The August sun beared down wave upon wave of heat, suffocating our town.
It had been like this for days. Months. Years. As long as I could remember, we had been bathing in this hellish heat. Our feet had become battle hardened, adorned with deep violet blushes and our faces were peeling; our lips had flaked off slowly and held a pale white colour, marred with blood spatters which seeped out the cracks. This wasn’t just the August sun. This was how it was. All year round. Our community was dying - breaking to pieces: our crops were dead, people famished, bodies were scorched. We had lost hope. But something was changing. Tomorrow marks the start of a new journey. It said it on the news - storms, hail, lightning.. Tomorrow we will have to face it. The sun substituted for thunder, and rain and winds that could wreak havoc throughout the township. We weren’t ready. We had accepted our fate.
I sunk into my tattered bedsheets, and my eyes shut. I stared into the dark abyss, unable to rest my mind.
I woke up waiting for the shrills and cries off terror but none came. I shot up out of bed and staggered tentatively to the window. Grabbing my curtains with a firm grip, I pulled them off my window and my view was shielded by darkness. The August sun had been shrouded by staggering clouds and the rain beat down at the baked soil, turning the ground into a whirlpool of soil and mud, pulling any signs of life away. I ran out to search for my father. The stairs were splintered and jagged and as I weaved my way through the shards of wood I caught a glimpse of something I had never seen before. My father was outside; his head was facing the sky and he was sobbing. Shouting. Protesting against the elements. He hadn’t yielded a harvest in decades. He fell to his knees, twisting in anguish. His small patch of farmland had been uprooted, dishevelled, flung around him. He lay among his crops. Equally destroyed. His body went limp and his eyes froze - a cold expression filled his face and his anguish froze me. I was scared. I’d never seen my father like this.
He got up slowly, braced himself, and charged into the belly of the winds. Stupidly brave and bravely stupid I sprinted after him. Gusts of wind beat at me from all sides flinging me off my feet. I persisted. I had to. I couldn’t leave him. He ran towards the side of an old industrial building and that's when it all changed. Barrages of hail began to rain down on us and slammed into our bodies. I glimpsed on the side of the building; a generator and a few fuel cans someone had discarded. I thought nothing of it. My father skirted along the edge of the building, his head swinging under the pressure of the cascading hail. He slipped. The hail continued. Then I saw it. The generator was failing, starting to break open under the pressure. I shrieked but the hail drowned my voice out. My father fell for the last time, and the generator exploded.
A ball of light exploded out of it, illuminating the stormy sky. My eyes glazed with sweat and my lips dried up. The flames licked at the sides of the building and closed in on my father. I watched, in silence. He threw one last fist up at the sky. A protest. And his body went still. He spread his arms out angelically, and bathed in the hellish flames. I tried to weep but my tears had been scorched by the flames and my thoughts drowned out by the rain.
I sunk into the sodden ground, waiting for the end; pain grasped and twisted at my heart and I shook- convulsing with emotion. The hail put me to sleep and I lay waiting, bathing in the hellish heat
Practice This