12.24.2015
The bus doors closed behind him with a squeak as he walked from the stop to the sidewalk that wrapped around to the mall. He first walked south, and then the pavement curved west. The dark clouds sat there having moved in some noticeable, but not definable, way. And so sat the lights blinking in and out of existence above the mountains just as he had seen them on the bus. Fading between those other colors slowly. Size growing larger and then smaller in random fits.
The top of the mall came into view. The structure sat at the foot of a hill, which he was now at the top of. In order to enter the mall, he would have to either take the stairs or wind down a series of switchbacks that ran down the hill.
He stared at the lights as he came to the top of the path that snaked down. A wind picked up from the west, and Tern saw the smog shifting in the distance as the air stirred there too.
A loud set of three inhales preceded a loud sneeze. And his head jerked back, then down with the force of it. Down it stayed. His eyes were transfixed on a patch of small wildflowers. The purple, small petals swayed in the air, but the center is what caught his attention. A white dot of puff in the center ignited with a shower of sharp, bright sparks raining out from a small, concussive explosion. The flame burned as purple as the petals, which quickly fell from the flower and struck the ground, which shuddered with each petal’s impact. The flame at the center of the flower quickly extinguished and a black tar cloud rose into the air.
His neck loosened and contracted again, jerking his head backward as a bolt of lightning leapt up from the flower’s center, through the center of the tar smoke, and raced out to a point beyond the front range. The air peeled and threw him to the ground with the pressure and a resounding detonation. Where his hip hit the ground, swelling began immediately pressing his skin against the waist band of his jeans. It was painfully tight within seconds.
Tern scrambled to his feet and looked around. The flower had turned to molten metal and ran down the hill in several small rivers. Vegetation ignited with a shower of sparks as the river of heat touched saplings and scrubby bushes. It looked like a fireworks display.
His eyes snapped up and the stars above the mountains emanated static in surges which fell from the points of light and crashed into the foothills. The middle star strobed with a fevered intensity. Another crack of thunder rolled across the town and Tern’s hair stood on end. With a wail, the trio shot out beams of light toward the south and the beam quickly swang away and around. Like three lighthouses without the supporting tower.
The sounds of sirens rose above the wailing lighthouses and collapsed over him as static from the hills flowed eastward and over his feet. An eddy formed next to his feet and that eroded the pavement on which he stood like sand shifting under his feet on a beach as the surf rolled in and out.
The static turned into spray and wet the knees of his pants. The black and white matrix of shifting and fading as quickly as TV snow. A blast of air from the east hit him from behind as it raced toward the lighthouses. Around and around the beams swang. For what seemed like centuries. And the lights shifted their colors and painted the mountains many hues at once. The points solidified and turned into revolving cylinders. Tops and bottoms growing equally.