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Apocalypse

I live in a hamlet.  Nothing happens here apart from the occasional chicken escaping so it was somewhat bewildering when I suddenly heard a very large bang, which shook the house so much I thought something must have driven into it.  As I opened the front door a military jet flew over so I decided it must have gone through the sound barrier, a familiar noise in my childhood when testing of breaking the sound barrier was a frequent occurrence along the south coast of England.  I glanced into the road and saw my neighbours' large,  white, furry dog standing in  the middle of the street.  'Not again,'  I muttered to myself as I went out to try and persuade it to move.  With no collar it is difficult to push an extremely heavy dog where he doesn't want to go but I tried.   It was then that we were covered, and hidden, by a huge black cloud of smoke, which seemed to silently creep over and between the houses and continued along the street.  I didn't want to get run over in the blackness so with supreme effort I forced the dog onto the sidewalk.

The day had turned to night in a couple of minutes and the smoke was making me cough.  I looked down at the dog and his beautiful white fur had turned into a dirty grey colour.  A neighbour came out with a piece of string and helped me tie the dog to the gate.  I asked what was going on but he gave a Gallic shrug and ran for cover.

I too went back indoors and washed the grime off me before going up to the top floor to look out of the window.  Smoke and flames were billowing high into the sky about a hundred yards away but I couldn't  make out what was causing such an inferno.  As I watched a fire engine turned up, then another and another.  I didn't know the commune owned so many.  After about an hour or two they left and the hamlet returned to normal.  Except the dog.

I looked out of the window to see my neighbour arrive back from wherever she had been.  She looked at her grey, sooty dog, and the piece of string round his neck, looked around, presumably searching for answers and with a puzzled look on her face, disappeared.  Will anyone provide them I wonder?

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