Story The Night The Canal Fed

The fire came like a living thing, spewing out of the earth, spitting flames
into the sky so high no bird could fly through it. It built towers of heat, thick
with smoke, choking out even the stars. The ground trembled like it was
afraid. We thought the world would open and swallow us.

Each blast cracked the sky wide open. Every explosion sent us, friends,
family, neighbors, all diving for cover like hunted animals. We scattered
without thought, like sand thrown into the wind. People ran blindly,
stumbling into the bush, tearing through thorns and undergrowth. Blood
marked our escape, smeared along hidden paths now made visible by
panic.
The children were the first to fall. Their deaths were the beginning of
something worse. When the little ones started dying, their parents, mothers
and fathers ran back into the fire to save them. They could have survived,
but they never returned. Others lived long enough to die slowly, killed not
by the blasts, but by grief. Some died a day laters, bodies intact, but spirits
shattered. 

The waters once familiar turned hostile, hungry. People were swallowed
whole. Others crawled out broken bones snapped, faces bloodied, bodies
torn. The screams were endless. We couldn’t count the wounded. We didn’t
try.
No one could record it. We had no proof. No phones. No cameras. No
witness but our own memory. And what good is memory when the sky
itself is falling?… .