Wrote this for English class junior year
A dark cloud rolls across the sun
Everything goes dark
The sun reappears, but not for long.
More black clouds of smoke
Roll across the sky
An earthquake thunders through the Earth's crust
A wave of heat ran through the Earth.
Ash and dust were forced into the sky
Then, suddenly,
Everything went black
The sundials were no use,
There was no way to tell the time
One moment it had been day,
Now it was right.
Smoke forced the city into blackness
It was blacker than any night.
Flames appeared
Shooting into the sky
Broad sheets of fire attacked the town
There was nothing anyone could do
The city was burning.
Ash was still raining down
Everywhere, white pumice thundered down,
Hitting people, throwing them to the ground
To say nothing of the violent tremors
Running through the Earth's veins
Molten lava shot in a fiery storm
Toward the black sky,
Carbon dioxide floated through the air
Unseen, colorless death
Red clay tiles from roofs
Death was the only thing to avoid know
It was like a shipwreck,
No one was stopping,
People were in a hurry,
They wanted to get home, get inside
Shelter!
But there was no shelter
Carbon dioxide come in with them,
Ash and dust seeped through the walls,
There was no escaping it.
Stones rained down from the sky
It wasn't just hail,
Death was at a much higher rate.
People were dying in the streets,
Calling for lost family members.
Many choked to death on he gases
Calling for their missing loved ones.
In a few seconds,
The town was gone, never to return,
It was over.
Fires still flamed
Libraries of scrolls had ruined by the fires
People were lying dead in their homes, on the streets,
Where they had fallen,
Buried in the ash
People had to fend for themselves
Many had died
They hadn't had the opportunity to escape.
Escape was near impossible.
Lightning flashed the sky,
Thunder rolled in the distance
A night, blacker than anything that had been seen,
Had descended upon a small sections of Europe
Elsewhere in the world,
People were going about their lives
Unknown to them,
People were dying in Italy.
The storm continued on through the night.
It was perpetual night
Never ending night,
The night continued
It didn't end
There was no end in sight
The fires were still burning
Ash, smoke and dust hung over the town
Burned, asphyxiated people lined the streets
Their bodies in an unrecognized state
Earthquakes thundered through,
Shifting the already precarious Earth
Buildings crashed to the ground,
Killing more.
The perpetual night,
Never seemed to end
The end was nowhere
No one knew when it was going to end
They only knew that right at the moment,
They were living through Hell on Earth.
They were living through the Fires of Hell
And they weren't even dead yet,
Through they might as well be,
Because how could the
Hell on Earth,
Compare to the real thing that had been haunting
Their brains for years,
The fires still burned,
Smoke, ash and dust slowly rose,
Revealing the extent of the damage
Shifting off the rest of the living.
Death was in the houses
Death was in the streets
Death was everywhere.
Pompeii.
A once prospering city on the Gulf of Naples
Was a city of the dead
A city that had been celebrating Vulcanalia,
The Festival of the Roman God of Fire,
Was now a monument to Pluto,
God of the Dead.
Pompeii had fallen into the Underworld
And into the hands of Pluto,
God of the Dead.
