Day 509

There's something about flood water specifically that changes a room like nothing else can.
That green slime sticking to every cherished surface, that dank stench, that lingering shudder
it leaves behind as if to remind you that yes, it was there and yes, can come back just as suddenly.

I remember going to my great aunt's house in Muchelney after the water's had receded.
She'd been cut off for over a week, alongside the rest of the parishioners in the small village.
Most of the people in the area had been evacuated by helicopter or boat but we were so unprepared.

The radio had been saying that it would be the worst flood since the 1900's and still we weren't
expecting the riverbanks to just erupt as they did, consuming roads and towns alike.
My great aunt and the others fled to the church and stayed in the main hall, barely above the waters.

When it had all died down we were left to pick up the pieces and look for the missing.
There were so many missing - over half the small area's population just gone.
We started inside the homes, where people would have gotten trapped against walls or windows.

I'd volunteered with many others to go searching inside the unstable homes.
The first home we searched was my great aunt's of course, she insisted.
The flood waters had taken almost everything inside, leaving little more than slime and sewage.

We found the first of the missing there, in her attic.
They'd tried to claw their way out when the water's rose higher than the building itself.
As we pried their arms out of the gouges they'd dug into the roof, I swear they blinked.