Flood Scare

“The rain shows no sign of stopping. You think it’ll stop tomorrow?”

Their house was surrounded by water and it was not only theirs but of all the people that lived in the area. A couple stories of each house was drenched, people were stuck on top floors, roofs, balconies and just anything that’d keep them on the higher ground. The alarms were blaring so loud that they had ensnared the minds to keep them playing inside their heads, while some grew distant each day as if shriveled by hopelessness, some were discouraged and sent home. There was a persistent commotion playing in the background which was a collection of crying, shrieking and old people on their knees calling upon God.

“I don’t think so my child, I wish I could act optimistic for your sake but I don’t see how that is going to help us. If there’s anything I can be sure of is that if it keeps raining the way it is and no help arrives…” their mother had no courage to speak anymore, it was said however and it rested like a heavy cloud on their head. It was the weight of truth, the reality that awaited them unless it stopped raining.

“Help will arrive, that’s what I am certain of if nothing else.” Her daughter said, looking towards the small flashlights that were lit on every roof but theirs. The younger one kept his eyes glued to the window; a pale reflection of him stared back at her through the glass and she saw the fear crouching behind his brown irises and realized that it had walked into hers too.

“Nala, come here please.” he asked his sister and their mother motionless in a corner dreamed of a void no better than they were in.

“Can you see the searchlights?”

“Oh,” she peered towards some lights that were far but she could tell there was no one out there looking for them. There was hardly a whisper of it in the air and people were still scared shitless, their faces contorted with fear and despair. “There’s something, perhaps.”

There was a faint flash of light in her eyes and for one hopeful second, she thought it was them. But it wasn’t and she hugged her brother and stood there frozen against the glass like a shadow in darkness.

“You think they’ll find us in this abysmal darkness, where even our sound is snuffed by its own scarcity to be loud?”

Their mother’s monotonous statements sent a shiver down their spines; it was like she dipped her words in the deepest and darkest part of her soul before she said them out loud.

“Maa, why do you have to make everything impossible?” Nala asked.

Their mother grew to be silent afterwards, she saw her kids hopefully staring out and somehow felt so hollow and helpless in their eyes that she wished she drowned. It was not her fault that she became a bitter person; the doctors labeled her as delirious and called her disability to stand, a psychological trauma. There were no signs of physical injury; it was only in her mind.

***

Nala gasped in horror when she saw a woman slide down the roof top, and presumably her father in the attempts to catch her midway, fell alongside her due to lose footing. It was a scene out of books, movies and while the father caught his daughter, they were both dangling inches higher from the rushing water and there was nothing anyone could do. Everyone was silent. Everyone was gasping in horror but everyone knew deep in their hearts that any more help was going to cause more loss of life than the ones at stake.

Nala’s brother was one of the first spectators of the incident, perhaps for a while she forgot that brother was beside her and it would mean scarring him to let him witness something so terrible. Although it was too late and quite naturally as a child, in his mind there were questions that rose in his mind like vapors from boiling water. There were so many of them.

“Are they going to fall?” he was crying, his tears had the weight of the world, his face glistened in the moonlight and his eyes shone like bright diamonds didn’t shut for one fleeting second as if rendered unlikely of closing them.

“No, no. Why would you think like that? You see, her father will save her.”  

There was one question which was more pressing more than the rest, for a twelve year old who saw a father sacrifice his life for his daughter, he couldn’t help but wonder about his. They didn’t have a father, at least not now. He had never felt the need for one, but today it would have made all the difference in the world to him.

In the mean time, the horror had just begun for those taking refuge on their roofs, or those that now had no option but climb theirs as well. They had fixed planks over their roofs so they could stand without the fear of falling but there were some that didn’t and as if the father daughter duo started a chain reaction, a couple more people began to slide down their roofs as an accidental loss, as if it was collateral damage that the gushing water demanded to recede, or the rain needed to stop. Nala was right. The father duo that it began with, managed to survive meanwhile everyone was focused on securing themselves against an accidental fall, as miraculous as it was no one believed they would make it from such a cliffhanger. Nobody really cared for others bat this point of time.

Nala closed her brother’s eyes and embraced him while fighting the tears herself. I’m not sure if that was wise of her plain stupid. Their mother, quiet as a bat in the darkness whispered them to come close and almost certainly Nala saw through her and somehow knew she meant it this time. Three cold bodies, in a haunting darkness, two normal and one in an impossible state of mind, nestled together in a corner like the warm-blooded animals we are, and the water kept rising and rain kept pouring without a grain of mercy. The emergency alarm across the town rose higher and people shivering in the darkness suffered quietly.

***

Nala was woken up by the sound shattering glass; a man in a neon-orange rescue jacket had broken the glass and at first as alarming as it was, when she could properly assess the situation she cried out of happiness. The man’s face was hidden and his brows tightly knitted showed the anguish of being so late. They were famished and the rain had finally stopped. There was a sigh of relief in the air, fresh and bitter as it was. The subtle breeze caressed the faces of those that had lost hope. For those that had survived the long drawn out disaster were all soaked and wet, most did not have it in them to survive a second more and could barely pass as alive. Some houses, barely standing as they were, were the face of the calamity. They were washed away like they were never there and the flood was said to have done massive damage in the shape of the lives that were lost.

“You guys need a hand?” the man said in an eerily familiar voice. Afterwards, few men ushered inside and helped carry their mother to the raft, then came Nala and her brother. Everywhere around them gleaming under the sun were rescuers, young and old together, who were nowhere to be found until yesterday had now turned up in large numbers. People were brimming with misery and simultaneously glad for being saved. Everyone had mixed feelings and the scars that hinged themselves to the souls of many were going to give them nightmares.

They were near the rescue camps when Nala’s mother couldn’t help but cautiously feel as if the man talking was someone from her memory and not being able to remember agitated her such that she nudged the man on purpose just to hear his voice and afterwards mean it as an accident. She couldn’t remember anything certain.

“That voice sounds familiar, can you remember anything regarding? I can’t seem to find it in my mind, can’t seem to associate it with anyone so far.” She told her.

“I was wondering if you had noticed. But I don’t think I remember anything either, our memory is clogged up right now, I’m too tired to mull over something that currently is of no magnitude at all.”

But of course she knew, she figured it out soon after they left and she didn’t want to face the fact. There was so much anger boiled up underneath her but the sense of safety that embraced her at that point steered her mind into a sudden rapture until sleep took her over.