Sun Spot

This is a short story that I wrote so that I can use it as a submission to an apocalypse  short story contest on a writing forum that I joined a few days ago.

Please let me know what you think about it

 

 

“What was that?” I shouted as I woke up with a start. Samantha, Sam for short, was sitting up in bed next to me, fumbling on her bed side table, looking for the light switch. When she finally found it, the tell tale click did nothing. No light. Nothing.

“The light’s broken”, she said, getting out of bed and trying the wall switch. Again, nothing.

“The power must be out”, I told her. “I’ve got a torch”. I fumbled in my bed side table’s drawer and found my torch. We both heard the click, but nothing happened.

Just then, Jenny screamed from her bedroom. She was only six years old, and still didn’t like the dark. She tended to panic when the power went out and she didn’t have her night light to see that the monsters weren’t there with her in her room.

Sam was out of our room in a flash. She was, and still is, an amazing mother, and nothing, not even the Lego block in the passage way between our rooms was going to stop her getting to Jen to help calm her.

“What’s the time?” I thought to myself as I pushed the little button on my watch to try and illuminate the face of my cheap but reliable watch. Again... nothing. Thinking that I hadn’t pushed the button hard enough, I tried again with the same result.

I was still a little groggy from being woken up prematurely. After I yawned, stretched and rubbed my eyes, I looked over at where my mobile phone was. I couldn’t see it in the dark. “Where is it?” I thought to myself. I felt for it, and sure enough, there it was, exactly where I had left it when we had come to bed. It didn’t turn on when I found and pushed the on/off switch.

The feeling that something wasn’t quite right had slowly been getting stronger as the minutes had moved on. I was trying to shrug it off, but the panic was trying to take hold of me.

My hands were shaking a little as I got up to go and join Sam and Jen. I swore as I stepped on what I assumed was the same piece of Lego that Sam had stepped on, and limped into Jen’s room, wishing, like parents all over the world, that all Lego would pick itself up when children stopped playing with it.

I could see a little light through the thin curtains in Jen’s bedroom. “Oh good.” I thought to myself when I realised that the sun would soon begin to creep above the horizon, casting what would at first be a red glow over the world that we knew. Sam turned to look at me as I hobbled into the room.

“Something strange is very wrong” I told her. “There is no electricity.”

“I can see that!” she said, a little annoyed with me for swearing in front of Jen and, stating what she thought was the obvious.

“No – There is no electricity in anything. Everything electronic is dead!” I paused for a split second, then added, “Everything!”.

“What do you mean? Everything?”, she asked. I could tell that she didn’t believe me.

“My watch. My torch. Even my cell phone isn’t working.” I answered.

“Did you remember to charge it?” Her tone this time was condescending. I could tell that she was getting worried, so I walked over and added myself to the three way hug.

“It was fully charged when we went to bed”, I told her as calmly as I could.

“Put new batteries in it daddy”, Jen innocently added. Being six years old made her an expert in everything, and she knew that was the solution to our problem. Boy did I wish it was that simple.

The first time I became aware of the rumbling, was while the three of us were holding on to each other, getting what little comfort we could in the strange circumstances. The room was getting a little lighter, but at the same time, the rumbling sound was getting a little louder.

We could feel the vibrations through our feet on the floor, and Jen’s little picture of pooh bear hanging on her cupboard began a gentle rattle. Things were getting stranger by the minute.

“Daddy, I’m scared” Jen said in her small quiet voice. She looked so small and dainty, huddled up in our arms.

“I know my love. I know.” I told her, while I stroked her head and hoped that everything was going to be ok.

The sun seemed to me to be getting higher in the sky a lot faster than usual. I was convinced that it was my imagination, but I wanted to make sure.

“I’ll be right back.” I said to my small, loving family, as I stood up, walked out of the room and got the key to the front gate of our home.

The front door lock had been broken for months, and all I had to do was hold the lever down to open it. I unlocked the gate, stepped out and looked around the corner of the house, in the direction of the rising sun.

What I saw made me empty my bladder in my pyjama pants.

The sun had just broken above the horizon, but instead of it being a little pin prick of a sliver, the sliver filled about half of the horizon. If that little tiny piece of the top of the sun filled so much of the horizon, then how big or close was the sun to the earth right now?

My mind was reeling. I couldn’t think straight. “Were we all going to die?”

I looked back over my shoulder and saw my wife standing there with a worried look on her face. Jen was holding onto her left leg, as if her life depended on it, tears of fear streaming down her cute cheeks and dripping on to her pyjama top.

“Look”, she said, pointing at the huge English oak tree in our front garden. The leaves were wilting and turning a grey/brown colour as we watched. The temperature was rising, and rising very fast.

Birds were dropping from the sky and the air seemed to catch fire as the sun rose in the sky.

I woke up screaming with Sam watching me in horror, and I realised that it was just a dream.