In which I post a short (ish) piece of writing

One of my amazing friends on Nanowrimo told me that I should post some of my writing on my blog.  This is the first chapter I wrote in my novel for Nano.  It's unedited so it might seem a little sloppy but I'm still working on it- suggestions are welcome!

August 12, 2027

            The August air hangs over my head, hot, heavy, and stickily humid.  It’s dense enough to fully envelope me, so I’m surrounded with an ominous sense of change.  A cooler breeze blows lightly at me, carrying with it a faint, tingling electric charge.  The sun shines as I walk across the yard to the shed, brown grass crackling under my Converse, but dark clouds are beginning to peek over the Western horizon.  I click the key into the lock and twist, and then creak open the wooden door.  I fight my way through the mess, all of it smelling like a mixture of dry, dead grass and gasoline.  Finally, I make my way out and push my bike across the yard, the breeze just barely stirring my dark blonde hair.  I study the clouds.  When I’m home from the park in a few hours, the clouds will be directly overhead.  And soon after, it will storm.

            I push off the ground with my left foot, bumping noiselessly across the yard.  And the world is still.  I smile silently to myself.  This is my favorite kind of weather. 

            Lee is waiting with her bike in the front yard, her straight, pale hair cascading from beneath her helmet to halfway down her back.  She squints at me through the sun.  “You ready?”

            I adjust my helmet.  “Yeah.  Let’s go.”

            It’s only a mile to Clancy Park, through our little South Dakota town, past houses with neat yards.  Everyone’s grass is better watered than ours, but I don’t know why, because since the drought got worse there’s been bans on water usage.  But after tonight the drought will finally be over, and maybe they’ll lift the bans, and refill the town pool.  It’ll be nice to swim again before ninth grade starts and it gets cold out.

            The longer we are at the park, the darker the sky gets.  After almost two hours, the sun suddenly blinks out as the clouds smother it, surrendering itself to the storm.  Thunder rumbles in warning, and a more noticeable wind blows up a puff of dirt from the playground.

            Lee looks up at the sky.  “We should probably go.  It’s going to rain soon.”

            I sit down on a swing and rock back and forth gently.  Creak, creak.  Creak, creak.  Another dirt cloud rises and blows away as I scrape the ground with the toe of my sneaker.  It is dustier than a baseball field.

            “I don’t know.  Maybe it will pass.  Just give it a few more minutes.”  The truth is, I can’t wait for the rain to begin.  I am sweaty and covered in dirt, and I love that moment when the first drops of rain begin to fall, love to be standing there and let the water land on my clothes and skin and cool me off.

            But already, Lee is shaking her head.  “No.  I’ve always hated storms.  I think we should go.”

            I frown. “Fine.”

            As I roll my bike back into the shed, the sky is completely obscured.  It is only eight p.m., but the neighborhood is as black as midnight.  Inside the shed it is impossibly darker, and I’m moving past large, hulking masses that I can’t even see.  I bang my knee on something, hard, as I move my kickstand down, and I curse the darkness.

            Crack!

            Suddenly, there is light, everywhere, and too much of it.  It is so white and bright that it blinds me.  Part of the shed roof collapses inward and crashes to the floor in flames, missing me by inches.  The air around me sparks, crackles.  It smells singed and charged and full of a strange kind of smoke, and I can feel a jolt of energy hit me.  The pain is like nothing I’ve ever felt before.  I can’t describe it.  I can’t move.  I can’t breathe.  I try to scream, but either nothing comes out or the enormous amount of sound me swallows it whole from my throat.  And just like that, the white is gone, replaced by the orange and blue of flaming wood and the murky gray-brown of smoke.  A loud, sudden roar adds to the noise, and I see the lawnmower engulfed in bright flames.  The tank, full of gasoline, explodes.  I am thrown off my feet, flying through the hazy orange air to land on a dusty, burning floor.  I can no longer see the purple clouds above me, even as I lie on my back.  Well, I think I’m lying on my back, but not sure.  I’m too disoriented by this point to even tell something as simple as that.  The burning gas finds my nose, choking me further.  The heat is more intense than the sun, but I find myself shivering as the flames reach me, and begin to sear into my skin.  And finally I can describe the pain.

            I’m going to die, I think in my fried brain.  This is what death feels like.

            I close my burning, dry-yet-watering eyes and let myself surrender to the flames.  They will take me, but I am prepared.  The pain finally, blissfully, fades into nothing.

            And I know nothing.

            I see nothing.

            I feel nothing.

            I hear nothing.

            I am nothing.

            But it isn’t the bliss I expected.

            It is, simply, nothing.  

            Nothing.