I remember thinking it was snow. The delicate flurries fluttering to the ground, getting caught in my hair and on my clothes. “It’s a miracle!” I shouted, throwing my arms out and soaking it in. Snow, here, in California, perhaps the most exciting day ever. But it wasn’t snow. And it wasn’t something I should’ve been celebrating.
As it started falling harder I realized it wasn’t cold, or pure white, but rather the color of something in a black and white photo, something unreal. More came down and soon I was covered. Ash, a voice in my head told me, it’s ash. It hit me that it wasn’t thunder I had heard earlier. I watched it coat the acres of lush hills bury themselves in the healthy grass. The looming trees, which were all larger than any house within 100 miles, were also experiencing the weight of the infinite stream. I turned my head nostalgically toward my country house. With it’s peeling white paint and faulty shudders, it was where I’d spent my entire life. I silently mourned a thought, which had only blinked for an instant, telling me that the gray would ensure that my house would never look the same again. I started blinking harder as the seemingly endless shower fell into my eyes. I should go, a faraway voice commented, but I was paralyzed and the house seemed millions of miles away, I was stuck out in the open, exposed. Amid my tangled thoughts, which drifted loosely in my head, I had a startling revelation: this is going to take forever to get rid of. And I wasn’t just talking about the ash that seemed embedded in my hair and stuck to my clothes, I also meant the trees, hills, and garden that had clothes of their own now too.
We had been on watch because they said something like this could happen. It was probably in LA, my brain told me. It was probably terrorists, another part of my mind chimed in. Potential news headlines bulleted through my thoughts, “USA declares IV World War after a nuclear attack on LA.” “Officials say that the nuclear bomb is expected to have impacts that could possibly last indefinitely.” It all spun in a giant tornado in my mind and the bigger the tornado got the farther away it seemed to go and the more empty my mind seemed to become.
When I finally went back into my house the radio confirmed my fears. The IV World War had started, and the effects of the bomb lasted indefinitely. The war took all of 201 days and about 3 billion lives from all of the 58 UN Approved countries.
After the war the started I used to love and watch the rain. I loved watch it turn the ash into a silky stream which dripped from its host. Every time it rained there was a little less to wash away. Though, even after the war had ended I could still find it on bushes or flowers. It seemed like whenever I thought it was completely gone I’d find a hidden cluster of black and white snow. It was like it never completely went away. But I guess all wars are like that. They leave scars that never fully heal.
Sometimes, when I think about that day, I wonder about what would’ve happened if it hadn’t rained ash that fateful day in April. Then I think to myself about how someday in the future, another young girl is probably going to have to face the reality of her world temporarily becoming gray.