Week 3: Tell it/Tweet it

Crystalline frost crawled across the landscape like an animated summoning from some Ancient Ice Demon, engulfing trees, creeping up buildings, glossing over puddles and fountains, and turning them solid. I watched from my perch on the ninth floor of my apartment building the ice sheet engulf the wishing fountain down the street. Maybe a few hundred yards away, it scaled every object in it’s path – covering lamp posts and skyscrapers alike from the ground up, reaching the top and then extending long, sharp icicles back downward, growing several feet long in seconds.

Luckily, I couldn’t see anyone outside my building. The shelter in place signal gave us just enough time to get inside. As the cold blew in, any evidence of the lovely, ordinary June day was erased by an unprecedented cold. The projections from the emergency alert system indicated that within an hour, the temperature outside could be nearly eighty degrees below zero. That alone would trigger a state of emergency.

From the ninth floor of our building, we watched as this almost cartoon-like frost overtook our city. In some combination of awe and horror, we watched as this inexplicable cold blew in – slowly ice crystals in little snowflake patterns began to form on the window. Placing my hand against it, I could see beyond my fingertips the storm for the first time. Over the ocean, dark ashy clouds tumbled over the ocean in a way that resembled the dry ice rolling down the volcano I made for my 5th grade science project.

As the thick ice crept up the building on the other side of the window, I gaped at the sight unfolding before me. The storm blew in at a speed seemingly impossible – suddenly, there was this sharp, flame-directly-against-skin, dry-ice-direct-contact kind of burn on my hand that both sent stinging electric pain sensations up my arm and down my spine and felt like my whole arm was on fire.

Pulling away I looked down to see the bright red and blue-ash purple burns where my palm and fingertips used to be. A roar, something beyond any thunder I’ve ever heard, hit the city with such force that many windows below shattered – the giant icicles dangling from any elevated perch fell to the ground. Screams from some indiscernible direction outside began to fill the streets as the Volkswagen-size icicles began impaling those still seeking shelter.

As the storm hit the coast, this wall of gray swirling mass reaching hundreds of feet above my ninth floor vantage point blasted through the city. The ocean beneath it was frozen solid by the time it crossed the coast line, curling up tens of meters over the shore and freezing mid-air.

I gripped my arm, trying to cope with the pain of the frostbite. The roar continued as the storm ripped through the city, destroying buildings and freezing any living beings inside to death within seconds. It smashed through Rockaway Peninsula, and Brooklyn, and Queens; shattering the nearly 28 million glass windows that almost every still-living citizen was standing behind in complete and utter shock.

I turned around; Allie stood behind me, seemingly paralyzed as she gazed out behind me. I grabbed her arm with my good hand and pulled her through the front door, into the dark, windowless main hallway; shutting the steel-reinforced door behind me. The sounds of our apartment being destroyed on the other side of our door were soon echoing down the hallway as all of our neighbors’ windows were obliterated. The gale force winds and thick, icy fog surrounded the building. From our spot in the corner, we heard smashing behind each door moving numerically down the hallway, and our eyes followed in suit. On the opposite side of the long hallway, one door opened. A very large man appeared dressed in what looked like snowboarding gear, holding two of the largest duffel bags I’d ever seen.

“Come with me,” he barked as he kicked in the door to the internal stairwell, “this isn’t The End.”

…

In the nursery the jungle burned. Blue lions roared, purple giraffes bounded off. The panthers ran in circles, changing color, and ten million animals, running before the fire, vanished off toward a distant steaming river…
Ten more voices died. In the last instant under the fire avalanche, other choruses, oblivious, could be heard announcing the time, playing music, cutting the lawn by remote-control mower, or setting an umbrella frantically out and in the slamming and opening front door, a thousand things happening, like a clock shop when each clock strikes the hour insanely before or after the other, a scene of maniac confusion, yet unity; singing, screaming, a few last cleaning mice darting bravely out to carry the horrid ashes away! And one voice, with sublime disregard for the situation, read poetry aloud all in the fiery study, until all the film spools burned, until all the wires withered and the circuits cracked.

The fire burst the house and let it slam flat down, puffing out skirts of spark and smoke.
In the kitchen, an instant before the rain of fire and timber, the stove could be seen making breakfasts at a psychopathic rate, ten dozen eggs, six loaves of toast, twenty dozen bacon strips, which, eaten by fire, started the stove working again,hysterically hissing!
The crash. The attic smashing into the kitchen and parlor. The parlor into cellar, cellar into sub-cellar. Deep freeze, armchair, film tapes, circuits, beds, and all like skeletons thrown in a cluttered mound deep under.
Smoke and silence. A great quantity of smoke.
Dawn showed faintly in the east. Among the ruins, one wall stood alone. Within the wall, a last voice said, over and over again and again, even as the sun rose to shine upon the heaper rubble and steam:
“Today is August 5, 2026, today is August 5, 2026, today is…”

CONTINUED…

A man with a fedora, satchel, whip, and looks similar to Harrison Ford enters the home.

He scurries around the house looking for a place to hide with seconds til doom.

At last he finds the best suitable shelter to hide in to survive.

He opens the refrigerator door and empties the contents.

The earth is rumbling, sky is blinding bright, and can feel his demise.

He successfully closes the door!

The man, woman, and children are incinerated in seconds.

The refrigerator flies through the sky, tumbles several times til it lands miles from the blast.

The man pops open the refrigerator and crawls out, first thing he sees is a prairie dog.

Then taken by the government and is washed down by a radiation team.

Beads of warm sweat trickle down my temples, tickling the peach fuzz between my eyes and my hairline. My eyes teem over with tears as he leans in closer, his nose mere inches from mine. He pulls back and turns slightly away. My exhale is so quiet, so subtle – yet upon the last bit of breath to leave me he turns back with his arm pulled tight across his torso. His fist smashes into my cheek – the crunch under his white, blotchy knuckles causes blood to spurt out my nose. The bulges and knobs beneath his skin imprint into my face as my head is forced the other way. My eyes open to see the window tilting to the side more and more as I fall. His fist releases from under my right eye as he completes the blow – turning all the way – his arm still hooked into a tight L shape. From the floor I can here him spit in that crass manner he does. I push myself up just enough to see him turning on his heel, my hands scrape against the course carpet – as he trudges away, blood drips into my mouth – the taste of copper flashes back the rolls of pennies the woman at the bank handed me as she asked about the bruises on my wrist. His thunderous footsteps echo down the hallway as I recall the lie I told her.