. “Daddy!? You there?” He sees a massive diesel tanker truck labelled “Water” and the Papa Johnson  commercial label above it. “Hello there stranger!” Yells out Papa Johnson in the midst of all the noise coming from the powerful diesel engine, which he finally shuts off. “Hello. Papa Johnson? That really you?” “Yeah it’s me. Seems like we need a new place to farm and a new place to stay. Interested?” “I mean…uh…I don’t have much with me. The storm destroyed my field. I need water to keep this growing. I have bags of seeds which could help us grow some crops.” “Oh really? What do you got?” “Squash, pumpkin, carrots, even some strawberries.” “Wow, really mister?” the little girl chimes in with an unusually naïve cheerfulness, as if she’s not totally aware of the disaster that’s befallen them.

              “Say, Papa, Could I speak to you for a minute?” “Sure thing mister…?” “Jameson. Call me Jameson.” “I’m not sure why y’all are so happy. I mean you lost everything, didn’t you?” “We did, but we’ve helped so many people over the decades, we figured fortune will smile upon us soon enough. We just didn’t think it would come so soon. I had no idea that you had so much drought here. Our property line ends about 20 miles back.

              “Oh I see…Well I mean if you think you can do something about this here land, we can grow what we need together: Split the profits.” Papa Johnson, a dreamer of the craziest kind, a man with unbridled ambition looks Jameson up and down and notices his old growing grey beard, slick with sweat. “I’m sure we can come to some kind of conclusion.” He also notices a shotgun not too far from the shack’s doorway. “I was hoping you’d say that” Says Jameson enthusiastically with a new lease on life. Prosperity seems to be within his reach now, but the land that Papa Johnson is talking about is far enough that it may have missed the storm. Could they be expanding by starting fresh, or are they just….expanding? Old Man Jameson’s 1000 days of drought has finally come to a vicious and abrupt end.