How does CANDY'S CHILDREN begin?

JAFFA

The explosion hit the morning with a blinding flash and a crack of sound, followed almost immediately by the roar of moving air. Pieces of debris hurtled outwards from the epicentre with the velocity of bullets, shattering and splattering everything that stood in the way, turning the busy thoroughfare into a nightmare of death.

The immediate debris was immolated blood and flesh, shattered bone. Unrecognisable pieces of human bodies spread amongst the twisted furniture of the little pavement cafe where the businessmen liked to take their morning coffee. The first to be shredded were the elderly lady in a pale blue linen suit and the young woman in a black djellabah who had been hurrying towards her. An instant later two little boys playing football with a tin can in the gutter were ripped open and their viscera splattered against a passing car that was then lifted and hurled into the path of a lorry coming in the opposite direction. The lorry driver slammed on his brakes before he was crushed by a piece of flying masonry. The lorry mounted the car, mutilating its occupants beyond recognition, before hitting the side of a bus that was picking up passengers, showering those inside with shards of glass and bits of twisted metal that acted like daggers. The bus leaned over under the weight of the lorry, tottered on two wheels, then fell on its side, on top of the people who, a moment before, had been crowding around to mount the steps.

The people killed by the flying debris rather than the immediate explosion were dissected more neatly before being hurled through the air. A complete arm here, a head there, a bloody torso wrapped around a lamp post. The ponderous, moustachioed gentleman sitting at a table inside the cafe reading a newspaper froze for an instant before he was flung backwards in his seat and simultaneously decapitated by a piece of metal flying sideways with the force of a falling guillotine. The young waiter bringing him coffee, his mind on fond thoughts of the girl he was to marry next week, was thrown backwards against the counter and overtaken by the plate glass window that cut off both his legs as it crashed around him and left him to bleed to death.

As the front of the cafe disintegrated, the supports of the two upper storeys of the building collapsed and it folded in on itself, burying the cafe proprietor, the chef who had only started work there last week, the grandmother in the upstairs apartment who was sweeping the floor and listening to the chattering of her daughter’s infant, left in her care, the young couple on the upper floor who were still learning to live in peace together. The neighbouring buildings were left teetering until a pick-up carrying vegetables from a nearby farm careered out of control as the driver panicked, and buried itself in one of the unstable walls, bringing another building down.

Seconds later the sound of breaking glass came from every quarter as the blast took out windows in an ever-widening circle. Car horns blared as vehicles collided in the spreading chaos.

Then the screaming began.