If They Only Knew

A canopy of black smoke covers the sky. I can hear people shouting and screaming in every direction. A low and deep rumble shakes the ancient ground my house is built upon. "Come on!" I shout, "We need to get out of here!" Balls of smoldering rock and pumice were being hurled at us, and bright yellow lightning cracked within the ever-growing cloud of ash. "We need to get to higher ground!" I yell while running. The charcoal-like cloud was beginning to spread out across the sky, darkening the sun and replacing it with a forecast of falling embers. 

At first, the powder fell lightly. But as each new hour passed it rained down harder on us. The air soon changed, becoming thick and dense. It was hard to breathe. We found refuge in a tall sturdy structure, with a tile roof like snakeskin and four marble pillars at the edifice's facade. There we sat, anxiously, through the rest of the day and the night that followed. We were all huddled in a corner, passing time by watching small bits of ash find their way through the roof whenever a small tremor shook the earth. Every now and then we could hear the roof creak and groan underneath the weight of the ash piled on top. After a while it began to sag, stretching the wooden rafters to their breaking point. 

"Move!" I shouted, saving three very confused people from an untimely death. "Great," I mumbled, "Time to find a new shelter." It was now the late hours of the night, and the sun could barely be seen peeking over the mountain range in the distance. A dense blanket of ash covered everything in a dull gray. The air was still, but unclean. It was so bad, I had to cover my mouth and nose with my tunic. I advised my friends to do the same. Next, we ran to the nearest building, which happened to be the only one left standing as far as the eye could see. It was squat, with several windows, one door at the front, and a sturdy flat roof. All four of us had to use all our strength to burst through the front door on account of it being barricaded from the inside with a sticky glob of cinders.

 We had just begun to settle in when we all heard an explosion in the distance, almost like cannon-fire. We all glanced at each other in amazement, but it quickly turned to worry. We all wondered what could have caused the deafening boom. Several minutes later, an even louder boom was heard, followed by a rumble that gradually sounded heavier, and heavier, like thunder. This was frightening to the four of us and caused my best friend Claudia to burst into tears. "I knew it!" She screamed, "I knew that it would end this way! We're all going to die right here!" I desperately tried to think of something else. I couldn't. The rumbling got louder. It wasn't long before the air was filled with a cacophonous racket that was so unbearable I had to plug my ears. I grabbed a nearby blanket and covered myself with it. It was the only way to escape the chaos that surrounded me and my three friends.

 All of a sudden, a searing cloud of ash and toxic gas surged through the windows and door of our hideaway. I heard all of my friends coughing, gagging, gasping for air in a cloud of smothering darkness. One by one each of them fell silent, while the rage of the burning smog had cleared. I stuck half of my face out from underneath the blanket and was horrified at what I saw.

 Each of my friends were trapped in a cast of wet dust and embers, frozen in their last moments of agony and terror like a marble statue. They had breathed in the toxic cloud and the ash had cemented their lungs, causing them to suffocate; a long and painful death. I was so appalled that I didn't realize I was up to my neck in ash. There I was, sitting in the floor of that building. Alone. I realized it too soon. A town with 20,000 inhabitants, almost entirely wiped out. There wasn't a single person as far as the eye could see. It was just me.

 If the Romans had only known that their wonderful, fertile, crop-growing mountain was really a dormant volcano. That Vesuvius. That devilish peak. That precipice of suffering and destruction. Only if. But now it was just me. One of the few victims spared from the fate of Pompeii.