He looked up again to the sky, felt the rain on his face, maybe for the last time. The cloud hung above them now. Thick, black as hell. Was that a gaping mouth embedded in its core? His imagination ran away, on fire from the fear, the curiosity and from facing the knowledge that in the next few seconds he most likely would die.

“Be my guest,” said William, opening to the bookmarked page as he stepped forward and handed it to her, placing it in her hand as if bestowing an award.

She gave him a triumphant smile. He nodded toward the book, as if to say, read it. His focus didn’t shift from the green cover as one hand rose to open the pages.

Then he smiled and waited, because he’d done everything he could and now it was out of his control and in fate’s hands.

For a moment she looked down and he saw her chest contract in a sharp intake of air as she picked up the note he’d written so carefully before placing it inside the diary.

“What does this mean? What have you done?”

He thought he saw green, white and yellow sparks fly; that they exploded from her eyes, her head, her hands, but everything happened so quickly, within a split second that he was sure of nothing. His brain had no time to process the image only a few feet from him.

Weeks later those moments would remain a blur. Every time he tried to recall them, they slipped into a time-lapse movement of his surroundings as if someone had flicked a light on and off. Until later when they came to haunt him day after day, night after night.

What he imagined and what was the true reality, he’d never know.

The unexpected flare of brilliant white blinded him as the intensity of the explosion threw him to the ground. He thought he saw fire but his faculties had been sent into a spin with the impact. The graves, the grass, the sky and black clouds shook as though he was trapped inside a glass container and a giant had slapped the surface. The earth trembled from the force and caused him to imagine at any second, he would fall into a chasm and be crushed.

He tried to rise but he had nothing left inside. His breath, knocked from him as he fell, left him depleted of oxygen. He dragged at the air in ragged gasps; a fish out of water, straining to refill its lungs.

As though nature’s sound and visual department had awaited its cue, a flash akin to a thousand light bulbs, and a roar like a jet, exploded around them for a second time.

William reached with both hands to cover his head, instinctively curling into a fetal position for protection. He wasn’t sure which terrified him more. The light, the sound or that he couldn’t move a muscle. His mind fumbled at this as if it was the most important question in the world, until the pain of a hundred million needles piercing his skin in a split second, wiped any thoughts from his brain.