The jingle sounds off from the little speaker on the phone. Flash of red on the screen. It takes forever. Pete is in a daze, the shard of glass in his leg keeping him somewhere between conscious and comatose.

There’s a sloshing noise, massive. Water licks at my feet. Mandy’s right shoe swims off. The car lurches off under a surge of murky sewage, I scramble away, imagining myself tied to the steering wheel.

The house is going to come down. We can all see it happening before it even starts. A ton of mud migrates into the highway-gone-river and exposes the foundation of the house. Creaking. Something snaps, a block of concrete the size of my bedroom breaks off. The rest follows.

Mandy’s mouth slips open loosely. I wonder if this would be less frightening with cinematic letterbox bars on top and bottom of my vision.

I turn back to my phone in just enough time to remember why it was off to begin with. The battery icon blinks, blinks, blinks, and dies. I wipe the blood from the screen and swallow.

Originally on Ficly: http://ficly.com/stories/17921

Still working on that short story, that website, that book, that comic, and that other comic… Keep an eye out for all my stuff.