Tuesday, November 1, 2011

It was a dark and stormy night...

The sky was without its usual brightness, being covered from the stars and the moon by the dark thunderstorms of midnight. Rain pattered heavily upon the pavement, and every so often the world became illuminated suddenly by a flash of lightning, only to fade into darkness once again a split second later.

One particular boy was spending his evening at home, safely sheltered from the weather. As the sound of the storm raged on outside, he stretched out on the couch and turned on the TV. It was a badminton match, and apparently, Lee Chong Wei was winning.

Then, lightning struck, lighting up the skies with a light much brighter than usual. Again, and again, the sky flashed with light from the clouds, and suddenly, the boy found himself sitting in darkness. The lights went out all at once, and his TV was very rudely interrupted when it blacked out. Before he realised what was going on, the thunder arrived. As he covered his ears, his entire conciousness was engulfed in the boom of the thunder, the terrible noise which sounded as if someone was ripping the sky in half. It rolled on and on and on... and then...
Silence.

The boy slowly got up, but the only difference this made was that he was now standing in darkness instead of sitting.
But the terror wasn't over yet. The boy began to notice  that over the continuous drone of the rain, there was another noise on the edge of hearing. It was a soft and slow crumbling sound, which sent shivers down his spine. It sounded like the edge of a cliff slowly being parted from the rock, and would soon tumble downwards to a loud crash against the ocean. As he listened, the tiny sound grew louder and louder, until...
BOOM

The whole thing, from the strike of lightning to the final boom, took about fifteen seconds.

The next day, the boy's father stepped outside and found that the garden wall had fallen flat on the ground.

*******************

Happy Halloween, people! Although most or all of you don't celebrate Halloween, and neither do I, but at least I can still commemarate it with an over-dramatic blog post.

A lot of the above passage is made up. It was not dark nor stormy, and there wasn't a power blackout. The bit about Lee Chong Wei was real though. And there was a loud Boom from when the wall fell, although I didn't notice it. And anyway, it didn't even take place on Halloween, it was on the 29th.

Its rather strange, really. It wasn't even raining. In fact, it was a rather clear night. So what could have caused the wall to collapse like that? It wasn't just a case of old bricks crumbling to bits and leaving the rest of the wall without support. The whole wall, as one piece, fell in the same direction and as I type this it is lying on the grass outside, not as a heap of rock but as a distinguishable wall.
Imagine building a miniature wall out of LEGOs, and toppling it over. That's what the wall looks like.

I've taken a few pictures of the now-fallen wall on my handphone, and those of you who know a bit about my backyard will recognise this place and the aforementioned wall.

See that large area of green in front of the potted plants? That's not tall grass, nor is it a path of some sort.
That's a wall covered in leaves, resting ninety degrees from its originally intended position.


It looks a bit more like a wall from this angle. See the archway on the left? The whole wall topples down, and the archway remains intact. Weird?

Of the whole wall, this is the only bit where the bricks broke. The rest of the wall is still in one piece.
The wall appears to still be in good shape, considering that it didn't break to bits when it fell. So what could have caused it to topple in that way? Probably an earthquake a few hundred miles away.
Or perhaps it was done by early Halloween ghosts?

Nah... of course not...

To lighten the mood, here's a picture of my baby sister pushing a tricycle:

"Yeah, the battery's dead. I'm just gonna wheel it to the nearest garage; they'll know what to do."

No comments:

Post a Comment