Breaking News

Breaking News
By Stephen A Abell

Number of Words: 299

The scream shook the very foundation of the house.

Down in the main room, the party people ceased their incessant chatter about matters prosaic. Their heads pivoted toward the stairs. A myriad of feelings from concern to irritation, amusement to irascibility, painted their countenances.

The second scream motivated the concerned and curious to movement. The former rushing forward, uncaring of whatever danger may await. While the latter held back; no need to put oneself into harms way.

Hushed Chinese whispers played around the party people; rumours and accusations passed from sigh to sigh.

On the median step the woman paused as her fledgling daughter’s voice cried out piteously for her. Something in the exclamation put haste in the mothers step, urging her up the stairs, two at once.

As she made good her ascent, she turned and purposefully strode to her daughter’s sealed room. Without hesitation she pushed through the door. Her voice ceased its progression to the lips as she saw her daughter hunched over at the end of her bed. Her shoulders shook with heavy sobs.

“Dad,” was the only utterance she gave as her finger gestured to the aftermath on the screen.

Blue-grey smoke clouded the street; metal and wood were rended apart and twisted into abstracts of nightmarish reality. In the centre of the street, a reporter stood agog; distress seeped through his pores to enshroud him. “I... I...” he stammered. “I don’t know where to start...” His eyes twitched and darted in every direction; his head slow to follow. “I was only here for the race... It should’ve just been a race...”

A tear trickled down the wife’s face as her skin prickled and her hair stood on end.

Downstairs, the party people discontinued their diatribe as the television was powered up into life.

For the "Daily Flash Fiction Challenge"   by Arakun the twisted raccoon

For Boston and it’s people, the runners, the first responders - my wishes are with you.

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