Lightening's Wake

I didn't understand the saying 'life flashing before your eyes' until today. I thought it was melodramatic nonsense to give a story or film more edge. I was wrong.

The storm was one of the worst in our towns history, and I was stupid enough to be driving in it. This storm felt different, malevolent. The wind was cold, chaotic and untamed, every blast of wind carrying the weight of the storm. I'd just finished my shift and was driving home, the rain lashed down in sheets, blurring the world beyond my windshield. Like with all my problems, i turned the music up louder in hopes I could ignore it.

Thunder rumbled in the sky and lightening flashed, the winds so strong I felt my car rock and it was difficult to remain driving straight. I clutched the wheel harder until my knuckles turned white. My chest tightened, like a hand wrapping itself around my heart and squeezing it in a vice like grip , and I understood why people in the ancient times begged Zeus to be lenient. The rain had become too much for the gutters, and was flooding into the road, my wheels were now struggling for any traction. After what seemed like an eternity, I'd finally made it to my driveway. I took a breath, a couple more minutes and I'd be safe.

I chucked on my coat and ran towards my front door the cold wind biting into my skin, the coat doing nothing to protect me from the rain. Suddenly, a blinding flash cleaved the sky in two, and before I could process it, a violent shockwave hurled me backward. My body hit the ground with a bone-jarring thud, and my ears filled with a high-pitched scream, as if the world itself was crying out. I could taste blood. Time slowed to a crawl. I blinked against the rain, the cold so piercing it felt like needles stabbing through my clothes, but I couldn't move. The world swam around me, the storm's roar muted, as if I were sinking into a dream. I struggled to sit up, my body heavy with shock, just in time to see the fire—angry, ravenous—consuming my house. Flames licked up the walls, devouring everything in their path with a terrifying speed. My home, the place that held my entire life, was now a burning inferno. Lightning had struck, igniting it in an instant. All my cherished memories—those fragile pieces of my past, the photos, the blanket I clutched as a child—were now turning to ash, floating away in the relentless wind like they had never mattered, like they had never even existed. The fire swallowed my life whole, reducing it to cinders.

The flames danced in the wind, a horrifying ballet of destruction. In that moment, the cold no longer touched me. I was overtaken by a numbness. A realisation that we were gone in the blink of a moment, and humans could do very little in the face of the sheer ferocity of nature.

I faintly heard the wail of sirens in the distance, cutting through the storm, and the frantic voice of my neighbour shouting, begging me to come inside. But their words felt distant, muffled, like I was underwater. The world around me seemed to blur as I stood frozen, staring at the roaring flames that devoured my home. The heat of the fire pulsed against my skin, even through the sheets of icy rain, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away.

Everything I loved—everything that made this house mine—was disappearing, turning to ash before my eyes. My throat tightened, and the tears came, hot and heavy, but the rain swept them away before they could fall, mixing with the storm as if my grief was just another part of the tempest raging around me. The wind howled, the flames crackled, and still, I stood there, watching my world burn.

I thought about the saying again—life flashing before your eyes. It's not the big moments that you see, not the graduations or the promotions. It's the little things—the way the sunlight hit the kitchen window in the mornings, the creak of the front porch when I came home late, the smell of pancakes on a lazy Sunday, the soft bird song in the early hours outside my bedroom window. Those were the things I thought of as I watched my house burn. I despaired over the thought of losing my family photos, loved ones who had already passed on to which I now had no way of immortalizing them. I remembered the Sunday dinners around the dining table, and the laughter that echoed around my house. I remember playing charades with my grandparents, and smacking my big sister with a hairbrush for trying to shove me out of the bathroom. I remember the look of grief, rage and exhaustion in my sisters eyes as she sat on the stairway, and told me our mother had passed. I remember sitting in the living room with my father and my sister as we came to terms with our loss. And how we went through it only a couple of years later with our father. The house was full of memories, both good and bad but it was my life. Now? Now it was nothing.

By the time the fire trucks arrived, there was almost nothing left to save. I watched them spray water onto the smouldering remains of what had once been my home. The flames had done their work—only a charred skeleton remained. I felt hollow, empty, as if I had burned along with it. My neighbour stood beside me, his arm resting gently on my shoulder, but I barely felt it. A small part of me acknowledged his kindness at braving the bad weather just to comfort me. But I couldn’t think beyond the ash and smoke, beyond the loss. But somehow, despite everything, I was still here, still standing. I was alive. And for that, I was grateful