The Aftermath

With what felt like the last of my strength, I heaved the remnants of my front door out of the way and stepped out onto what should have been my front porch, but was now a pile of rubble. The sun blinded me after being in darkness for so many hours. I felt no pain as I enjoyed the feeling of being alive and free from the debris that rained down upon me early this morning when my own home tried to kill me.

               I turned to look at the tomb from which I had just emerged. My house, once a desirable Colonial style place of solitude and safety, was gone. I recognized some things among the wreckage. I could see the top of the refrigerator, and the corner of a mattress. I wasn’t sure if it was my mattress or the one from the guest room. The Granny Square blanket my mother made me when I was a child poked out of piles of insulation. Where had that even been stored?

               I heard barking. The familiar sound caused me to whip my eyes away from the fragments of my home. Bailey was calling to me from where she was still tied-out on her run. The tree holding one end of the cable had toppled onto the neighbor’s car, and I felt a wave of relief to see Bailey had not been under it when it fell. I followed the cable with my eyes to where it was once attached to the corner of my house. The cable just disappeared into the pile of wood and concrete.

               Carefully, I climbed down the remains of the front porch, jumping the last foot to the grass below. I kneeled beside Bailey and the hound mix licked my face happily. I rubbed her head and unhooked her lead from the cable. I stood there, in my once familiar surroundings, unsure of what to do. It was quiet. It was as if the world were frozen. A plane rumbled carelessly overhead, its passengers blissfully unaware that life in my small town had been so dramatically altered only hours ago.

               Holding Bailey’s lead, I carefully climbed over the tree that had once tethered the dog in the front yard. Bailey would not climb down when I reached the other side, so I reached up and lifted the dog from the trunk of the tree and placed her on the ground beside me. We stood on the sidewalk we had traversed daily, once before I left for work, and once when I returned. There was no clear path to stroll along today.

               I turned in the direction of town, intending to find… something. I was not even sure what it was that I needed. My clothing was torn, and I was bleeding from several places, but I didn’t feel like I was hurt. I wasn’t looking for medical attention.

I abandoned my recent decision to progress toward town when I saw the black smoke in the sky before me. More than one building was on fire. Town would not be what it once was, and I did not feel prepared to find out what it had become.

               My thoughts turned to my neighbors. What if some of them were trapped in the remnants of their homes as I had been? Was there a way I could help them? Should I call out to see if anyone would answer? It seemed like a momentous task to summon the will to break the silence around me. I stared at the debris pile before me, trying to convince my feet to take me toward the fallen structure.

               The silence was broken when the top portion of a utility pole snapped from its base and crashed in a shower of sparks off to my left. With the breaking of the pole, my silence was broken as well. I screamed. I threw my hand over my mouth to silence myself. It felt wrong to make so much noise. There was no one else around. It was as if my mind was forcing me to stay quiet so I would not draw attention to myself. It was some kind of misguided instinct to protect myself from danger.

               I picked my way to the other side of the road, Bailey trailing a step behind, so we could circumvent the sparking transformer brought down by the snapped utility pole. Irrationally, I wanted to get in my car and drive away from this place of horror. There was no way a car could make it down this street, and I was not even sure where my car was.

               I looked back at where my driveway should be. Leaves and branches covered the area. I felt I could make out a flash of red paint among the detritus and turned to walk in that direction. I chastised myself. Seeing that my car was in the driveway did not mean I would be able to get it out from under a tree, nor did it mean the car would work if I could. It also did not mean I would be able to drive anywhere in this neighborhood that had once been home.

               I started to feel fear working its way up from my stomach, threatening to burst into my mind and send me into hysterics. What if the red wasn’t the paint from my car? There were other, much worse things, that we red. Things I was afraid of seeing were red. I spun away from the site of my buried car. I saw the smoke in the sky and spun again. My eyes took in the sparking transformer. Another spin and I was looking at my neighbor’s house. They had a toddler. Was the toddler still in there?

               It was overwhelming. My mind could not reconcile the sights before me with the memory of my comfortable neighborhood. I turned again and tried to run. My first step betrayed me and I landed hard on the pavement. My hands took most of my weight, but I still managed to hit my already aching head on a wooden board. I rolled over onto my back and stared at the sky.

               The sky was blue, with a few wisps of fluffy, white clouds. Bailey licked my face and my heartrate slowed. The sky was comforting and familiar. It was the same sky I had seen while lying on the beach, and while sun bathing in my back yard. The backyard that no longer existed. The backyard that was covered in rubble and might hold the bodies of my neighbors. I felt my heart begin to speed up again. I can’t do this. I closed my eyes. If I just went to sleep, maybe I’d die too, or maybe I’d be rescued and someone would take care of me because I was clearly incapable of taking care of myself at the moment.

               Bailey licked my face again. Who would take care of Bailey? Even if I were rescued, Bailey would be left behind. I sat up. This time, when I took in my unfamiliar surroundings, I pushed away the thoughts of what once had been. I climbed to my feet and only focused on the obstacles directly in front of me. Slowly, Bailey and I started marching through the destruction. I hoped I was headed toward familiar surroundings.