Firestone
2250 Words
I was just about to embark on my journey to ride the horse-drawn wagon from my house in Durham when I was approached by a couple of men that hailed me from a distance. When they first saw me, they scrutinised me from afar and was making sure they had gotten the right man before they began to approach me.
I had never seen those men before and they dressed up in workday clothes, unlike the miners. They had a satchel of some sort under one of their arms and were walking gingerly to me as they spoke in audible tones among themselves.
The men that were sauntering over were kidding their heads and I thought they were referring to any other men visible asides from me but I'm the only solitary one around in front of my house's yard.
I was a bit sceptical and a little offended by being looked down as a cripple ever since I had that accident before that crushed my left leg, resulting in the amputation just below the knee. There was a prosthetic wooden extension that somehow gave me support like as if I had a perfect pair of legs when I stand up.
Even the pants I was wearing could never hide the shape of the prosthetic wooden support when the wind blows the material around it, exposing its contours.
But the feeling was lost, as there was always an invisible scratch that I would inevitably reach out and scratch at the wooden prosthetic support around the ankles as if my left ankle still existed there.
Things never change the fact that I had lost my left leg due to being run over by a fully laden wagon some 2 years ago. It was really beyond my expectation when one of the coal mines blew up just as I was about to rein the horses and waiting for the last load of coals to be loaded up.
The incident happens within a split second. The moment the coal mine blew up, it sends a torrent of hot searing waves out from the mine's opening. The explosion was unknown but only one thing could be ascertained, no one working on that mine was alive.
Mine explosions could also be triggered when fine particles of coal dust come into contact with a source of heat. While methane was easier to ignite, the explosion pressure and heat value of methane were not as high as coal dust. In most cases, dust explosions were first caused by methane explosions.
The explosion happened deep inside the mines and it was caused by a miner's lamp that was exposed. The dust particles came in contact and created a chain of reaction within the mines. No one would have expected anything during that day because that mine had been operating for about a year without any single incident.
But God had His own planning that fateful day and the inevitable happened. The blast rocked the mine walls inside, literally burying anyone alive, entombed permanently. Those who were closer to the surface or about a mile away from the mine entrance were not lucky too.
When the explosion occurred, merciless hot searing waves like those being spewed from a volcano blasted out more than 100 miles an hour, just like a dragon's breath, devoured every breathing living souls and melted those who were petrified and stood their ground or tried to run.
Their bodies were simply blown away to bits as the dragon's breath spewed out from the depths of the mines, engulfing everything and everyone as it greedily gobbles up the oxygen within the depths of the mine.
There was no escape but only the explosion that finally escaped from the mine's entrance. Rocks, debris, pieces of human flesh and bones were spewed out from it like a raging furnace. Those who were 30 feet away could even feel the smouldering heat of the fiery explosion as it rocked the history of the mining town as its first recorded disaster ever.
The mining town was literally shaking on the ground as a great magnitude of tremors took over, seconds after the initial explosion. People and animals were badly shaken as people lost their footings and balance while the animals were literally spooked, including mine.
I was just about to sit and rest my feet on the footholds of the wagon and to reach for the reins when the horse that was tethered to my wagon spooked. It started to raise its front hoofs and jumped sideways, throwing the wagon off balance. I managed to only glance backwards and saw my only daughter was loading the last pungkis of coals into the wagon.
Red fiery flames shot out from the mine's entrance and the spooked horse threw me off balance from the top of the wagon. It was as if time stood still. I felt myself thrown off from the wagon like a rag doll. I wanted to reach out to my daughter as she was knocked back behind the wagon.
Everything was slow motion as I landed on the hard ground, headfirst and everything was blurry. There was no sense of sound or sight as my body bounded of several times in the ground and I felt that I was underneath the wagon halfway.
The spooked horse traversed sideways to the left and darted off with the riderless wagon. I saw a dark shadow looming over me when I felt excruciating pain on my left leg.
*CRRAACCKK*
*CRRAACCKK*
I heard a few snapping and cracking sounds and it was repeated once again as the wheels of the wagon ran over my left leg twice.
The pain... The agony... Was too much for me to take and my world turned black. When I came to, I found my left leg was badly mangled and I somehow knew that the left leg was a goner. I saw my only daughter was quarrelling with a man who was squatting before me and I saw my familiar coin pouch that was dangled on my waist was now on the man before me.
I saw my only daughter Farah was clinging on to the man and was hollering something when suddenly I was overcome with a blinding and searing white light. The next thing I know was the unearthly shrieks of the man before me and he was literally burning up as if he was affected by the fiery flames from the earlier explosion.
His clothes were on fire. The moment he screamed, it sounded like a bunch of banshees but only for a few moments as the flames engulfed his body, his face, mouth and hair. I saw his hair caught fire, his skin on his arms, and face were literally melting away like hot wax. I saw one of his eyes popped out from his eye socket and was soon engulfed by flames.
My daughter was only inches away from that man and I had a premonition that she was the cause of this. My daughter had just reached an Awakening and she was now accursed with an ability that she can't remove. She had then become — A WITCH...!
"Control your temper, my child. Run... Run as far as you can...!" my throat was dry and hoarse. It croaked like a toad calling for rain. My throat was parched from the wails the moment my leg was crushed by the wheels under the weight of the laden wagon.
I did not know why I croaked those words before but that was the only few last words I had with my only daughter who was barely 19 and was supposed to work together along with me as my personal assistant. She was self-taught at home to do simple accounts and was able to be of great assistance to me when loads of the coals were being brought to our buyers.
My only daughter crawled towards me and hugged me and I felt her shoulders shuddered. She did not know what had transpired when the man suddenly caught fire and melted before our very eyes. She had just taken a man's life and the penalty was death.
"Let me take the wrath instead and let my daughter be free." thoughts raced through my turbid mind as I embraced her for the last time and told her to make off from the place as soon as she can.
I had a last look at her, coal stained faced, streaks across her face like a run down mascara after she had cried her eyes out and her hair all messed up as she had lost her twine that secured her hair in a single ponytail. She looked literally wretched and seemed out of place.
She scampered off, talking to someone and then I saw her hid among the other horse-less wagons as she squatted near the wheels, hugging her knees close to her.
A man and a lady came running with a stretcher and whisked me away as during the rough handling when they shifted me to the stretcher, my world turned dark once again as I lost my consciousness. They saw the molten mass of flesh, bones and clothing on the ground and thought it was just another victim from the explosion.
It took me more than 4 months in recuperation to the condition where I am right now. They had to amputate my left leg because the injury was beyond repair. The femur was smashed to smithereens and that includes my kneecap as well.
The tendons were rendered useless as it was literally squashed under the weight of the laden wagon when the wheels rolled over me. I slowly recovered, both physically and emotionally and kept asking about the whereabouts of my daughter. But to this day, there was not even a sliver of news about her.
=*=
"Good morrow, man. May we ask, this kind soul before us, if you are Firestone, the foreman who supervises in the quarries of Durham about 2 years ago?"
I eyed the two men before me and I answered affirmatively. Everyone knows I was the foreman at the quarries before I had this accident and now I'm just a wagon driver that could not even lift any heavier load without losing my balance...!
"Good morrow laddies. Aye, I am da one called Firestone. What business do yew 'ave fer me, lads?" I greeted back to the two men that had sauntered over as a firm hand landed on top of my shoulder and remarked, "Come with us, old man. We have found your daughter and she is safe and sound."
I was totally speechless as I clasped my calloused hand my mouth as I had difficulty even to breathe. My shoulders heaved and shuddered as the vision before me got clouded and I nearly lost my balance. One of the men caught me and steadied me back on my leg.
"Let's get packing, we will assign someone to return this wagon back to its rightful owner. It is going to be a 60 mile 20-hour ride back." one the man who had caught me ushered me back to the house.
"How do you know..." my sentence was cut short when I wanted to ask the men how they know about the horse and wagon that doesn't even belong to me now. When I was a foreman, money was no issue. But now, as a wagon driver, I earned just a mere 3c a day, good for me to buy a loaf of bread to sustain myself for a single day with no extras for any savings.
"Aye, give me a few moments and I pack the necessaries. I don't have much, it's all inside the wooden chest. That's all I have right now."
"How did you know I was looking for my daughter? She was gone for 2 years already since the mining accident."
I asked, my eyes brimming with tears as I took my blanket, dumped my few worldly possessions inside it, along with some of my only daughter's personal items of 2 years ago and wrapped it up in a bundle.
I slung the bundle through my left arm and hobbled out from the house, taking a last look and ensuring I didn't leave anything valuable behind.
"Oh, we all knew it since your daughter herself had informed that the family was Firestone. It was fortunate that you didn't leave this town or else we would not be able to look for you at all."
One of the men spoke up and exchanged his opinions to me and all I could do was keep nodding my head and biting my lower lip as I hobbled with him a short distance away. There was a draught horse waiting with a wagon and I was supported off to ride in the passenger side.
"We will ride, make a short stopover, rest our horses and then make our way once again after the break of dawn. In God's Will, we would be there right after dusk the next day."
I can't help feeling a sense of elation washes over me as the anticipation and bottled emotions of seeing my daughter once again welled up within me.
My daughter... My one and only precious... Finally, we are going to be reunited...
=*=
Farah... Is that you?" my voice squeaked like a tiny mouse when I reached the entrance of a building that looked almost like a town hall.
- Writer
