Circles in the Dust Read Free Page A

couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of him, the far wall a blur of green and gold wallpaper, shrouded by the polluted air and the spots on his vision from the bright light. He rubbed his burning eyes and stumbled back into the hallway, his ears ringing, and saw his family crumpled on the ground.
    Mark stirred a little, rising up on his hands, but Ben lay motionless, a board across his back. David looked behind and his stomach sank as he saw his mother lying face down, her hair stained with streaks of crimson. He dove to her side, kneeling in debris that poked his knees through his jeans. He held out a shaky hand to his mother’s head, reaching for the bloody clump of hair. Time stood still for a moment. His eyes could barely focus on her, his vision distorted by the flash, ears unable to pick up any sound as they throbbed. He could not even breath without choking on the soiled air.
                  He came to as his fingers met her skin, cold and clammy, slick with blood. He poked her injured head with a few fingers then let them slide down her face, smearing her life’s blood down her cheek. He grabbed her shoulders with both hands and shook her. His vision slowly returned and he heard someone screaming, screaming at his mother to get up. It was his own voice. He had not even realized he was making a sound. His cries left his head spinning and his lungs gasping for air; he sucked in only to choke and ended up lying next to his mother in a coughing fit. He hacked and gasped until a shadow came to rest upon him, a dark silhouette his eyes took too long to recognize as Mark. Strong hands clasped around his arms and suddenly he was upright. Mark’s face appeared inches from David’s, his jaw jumping up and down. Hot breath struck David’s chilled cheeks as Mark shouted something, but the words came to him from a great distance and meant nothing. He squinted, trying to decipher the message. Mark’s hands returned to David’s arms and shoved him forward, down the hall in the direction they had been heading before the blast. The hallway was buried under a mess of rubble; the paper was stripped off the wall. Ben was now on his back, the board a few feet from him. His shirt hung torn and his head lolled against a light fixture that had been knocked from the ceiling. Statuesque again, he did not move. He had been just behind their mother.
                  David stumbled as strong arms pushed him again farther down the hallway, the last few feet to the main door. Shards of glass glittered in the entryway, starkly beautiful against the wreckage. The metal frame that had encased the glass lay twisted among the shattered doors, a jagged hole all that remained of the once pristine entrance. David walked slowly over the glass, feeling it crunch beneath his tennis shoes. He walked out onto the cracked sidewalk and looked back inside. Mark was limping behind him with his two bags of food back in his fists, salvaged while David had been admiring the terrible glory of the wreckage. David’s was still inside, though the weight on his back told him he still had his backpack.
    Positioned just outside the door, he stood and watched Mark struggle. He wanted to help him but could not control his body. Everything seemed unreal. The air shimmered like a dream, and like in a dream, he had no conscious control over anything that happened. He knew he wanted to move, to go back into the crumbling building and pull his bloody brother out, pull his mother out, but his thoughts and his muscles were no longer on speaking terms. A statue himself now, he merely watched as Mark made his way over the glass. He tripped on a twisted frame that had once held an old photograph of the river the town was built around and fell to the ground. David stood motionless as something fell on his own head, like rain but dry and light. He held out his hand and watched as little black and brown pieces of his home bounced off his sweaty palm.