Flash Flood

It was a hot summer’s day in the Israeli city of Arad. I was a water maintenance officer and my job was to maintain the sure supply of drinking water in the city. One day I was called up to fix a leaking sewage pipeline, but the damage was too big and there was no way that I could fix it all by myself. The specific thing that happened was a buildup of dirt blocking the way of the water. Anyway, I started fiddling around with my drill and wrench trying to find out the exact scale of damage when suddenly, I accidentally drilled straight through into the pipeline. Then there was a loud noise and the whole pipeline burst spilling out sewage onto the street. It was coming out in the gallons and soon there was a flood in the heat of the desert summer.

Soon the police arrived and took me to a detention center. They thought that I was a mad person trying to kill people, and I was given a fine of 1000 shekels for endangering people’s lives. I ended up broke and homeless as I was not able to pay my rent because of the large fine. Those were some of the worst days of my life, begging on the street and hoping to get enough bread for the night.

Over half a year passed like this and, one day, I’d had enough of my life and decided to go for a walk; a long walk that I would never come back from. Since Arad was a city in the desert, the only option I had was venturing into the barren land. I said goodbye to my nothingness, left the town that had betrayed me and wandered into the wasteland of the desert, where there was nothing but cream-colored rock. The mountains rose and the valleys fell, but it remained like infinitely going on a long, never-ending plain.

As I was walking I started to think about my wife. She was refined and cultured, and the only thing I had left in my life after the fatal flood. Nearly all the time we played games together, cards in fact. It was one of the best things in my life a few months before I started my walk. But, one day I was playing games with her and suddenly she fell over. I raced to try to save her life, but it was too late. In the end, it was said that she died of drinking too much water - a kind of flood in her body. I could have saved her if I had called the ambulance quicker instead of crying over her. I really felt angry with myself, it could have been my fault that she died, maybe me that caused all this mess.

Soon the colors changed, from cream rock to dark valley. It was really beautiful and that is what I wanted on my final walk. The valley had steep sides and was nearly endless. It was January, the rainy season. People had told me about walking in the desert during the rainy season. But I didn’t care. All I wanted to do was let the walk go on and on. It started raining but I kept walking.

Soon the rain started to get extremely heavy, the dark colors of the canyon were getting darker as the water soaked into the soft rock. I started to think about my life; it was decent, and at least I had a life. But then I thought about the pipeline incident. It was my own fault, carelessness. That is what has caused me to be here right now.

My long walk was one of the final events that really wrapped my life up; people don’t even have a chance to walk or aren’t capable of managing it. Many people in the world don’t even live to adulthood. I could have been very lucky in my life.

As the water coming down the sides was rising, I saw a huge wall of water coming towards me. It was a flash flood, just like the one I had started in my hometown, about to sweep me away. The events that I have caused, making that flood, or me accidentally killing my wife. Despite all of these things that had happened to me, I felt satisfied with my existence in the world.