The thunder was so loud, it just must have claimed a life this time. Not only did I wake up immediately but for split second I thought the world had finally ceased to be. My country doesn't feel like mine with it does this. This tropical rain. I sat up, wrapped in my blanket, spring tight, eyes fixated on the sepia background that seemed glued to the other side of the window glass. Two of my three windows were wide open but the rain was completely silent. I wouldn't have believed it even rained if I hadn't heard the sky crack. I must have sat there not for longer than ten minutes before I heard the light turn at the bottom of the stairs followed by determined footsteps in my direction. I curled up tighter in my blanket and pouted to let my approaching mother know, that she had made a very precise decision, coming up to check on me. She put each window on their first hatch, leaving them merely open by an inch or two. Dad had been up to get some water, she said, nearly spilled it all. It's odd, I said, I thought I died. The cowl covered gangster that for the moment was my mother, shifted into the other room. With a shaken voice she called me in there to come look out the Eastern window. I was certain she must have seen a dozen toasted corpses on the road, but it wasn't so. It was the sun. It hung just above the rooftops spitting op in front of the horizon, it hung like a blood red lump in the sky. It was never less majestic than now. Pathetic excuse for a celestial object. I think my mother left me to my doom again because she didn't reply when I asked her, if she'd ever seen something like that before. The blue light from my screen makes the sky look green which doesn't help it in looking at all less eerie. Suddenly all the muscles in my body tense up. This time I saw the lightning flash and I can't do anything but hold my breath. I count too fast inside my head and get the location all wrong when then the ear-tearing thunder hits. In the meantime I had given up on the red sun, my helpless hero, and had returned to my bed. What was so strange about this second lightning is that it had stopped raining. It came from an empty place. And a good twenty time units after the crack, the rain started pouring again like was it the last chance of survival. The East going road is flooded now and the sun has restored some of its power, so much that I can't stare directly at it anymore and must content myself with its reflection in the street. Its orange light in the green sky, an other massive growl of thunder. It will be safer for me to just stay inside. I think something is broken.
