Spaced Out

Ladies & Gentlemen, This Is A Flying Saucer

The sky over the lake burned orange.

On the back porch, Lily trembled. Heart jack hammered her breast bone. A moist tongue swept over dry lips. Aluminum mesh screening in the camp's rear deck separated her from flames that licked the pier. Ember-flecked smoke floated heavenward in a bonsai shaped cloud. Intense heat buffeted her cheeks and chest. Mind raced.

Get up. Get up. Get. Up!

Hands slapped onto a bed of jagged shards from the shattered windows. A bit of glass stabbed Lily's left palm. She hissed as she inspected it. On a count of three she yanked the fragment out then positioned her hands and knees carefully on the glittering mess and pushed up.

Blood pooled around the wound in her palm. Going lightheaded, she squeezed her injured hand. She backed into the camp, away from the flames and smoke. Cool shadows swallowed her.

With the wreckage out of sight, Lily's shock faded. Burning pain pulsed her left hand in time with her fluttering heart. She tore into the kitchen. All the fishing and barbequing and jet-skiing her family did here caused endless cuts, scrapes, and burns. First aid kits were tucked in the corners of every room. She found one of the metal supply chests under the sink.

The kit hit the counter with a loud clank. Lily tore a few paper towels from a roll next to her groceries and balled them. While she pressed the coarse wad of paper to her wound, she flipped open the kit then grabbed the ancient phone fixed to the wall. She punched in nine-one-one and pawed through the kit's contents. Someone else had to have seen or heard the crash. The phone at the nearest police station probably jumped in its cradle.

Or not.

The phone sandwiched between her shoulder and ear was dead. There was no ring tone. No dial tone. While she mummified her sterilized palm in bandages and half a roll of medical tape, she clicked the hook tab and hollered into the transmitter for someone, anyone, to pick up. No one did. With the head of the receiver, she beat the wall mounted cradle.

"Shit, shit, shit!"

Each time she struck the cradle she shouted. The plastic case housing the device's guts finally split. Another loud crack punctuated the phone's destruction. Dust and a smattering of rubble dropped onto her head. She glanced up. The roof split too. She'd canted up her head as a big chunk of the ceiling broke away.

Darting back, Lily dodged a hail of plaster, charred wood, and shingles that caved from the ceiling. The meteor must have skimmed the roof before it crashed. A zig-zaggy crack spider veined from the new hole above her. The jagged line crept towards the front and the back porch. Debris rained from the growing fissure. The whole place was about to come down on her head.

With no time to collect any of her stuff, Lily pelted through the kitchen and up the narrow hallway to the front room. The ceiling crack chased her. Smoke hazed her surroundings. Polluted air tickled the back of her throat and scorched her lungs. A step away from the front room, the roof collapsed.

The ceiling caved inches away from Lily. Blackened and flaming wood, boxes and equipment from the attic above, toppled on each other. A squall of embers, like a cloud of angry horseflies, tornadoed around her. Crossed arms shielded her face. Bits of fiery ash singed the hairs dusting her limbs. The camp groaned. What remained of the ceiling creaked a rusty-hinge creak. A great, jagged, puzzle piece of sheet rock overhead started breaking away.