JANET

Wood, dust, and debris rained down from all directions, and Booker felt scolding hot air pummeling his skin. He was tumbling downward toward a hole in the floor of his father’s office right where the coffee table had been. For a moment, he was weightless, then he crashed onto the floor of the kitchen below, his shoulder slamming into what was left of the kitchen island on the way down.

Pain shot through his entire body, and his ears were ringing. Holding his arms tight over his head, he felt debris falling on top of him from the office above, slowly burying him in the center of the kitchen.

As fast as it had all happened, it stopped. He heard the last few things tumbling down from the second floor, as well as the hiss of dust falling from the ceiling above. He slowly started pushing debris away from his body. There were books and papers, pieces of wood flooring and furniture, shards of glass, and something that looked like the wing of a ceiling fan strewn around him. Above him was a gaping hole in the kitchen ceiling. He could see faint stars in the dark sky through the hole in the roof of his father’s office above.

The lights in the kitchen came back to life but flickered on and off. He saw a lamp dangling from the hole above him, swaying from the cord still plugged in upstairs. Smoke curled downward from the hole in the ceiling, slowly filling the room. He coughed, waving it away from his face. Fire was building somewhere in the house.

“Joanna! Can you hear me?” he yelled, coughing profusely. Looking around, he saw the kitchen was completely destroyed. The island’s countertop had shattered, causing granite shrapnel to shred through the whole first floor. Cabinets, windows, and the refrigerator had all taken the brunt of the force. Water was spouting from the cracked pipes under the sink.

He slowly stood on shaking legs and called out for Joanna again. Thinking she must be buried somewhere nearby, he started digging feverishly.

After pulling up a large wood beam, he saw a faint blue glow emanating from underneath the wreckage in the center of the kitchen. As he pulled more things away, he quickly uncovered what looked like a shiny, metal sphere. It was about the size of a basketball with no markings on it whatsoever. However, as Booker continued pulling things away, he saw that not a single piece of wood or metal or even dust was touching the sphere.

It was floating in its own untouchable bubble somehow. When the top was completely exposed, Booker stood back and watched if float by means of some invisible force. It made no sound, but there was a faint blue light emanating from it. The blue light pulsed like a heartbeat.

He couldn’t see the source of the light. It was as though it was just emanating straight from the metal somehow. He reached out to touch the sphere but couldn’t. The harder he strained his fingers to reach the metal surface, the harder the air around it became. It was like an invisible force field was pushing him away from the surface.

He stepped back, rubbing his hand and watching the sphere in awe, when the blue light faded, and it dropped into the debris with a soft clang.

He was about to reach out and touch it again when he heard a coughing sound somewhere above. Smoke was now billowing down from the second floor.

He waded through the wreckage of the first floor to the stairway and took the steps two at a time. Almost the entire second floor had been blasted away, revealing the starry night sky above. The door to his father’s office and most of the wall around it were gone, but a huge wooden beam from the ceiling had fallen in the doorway. Joanna was trapped under it.

He could see her pushing in vain, trying to lift the beam off her chest. On the other side of the door, what remained of the office walls were on fire. The window curtains were ablaze and the drywall around the room was already starting to crack as flames shot through the bones of the house.

Booker seized the beam pinning Joanna to the floor and lifted with all his might, but it was no good. They were both coughing as thick clouds of smoke swirled around them. Booker tried one more time to lift the beam, but to no avail. Running his hands through his hair, he wheeled around, looking for something he could use for leverage. He ran down the hall to what remained of his bedroom and started throwing things out of his closet, digging through his clothes and possessions to find something - anything - that could help. He finally found it; an old aluminum baseball bat. It wasn't much, but it was worth a shot.

He ran back to where Joanna lay under the beam, flames now licking the walls around her. Her eyes were streaming, and it looked like she could barely breathe through the smoke. Booker shoved the bat under one side of the beam and pushed upward with every ounce of strength he possessed. For a split second, he thought it wouldn’t work, but the beam rose just a fraction of an inch. His whole body shaking, he doubled his effort, pushing all his weight against the handle of the bat, forcing the beam up just a little more.

Beneath him, Joanna was wiggling free, but she could only go deeper into the room, not out into the hallway. She didn’t hesitate, and it was a close thing. Just as she managed to slip herself free from under the beam, the aluminum bat bent slightly, then completely folded. The wood beam crashed down again, cutting off access into the hall from the office.

Booker couldn’t stand there any longer. He ran back down the hallway to the stairs. The smoke had come full circle and was now billowing back upward through the stairwell. He ran in the opposite direction to his father’s room. There was a balcony overlooking Ocean Front in that room. He could jump down to safety.

As he reached the balcony, the sights and sounds of fire engines and police were already nearby. He waved his arms over his head as the first fire truck squeezed its way down the thin street. It stopped right in front of the balcony so Booker could jump down onto the roof and climb down to the street.

As soon as his feet hit the pavement, he ran to the front door of the house and wrenched it open. Ignoring the shouts from the fireman behind him, he dove into the wave of gray smoke flooding through the open door. He called for Joanna, but there was no answer. He made his way to the kitchen where she must have fallen and tried to see through the gloom. He couldn’t see her, so he started digging through the debris in the center of the kitchen again.

Coughing through the thick smoke, he realized that, not only was Joanna nowhere to be found, the sphere was gone as well. He crawled through the wreckage, scraping his hands and knees, and tried to find the sphere but it was definitely gone.

He would have stayed there too, if a fireman hadn’t grabbed him from behind and pulled him from the house. Outside, a small army of rescue workers were already unfurling hoses, climbing ladders, and fighting the flames bursting from the top of the house. Booker tried telling them that Joanna was still in there, but no one listened. He was left to one side as the firefighters and police went to work. All the neighbors were outside now, pulling their bathrobes tight and gazing up at the burning wreckage of what used to be Booker’s home.