Artemmm!” I heard the desperation in the scream from my pensioner neighbor and flung myself up the stairs to the roof. Bursting through the door, there she was, petrified and pointing up Shaftsbury Avenue. My eyes followed her finger until I saw what she saw.
“My god!”
A whale of a boat was sailing—no, floating—down Oxford Street!
It was 20 meters high with a pristine white hull and unfurled sails taller than the London Eye!
“Marvelous!” I yelled as the gigantic beast filled me with a child’s wonder. And I wasn’t alone. Flecks of moving color dotted every rooftop between me and the beast as others scrambled for similar views.
Then the behemoth spoke; a bellowing, drawn out, baritone groan from deep within its welded bowels. Under water, I reasoned, it’d be indistinguishable from whale song.
“Magnificent!”
But the beautiful rumbling faded as the boat slowed, coming to a grinding, churning stop and a coinciding boom. I was jolted back and gripped the soot covered rail for balance. Confounded, I imagined it’d struck an imaginary wall because nothing was in its path save cars underfoot. Cars it floated over by several meters, however.
A chunky clickitty-clack of metal soon followed. Three massive panels on its deck opened and my wonderment was enveloped by worry as gargantuan, hook-tipped spear mounts arose from its depths. Panic itched my neck. Each spear was the size of a Vauxhall Corse and every moment they climbed higher.
My childhood imagination struggled to conceive of anything good coming next. A litany of bad outcomes started ticking down an imaginary list, each worse than the one before.
Then the clanking ceased. The spears began rotating. A smooth metallic sound of oiled bearings rang—christ, they’re pointed right at me! Terror arrived full force.
FOOP! FOOP! FOOP!
The spears exploded out of their launchers high over shops and theaters in a chain linked arc, hurtling directly towards Soho Square and my council flat conversion. To my shock-induced mind, the wispy sound of the steel cutting through the air seemed dreamy. How does one escape an attack from a floating frigate?
Nearby screams jarred me from my befuddled paralysis. It was too late for my neighbor, though. The first spear, only a few hundred yards away, hit just as she leapt towards her door.
KABOOM!
Its hook pierced the center of her rooftop greenhouse and drove straight through two floors of centuries old brick. The blast obliterated the glass canopy and sent furniture and stone exploding into the air. I was knocked on my back, giving me orchestra seats to spears two and three with just enough time to thank god for their lower arcs and a few seconds to indulge a ridiculous belief I might survive. Then they hit their targets with a thunderclap.
Two thousand kilos of metal tore through our ground floor so hard the shockwave ripped up the building and sent me flying into the air. Weightless, I could see Miss Culpatrick’s boxed-planted zinnias. They shot across the square at the speed of a bullet thanks to the third spear hitting the bullseye that was her penthouse suite.
My weightlessness quickly ended. I fell with a painful drop to my ass onto hand cut bricks upon which I’d enjoyed many an afterwork pint. But the ole’ gal that was my home was still standing. It creaked with an old man’s bemoaning but held strong. I shouted and pumped my fist, “We survived the blitz!”
It answered my defiance with ominous mechanized clanks.
I collected my bruised tush and grabbed the rail to peer over. The massive spears were connected to monstrous chains leading right back to their master.
“No, no, no, no, no!”
The building whimpered, resisting each successive tightening. Escape route options raced to mind. Alley dumpster? Legs broken, ankles for sure…debris risk. Next building over? Five meter jump. 50/50 shot. Good enough. I backed up and readied myself.
But the monster sensed my escape, belched and called back its children. The building rocked and I knew the chains were taught. It was now or never. I dashed towards the edge as the behemoth chains heaved and the spear tips decimated the building’s spine. I pawed at the air, racing to the edge, while the floor started to collapse beneath me.
Mere meters away from escape I felt my feet shuffling over shifting brick as the building’s back cracked. Almost there…
CRACK! The spearhead jerked backwards, ripping out the support column and blowing the entire front face of the building falling towards the street. I left my body and watched myself scream from bass to baritone to soprano.
My feet hit the lip of the roof railing as the building fell forward over the street. I lamented my body would be found splattered amidst the cheap dresses of the soon to be destroyed Kendrick’s Bridal and Bows.
But…hurtling towards death time does move slower.
It might be possible, I thought. The arc felt right and the building was half the height.
My heart raced while I worked it out, ignoring the morbid sensation to look over my shoulder to watch the floor become the ceiling. Bracing my weight, I leapt once then with a big kickoff, twice!
FABOOM!
The concussive blast of my ten year home, carpet bombing the bridal shop, shot its roof into the air. The concrete rushed up in a wave, meeting my flesh moving at 60 kph. It was a pyroclastic cloud of concrete micro bullets that lacerated every inch of me.
Remnants of the lawn chair belonging to Mr. Tomlinson, the bridal shop’s sole resident, and his indispensable cooler were the final projectiles to welcome my crash landing. My left shoulder exploded. My back snapped. A blessing, I supposed. It saved me the pleasure of experiencing a dozen other bones breaking as I flipped end over end. In the final moment, it wasn’t my life playing back before my eyes but a grainy civil service film from primary school on how drunk drivers survive car crashes. It was their pliability. So I went limp and let the chips fall where they may.
Finally, my body flopped to a stop. The roar calmed. And the rumble faded behind ambulance sirens.
I kept my sensations restricted to my eyeballs to stave off the avalanche of pain I knew was waiting. Slowly, I included my mouth. The muscles tensed. My cheeks rose. I could taste cement and sewage on my tongue but didn’t care. I was smiling. Why?
Because I was still alive.