Hickory Crab Ch.1

The day it ended, the skies were red. It was as if the clouds soaked up all of the summer sun and painted a picture, carefully gathering the embers from my neighborhood barbeque and sprinkling them like stars amongst the horizon. The leaves, albeit still green, had been dipped in various shades of infectious orange, an ominous forecast for every kid in our small town. Three miles east lies the ocean, though I doubt anyone would have visited at this time of the year. The absence of people is what brought me there that evening, to a small, hidden crevice above the waves. Maybe I wanted to get away from the noise, the endless, meaningless chatter that imprisoned my thoughts, maybe it was the disgusting smell of my dad's burnt barbeque. All I know is that it must've been fate, or something darker disguised. I returned from my wanderings at about eleven pm to sheer chaos. Everything was in disarray, the tables displaced at a minimum of ten feet away from their original location, the grill overturned, smoke billowing from the grass, lit by the heat of the coals scattered atop it. I watched as the heat from the fires distorted the surrounding images, the scene envied by the sky. The more I looked into those flames, the closer they crept, the less attention I paid to my surroundings. A chill crept up my spine, but I kept staring, entranced, eyes attached to the flickering dance. For a moment, I saw it. The ground, breathing and bubbling, something surfacing through the thick layers of compact soil. For a second, I heard it. A chattering, clicking, snapping, sickening sound. Suddenly, something grabbed my ankle, and whatever was underneath my feet was pulling me towards it, the boiling theater of fire and earth.