Cut From The Earth by Stephanie Renee Dos Santos

Author:Stephanie Renee Dos Santos [Santos, Stephanie Renee Dos]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Next Chapter
Published: 2021-05-08T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-Eight

“Diogo!” Rafa darted from place-to-place, calling out with the other ghostly black figures covered in chalk-colored dust. People crawled among the fallen homes and rubble littered streets throughout the Mocambo. They stared fixed-eyed, attending no particular thing, their breathing ragged, hair filled with broken bits. An acrid cloud spewed from the city, hanging low in the sky like scum on water. Rafa held his hand to his mouth, as he made his way through the barrio.

Rafa struggled toward home. His cries joined the choruses of others’ in search of lost loved ones.

“Diogo! Diogo! It’s Pai. Call out to me. Let me know where you are. I’ve come for you.” Rafa rasped over and over, his voice hoarse. “Come home, Diogo. Meet me there.”

Rafa peered into each open doorway, their roofs caved in, walls half standing. He searched skyward to open-faced multi-storied buildings whose jagged broken bricks exposed halved interiors. Carpets dangled from destroyed floors with toppled chairs and tables, crushed and teetering on exposed edges. A lone woman stood and looked out vacantly from the threshold, her exposed shoulders bloody, her dress ripped, revealing her bodice.

“Diogo!” He and the woman’s eyes meet. She stepped forward.

“No!” Rafa cried and held up his hand.

But she walked out into the floating dust and disappeared into an impossible to reach jumble of broken buildings.

Rafa clapped his hands at his temples. “Dear Lord…Rest in peace, Sister.”

Moans and groans from unseen places filled the air. Rafa called out and then rushed to where sounds emanated, crouching on his hands and knees, or leaning against an intact wall. “Diogo is that you?”

Behind a wall he discovered a broken soul beyond repair, beyond retrieval, beyond hope. He wiped the old man’s brows and held his shoulders, for he no longer had hands to be held.

Rafa whispered a blessing as the man departed to the other world. “Black Madonna, Mother of the endless night, receive this old soul.”

Rafa sat on a lone chair and wept, looking at the dead man. “Where’s Diogo?” he asked over and over.

He worked his way out of the building and back into the street.

A shower of broken tiles and debris rained down. Hands on his head, Rafa careened his eyes skyward, lunged and stumbled forward. “Diogo!”

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