The Big Boom [re-writing]

10:00 am [updated]

UPDATE// Hello, just poppin' in again!

I didn't expect ANY more people to still read my story The Big Boom to this day, so as the self-[overly]criticizing writer I am, I decided to revamp my entire story altogether to gloss over everything I found 'cringeworthy' to me.

EVERYTHING WILL STILL (KINDA) SORT OF BE THE SAME. But there will be a bunch of newer, and hopefully better, elements to it.

It's crazy to find new ppl still adding this story of mine to their reading lists, so I just wanted to make sure it's of better quality for anyone else in the future to read it. Thank you so much, guys.

I really hope you all continue to enjoy it <3

/////

It was like one of those photographs.

There would be a single subject in focus with everything else a blur, like the vignette of the picture was a time lapse speeding up a thousand times faster than the center of it all that everybody's eyes stopped to stare. I wondered if you felt like that.

I shut my eyes so tight I couldn't see the light that shone through the red of my eyelids and tried to imagine a space in time where everything was moving, pushing and pulling around me, while I laid back motionless for the wild tides and seasonal monsoons to take me in, chin up, breathing in deeply. I waited to hear the boom.

I tried to imagine all that noise ringing in my ears, all those voices of the people around me echoing back and forth so many times that they all merged into one. Until the sounds they made became the words my thoughts mouthed. I tried again to envision myself as an avalanche that tumbled down a slope so shallow it didn't feel like I was heading right to the ground until I crumbled apart at the bottom, so all the teachers who taught lessons about physics and potential and kinetic energy would say that I should've seen it coming. I tried imagining all of that to the extent of my mindset, but I couldn't because it was all you. It was just you.

I opened my eyes.

It was a bright, cloudy day out with some jet streaks blemishing the sky. I cursed at the luck that it should have been raining today. It should have been you agreeing with me that it should have been pouring. I looked around. About fifteen people were left here, including your parents, all surrounding the ground they placed you down in an hour ago.

I stayed stock still, cold despite the sun, and couldn't imagine the weight of my own mind controlling me, no matter how many times you've told me you couldn't keep them away and the number of times you've tried to make me understand.

I was just so sugarcoated with this lack of understanding right now, okay, so I'm trying so hard at this very moment to not let myself melt under this perfect, perfect weather and this beautiful atmosphere for the single benefit of trying to understand you.

"You can go home now."

I turned.

It was your cousin Harley. I could see her gray roots peeking through as a vertical stripe up her tight parting, her red baby hairs haloing them.

I said, "Home?"

"Do you live far from here?"

I shook my head. A lie. It was a truth that you've always been so far from me.

I pulled my eyes away from the woman who we both used to call your Nanny McPhee. Because we used to think she looked so young and so ugly. I looked back.

She had fine skin, elderly features that contradicted her true age, thick brows, and pinched lips, but she looked like me and you and everyone else standing nearby.