Atomic Dreams(Aman) I was weeping, begging for this terror to end. My family whispered their last words to me and then the second explosion hit, “BOOM”! This was the moment that changed everything in my life, and it was horrible. It was about 1:30 in the afternoon, I was testing out this recipe for a sweet and sour pork bowl after seeing my mom make some yesterday. It made me jealous to see my mother cook, so I had to try out the recipe.

My sister was sitting on the couch and she was making fun of my cooking with an irritating voice that she thought was similar to mine. I started to turn on the stove for the bok choy and the onions, while my sister was bickering in the back. I turned the stove on but the gas didn’t catch fire, so I had to get a lighter. I think my Mom saw my action because when I tried to reach in the pantry she said, “Cosmo you're only 13, let the adults deal with the fire.” This made me feel like a baby that just learned to use his hands.

When my mom reached to get the lighter, I started to feel the ground shake. My sister got up and ran to my mom screaming, “What’s happening?” I knew this had to be an earthquake, so I ran under a table as I saw this in my survival guide book. The shaking got drastically worse every second. I hid under our wooden table. Right when the shaking stopped there was the brightest flash in the world! I got up and looked out of the window and saw a huge flash. Then something else happened……. The Hugest orange light appeared beside it!

I heard the loudest bang, it was so loud that all the glass shattered and huge blodges of dust and rocks flew in. Then, over the horizon I saw a wave of materials like trees and bricks flying.
They were flattening and destroying everything in sight. I thought it was a tsunami but I couldn't see any water.

My mom and sister were crying out my name, but I was practically deaf. That loud bang made my ears lose all my hearing. The weird wave of materials moved at the speed of light, and by the time I blinked it was in front of me. I thought Godzilla had actually existed, but I didn't have time to think or talk about that. I ducked so fast that my legs just cracked; so I fell hard. Once the weird wave hit I saw the roof crack, everything was cracking but I forgot one thing, MY FAMILY!

I looked in their direction, and once my eyes had cleared to see them, the roof crumbled and fell on them. I fainted and I was left for dead until I got up. I saw dust everywhere but I saw a body, wait it was two bodies with their hands sticking out of the rubble. My mother and sister were in pain and my legs were too. The adrenaline had numbed the rest of my body because I had a steel rod deep in my stomach, but I felt no pain.

I crawled my way to my family and called out to them. My mom had the most calm voice, and my sister never talked because she was gasping for air. My mom whispered, “Run cosmo go somewhere safe”. I was weeping, begging for this terror to end. My family whispered their last words to me and then the second explosion hit, “BOOM”! I knew exactly what to do so I crawled under the same window I hid in for the first explosion and waited. The second shockwave had hit and a rock came flying and hit me in my head, everything went blank.

I woke up to screams from people running out of their houses. I got up with blood dripping from the metal rod in my stomach and from my head. I looked outside and saw a van. A man yelled and pointed at me, then some guys helped me up and put me in the back of the van. That was the third time I passed out. I woke up in a room with a bed shaped like a glossy red car, there was this woman who yelled, “He’s awake!”. There were a lot of people looking at me. One lady said, “Welcome to the John’s Loving Orphan home. This will be where you live until people adopt you.”

Great I said in an infuriated tone. Now I am an orphan. I got up from my bed and unplugged a IV from me, and ran to the door. Before I reached the door I had a chilling and traumatic thought of when my mom told me to “go”. Instead I tried to imagine what kind of friends I would make in order to change my thoughts and make me happy. This was what the rest of my life would be like, I thought. Hiding my trauma from myself by thinking of what makes me happy, this was going to be hard.

---