Originally Posted by LiquidThunder
This is a fan-fic that I've been working on for a while, and though tot post part of it now. Its based in '46, and about a earthquake that occured, and its told by the eyes of a young child. I could have done this all in a one-shot, but I don't want to make it overwhelming to anyone who reads it.
Now this is diffrent from normal fan-fics, it dousn't have "cliff hangers" and whatnot, its just a straight story, but interesting to read nonetheless.
Enjoy!
Chapter 1
Do you remember the
the earthquake of '46? Do you remember how the chimney fell through the roof of the house and down through both
storeys(stories), which would have killed us all if this had not been on Sunday when the house was empty. Do you remember how the post office, which was the only brick building in the
enitre(entire) valley, collapsed in a heap of rubble where it had stood for twenty-three years, and how we were thrilled to think afterwards that it looked exactly as if it might have been bombed from the air?
And how the bells on the little Anglican church went chiming, and the electric poles whipped back and forth like fly-fishermen's rods, and electric wires trooped low like skipping ropes and snapped tight and clearly
sang, and how the earth came rolling up in waves and sent Cornelius Baxter's car out of control and up onto Millie Weston's porch?
Then you may also remember my uncle, Ned Desmond? Lived just down the road a ways from us in that little farm with the buttercup-yellow house? Well my Uncle Ned was the first one out in our part of the valley to install an electric fence. Power had come as far as Waterville just the year before none of us had become accustomed to its magic yet, nor learned to trust it. Ned went out that morning to pull the inaugural switch, and prepare himself to have a good laugh at the first cow to find out what it would mean from now one to stick her nose into a field where she wasn't wanted. Well, Ned pulled his switch and immediately the air began to hum, the world began to heave and roll, the trees began to dance and flop about and try to fly.
Two Guernseys dropped directly to their knees and started to bawl, a third went staggering sideways down the sloping earth and slammed into the cedar-shake wall of his barn. Chickens exploded out of their pen in a flurry of
squaking(squawking) feathers as if the jolt of electricity had somehow
jumpeda(jumped) connection and zapped them.
Naturally he thought that he and his fence were to blame for this upheaval but he could not make it stop by turning off his switch. Poor old Ned had never been so frightened, he started to curse and blubber, he hollered for Grace to get out and give him a hand. Never much of a man for religion, he promised God at the top of his lungs that he would abandon for his life-long fascination with modern inventions immediately. But God took far too long to think this offer over; by this time the earth's
convultions(convulsions) had settled, all of his cattle had fallen and poor Ned had wrapped himself around a fence post and begun to cry.
Now the scariest thing about quakes is that
thet(they) change the way a fellow looks at the world. You may also remember my other uncle, Tobias? Owned the little sawmill up at Comox Lake? Uncle Tobias drove down from his mill and hour after the quake had worn itself out and told us the entire lake had
empited(emptied) in from of his eyes.Truly! Right to the muddy bottom, he said he saw drowned tress and slime. Drained entirely down a crack which had opened up in the earth, and must have gone right out to the ocean somewhere, because it came back with tangled knots of golden-brown kelp and furious and bouquets of
brillant(brilliant) people anemones torn off the ocean floor and flung up onto the driftwood and shoreline trees and the sorting deck of Uncle Tobias's mill.
He was uneasy about going back to his awmill after that. Though the sound of the sound of the lake emptying all at once like water down a sucking drainpipe had horrible enough to haunt him for the next few years, it
woulld (would) not have the effect upon him of those remembered moments when he stood and watched the water returning to the empty lake leaking in at first, and spreading, then racing outwards across the mud, and swelling,
deeping(increasing depth), rising up the nearer slopes. He had no reason to believe it would know when to stop. By the time the first waves slapped against the pilings under the mill, he was in his truck with the motor running, yet later confessed that he knew he would not have the will to drive out there even if the water had kept on climbing up the pots and started out over the land. He would have just hang around to see what
hapened(happened) next.