I Found the Records for a Natural Disaster that Never Existed
Written on April 10th, 2021 by Ethan Zhang
I discovered the records for a natural disaster that never existed. It was a tsunami, wildfire hybrid of some sort. I know it sounds insane. How does fire mix with water? If you had told me this before I knew what I do now, I would have laughed, but now things are different. I suppose that I should start from the discovery of the document and who I am.
My name is Jake Warran, and I am a professor at a local 5-story public high school in upstate Japan. Every year, I am required to make sure that the info in our textbooks is correct and that all the pages are present within each textbook. It was here that I discovered an odd note of some sort. This note was handwritten on a sheet of lined paper and seemed as though it was wet and set on fire as there were areas where the page was stained with what seemed to be black water and others where the page was blackened by flames. I shall transcribe the translated note as best as I can.
“The time I am writing this is midnight of January 10, 2021. Today, there was an earthquake, magnitude 20. Magnitude 20 seems nearly impossible, as there would need to be a fault line twice the circumference of the Earth itself, but it happened. Later it was followed by a black tsunami of sorts, but this wasn’t water that the tsunami brought, it was oil. As the tsunami slammed into the powerline outside my window, it ignited and the world around me went up in flames as more oil began to come into my town and fuel the fire. As all this happened while I was at work, luckily on the highest floor of my 5-story office building. Despite how high up I was and how overpowering the evil laugh of the flames was, I could hear the screams of the people down below. Then they began to call my name, and that was when I knew that this was no ordinary disaster. I ran to the rooftop of the building and looked on in horror as I saw that the tsunami had stopped, replaced by dancing flames, flames of desire. I saw myself being slowly eaten by the flames but I know it wasn’t the real me, or at least I hope not.
Suddenly, I heard crying below me, inside my office. As I sprinted down the stairs desperate to bring anything or anyone with me to the relative safety of the rooftop, I found that people had opened the windows, and hung themselves, their screaming bodies being eaten by the slow and meticulous flames. There was only one other person who had not succumbed to the paranormal flames, and that man was my boss. We took what little supplies we could scavenge to the rooftop and prepared to wait out the situation.
That brings us to the present. The ashes have begun to swirl and form in a mass at the town square and through the flames, I see my salvation, I see the wings of an angelic and fiery bird. A strange man is with me on the rooftop, he is begging me to not walk off the edge, but it is the only way I reach my salvation. If necessary, I will show him too. All must witness the great Phoenix’s birth, and the billions of lives it will save by ending. I must jump into the sea of dancing people, dancing faces, fueled by the soft and moist ground.”
The note in itself is not significant, as it was likely written by some punk who wanted to give his teacher a scare. However the scent of it was real, and a certain event occurred as I walked out of the school building at 10:00 PM on January 9, 2021. I looked at my watch and the time claimed that it was 10:00 AM the next day. Suddenly, in the span of a minute, I watched as the ground shook and tore open, followed by a wave of oil that sparked and sent flames consuming the entire town. I watched as the school burned, the houses burned to ashes, and in the final seconds, I saw the ashes of the corpses shuffle to the town square and flames that formed the symbol of the Phoenix. This is why I am writing this now. I hope it is not too late, but I have no clue how to stop the events of tomorrow from unfolding. If the events in the note and my vision are true, there is no stopping the end. I write this from my bedroom, awaiting the earthquake to come, awaiting the right time to pull the trigger that sits in front of me, ready to stop the flames from consuming me.
