ALSphere Foundation
Outside, it’s usually pitch dark at 5 a.m. The dawn has plans to reveal itself in bits and spurts. First in sepia and then with pastels, it amazes me with a splash of tangerines and ambers which heralds the arrival of the sun.
But, this morning, as I look out of the window, the sky has an unusual splash of orange cast onto the otherwise pale clouds. The air is buzzing with static.
The breeze rustling the trees whips my hair so violently about my face that I can barely open my eyes. The trees creak, their branches straining against the brunt of the torrent.
There was something odd though, there was an absence of birds and a skittishness in the stray rabbits and cats. That’s when the whispers of the hurricane began.
By midmorning, it was blowing a potent dust storm and whisked away anything light that wasn’t secured.
It could have gone out to sea if it wanted to, but it hit the coast and kept on going inland. It wasn’t supposed to hit our town, but it took a fancy to our town named Seaman’s Cove and decided to make a pit stop right here!
I hunkered down in the old wine cellar of our home.The cellar was as black as a coal mine.
The hurricane had grown to a gargantuan spin over the sea. A 74mph tempest and gale were howling like a banshee. It was right overhead, gusting so enormously that it felt like my ear drums would explode!
The beams of the house groaned in a way that sent shivers down my spine. I could hear objects crashing on the roof of my wine cellar.
All the houses in the town stood on trial. Roof tiles were ripped apart as they flew haphazardly like rogue missiles. The panes rattled as if in seizures and splintered while still in their aging frames. The walls creaked, cracked and chunks of plaster, wood, cement came down like a ton of bricks.
The gale continued screaming. Then, as suddenly as it all began, all went silent in a trice. Nothing stirred. Not even a whisper!
When I poked my head through the gap of the wine cellar, the house was gone! Only a leveled expanse of land covered in ruination that was our neighborhood surrounded me.
Every livid cloud had disappeared like a ghost that never existed. The sky was once more a perfect powder blue…but all that remained were the heavens and the earth and many broken families and dreams…
The hurricane had made its exit noiselessly like a vengeful, contented dragon leaving behind a trail of a heap of rubble and twisted metal. Maimed trees uprooted and lying on their sides, looked like mangled pieces of driftwood!
The once picture perfect town we called home looked like a scene right out of the end of days. Such was the speed and savagery of nature’s fury called ‘hurricane’.
What an apocalypse!
Every sheltering home was wrecked!
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