Mbona haufanyi kazi yako vizuri, eh? Sasa unanipeya kitu mbaya!" The customer is jabbing her finger at the cabbage head i sold her, her voice sharp. She's got that familiar tone, the one that tells me I'm about to get an earful.
I keep smiling, though my patience starts to fray at the edges. "Pole sanaa lakini hii iko sawa sioni shida yoyote. " I say, taking the cabbage in my hands and turning it over like I've never seen it before. Sometimes I have clients like that, ones who think every rack is plotting against them. Whatever; the job.
I glance at my wrist watch, almost lunchtime. Joseph,My husband of two years is at home his day off staying with the kids, John and James. The hustle is killing, but knowing they are safe, fed, and happy makes everything worth it. Just a few more hours and I shall be home.
Then it happens: the peace I had managed to build around me, shattered in a second.
BOOM.
The next instant, a big rattling noise tears through the shop, as if the air itself had cracked. A shockwave pounds me with such intensity that it feels like it is tearing me in two. My ears shriek with a high whine, hurling me backward, my head slamming against something hard and cold. I am on the ground, dazed, clutching my head while the world spins in fractured pieces around me.
The customer who was yelling now lies on the floor, face contorted in shock and pain. The shelves are destroyed, food and supplies everywhere, cans rolling in a slow, mocking parade across the floor. It is like a war zone. Sharp and brutal, the pain in my head throbs as I try to piece together what just happened.
"Aww, Shetani ashindwe!" I exclaim between gasps, words tumbling of their own accord while I fight for air. My head's pounding, ears feel as if they were bleeding, and my arms and legs are numb. "Hio ni nini"?
I force myself up, hands shaking as I grab onto the counter to steady myself. The whole shop is in shambles. People are lying on the floor, moaning, clutching at wounds. Broken glass glitters on every surface, catching the dim light. Some of the lights flicker, casting eerie shadows across the devastation. My mind is a storm of pain and confusion, every thought scattered and incomplete.
My phone lies on the ground, buzzing with Peter's name across the screen. I lunge for it, holding onto the one familiar thing in this chaos. I can barely get out a word, my voice thin and broken.
"Peter?Watoto wako sawa"
"Hannah!Wako sawa , Are you okay? I heard the noise from here, it was… What was that? Are you alright?" His voice is in a rush, strained.
"I don't know… something… a huge explosion or… I don't know. I'm hurt, and so is everyone—" I glance around at the wreckage trying to make sense of it. "Everything's a mess. It's chaos."
"I'm on my way," I say, his voice tight, and the call cuts off.
Everything in me is screaming, every instinct in my body raging, as I stumble out of the shop. I clutched my phone like it was my only tether to sanity ,ITs complete chaos i have seen disaster movies before but to experience it first hand is worse ,I always thought it was meant for other countries
Dazed, I push through the doors of the shop, stumbling outside, desperate for anything that makes sense.Cars have stopped others collided they are fires everywhere too much noise as people scream and cry .I see bodies litered all over i am to disoriented to help i hope they are not dead,I wish i had taken that first aid course a few months back,I don't know how to help as i rush over to a screaming woman helping her stand .People are pouring into the street, some crying, some screaming, all of them looking around, looking up, and when I follow their gaze, I see it.
There's something in the sky. No-something wrong with the sky.
A void-dark, terrible, an impossible absence in the fabric of the air. It's black, but it's not of any blackness that I have ever seen. It is a chasm, a wound in reality itself sucking in everything around it. I have no idea how to describe it because it isn't a color, isn't really a shape at all. It's like a crack; and just to look at it is burning my eyes, crawling my skin. I feel like the earth has been torn asunder, leaving this. thing.
People around me are frozen, staring, some sobbing, others muttering prayers or curses under their breath. I hear words in fragments, voices full of horror: "Ni nini hile?" "Is it the end of the world?" "Hii haiwezekani…kazi ya shetani"
My heart is pounding against my ribs so hard, I can barely breathe. I feel tiny, like a speck of dust beneath a great, indifferent boot. Whatever that thing is, it doesn't care about us, doesn't even know we're here. The terror is so deep, so complete that I break down in tears, feel like I'm going to be sick.
A man beside me clutches his bleeding arm, a white face looking up toward the void. I nudge myself to turn away, yet every nerve in my body screams, every instinct commanding me to look-to understand-even though I know I never can.
I glance down at my phone-at the photo Ken sent me-at my two little ones grinning and laughing without a care in the world. And the tears spill over, hot and unwelcome, to think about them out there, maybe frightened, maybe hurt. No one answers at the school, and the silence on the other end of the line is a terrifying void of its own.
I start running as my body hurts and blood was still dripping down my arm. The street was a mess of glass, rubble, overturned cars, and people lying on the pavement, some bleeding, others too shocked to move. I stumbled, catching myself against a broken lamp post, my breath coming in desperate gasps. The world seemed twisted, wrong, some kind of nightmare from which I couldn't wake up.
My phone rings. It's my husband again. "Hannah, where are you? Are you on your way ?"
"Yes. Yes, I'm coming," I say, my voice breaking with sobs, barely audible. "I'm coming to get them."
"Hurry, please. Just… hurry."
The line goes dead, and I struggle on, my legs all lead, every step a battle. My only thought is of Zuri my babies, my treasures, waiting for me, needing me. The streets are bedlam, yet I force my way forward, swerving through the crowd, the screams, the smoke, the rubble. I have to get to them, have to hold them in my arms.
The thing in the sky looms over all, dark and silent and watching, uncaring, and I feel its presence in the air, weighing upon me as I run. Still, I can't stop, can't look around. My children need me, and nothing in this world or the next will keep me from them.