Second Creative Writing Challenge Task #3: Heart Tremors

Heart Tremors

The dark brown eyes stared vacuously into the deep blue sky and the wispy clouds making their way across the horizon.

That’s an odd pattern he thought as he meandered down the middle of the road. His slippered foot suddenly found itself lodged under a piece of debris, causing the man to stop walking forward and look down.

It took a few moments for his eyes to focus on the thing stopping this foot, and then another few for his brain to process what his eyes were seeing.

Most of the curved piece of metal entrapping his foot was the light grey of pulverized concrete, apart from one area where the sunlight reflected in blinding contrast. His foot had managed to step on some still-shiny purple tinsel - the meager strands that managed to hang on during the chaos.

A loud crackling noise invaded the oddly serene tableau, and the man slowly turned to the sound - a pile of rubble containing oddly familiar objects - the remains of a small round table whose legs were painted yellow and red, a bronze crucifixion sticking unceremoniously upside down amid a pile of shattered bricks and mortar, a plate that managed to retain most its contents of beans and rice, albeit with a fine sprinkling of dust rendering it inedible, and finally, the source of the sound, a radio partially hidden beneath the remnants of the table.

The man shuffled over to the radio and bent down in slow motion to retrieve the radio, the intensity of the crackling sound increasing as he draws it out from under the table, as if he’s given it new life under the brutal sun. He turns slightly, and the radio picks up the faint voice in distress, “…8.1 magnitude quake in Oaxaca…worst in Mexico since 1985…”

The man blinked, finding his right eye especially blurry and noticed red droplets falling on the radio, creating bright red circles by his hand. He lifted up his hand and wipes at his eye and looks at his hand, which looks oddly like one of those modern art pieces, a smear of red on the grey background of his dusty hand.

That’s right, I was in my kitchen, listening to the morning radio, he thought. He always enjoyed getting up early to have some time alone before the business of the day got underway. He recalled how it was dark outside, and he heard a loud rumbling sound that seemed to come from far away, and as it snaked closer, sounds like snapping and cracking from outside invaded the quiet of his home.

He had run outside to see what the matter was - he was positive someone had gotten into a car accident.

But there wasn’t just a car accident, he recalls. There were many cars being tossed around as the ground underneath them bucked and rolled like the ocean before a storm. Electrical wires were being stretched to their limits and snapping in two, making a strange sort of song like a guitar whose old strings are breaking as its being played.

He had turned back to the house to run in for something - he couldn’t remember what - and that is when the doorway had collapsed. The next thing he remembered, he was wandering the street as if he had been suddenly transported to this world of grey and blue. He turned around once more trying to orient himself, and his foot snagged again on those stupid handlebars. The ones with the purple tassels.

“Oh dear God!” he exclaimed. “My Lily!” He yelled, his voice breaking as he jumped back to life, digging in the rubble where his house once stood, where his daughter’s bedroom once was. With each piece of brick and chunk of plaster - purple on one side - he called out her name. With herculean effort, he ripped away each piece of his home that stood between him and his daughter.

As his breathing became labored, his cries became little more than whispers, a prayer on each exhalation, “Lily…dear God…Lily…dear God,” until one piece of plaster uncovers a small hole of blackness, where no light seemed to reach.

He found his voice again, “Lily!!” he yelled into the hole as he reached inside, his hands feeling something soft….soft and warm. He gulped, knowing instinctively that she was not out of danger and that he couldn't allow the carefully arranged cocoon that protected his daughter from a crushing death to become her tomb.

“Papa?” came a weak, high-pitched voice from the depths of the hole. She was so close!

“Lily! Papa is here!! Stay there, Papa is going to get you out!!” The man put his hands together and offered a fervent, silent prayer, before carefully removing the first brick.

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