I am at home in a place I lived at back in the mid 90′s. It's night time and I head outside to do some stargazing with a pair of large binoculars. I would really like to catch a glimpse of the Pleiades. Instead I see the streaking tail of a nearby comet, like a hazy line in the magnified view. It is odd, though. It doesn't look like a normal comet tail. It's more like orange billowing smoke in a line. I realize it's not a comet out in space, but a meteor in the atmosphere. It's really large. It feels like it is too large. I can see the rocky ball at the front of the streak. It's a glowing sphere that looks like lava, or cinders.
It suddenly darts away faster than I can keep track of. It's gone over the horizon. I walk to the side to get a better view around some trees and the nearby silhouette of a dark house. I spot it again, in the sky, glowing furiously with a long streaming cloud of glowing yellow fire and red billows of smoke. It slowly descends and meets the ground way off in the distance.
Everything is lit up like daytime. There are long shadows across the ground and a sun-like glow coming from the horizon. I make a guess that the meteor landed only ten miles away. The bright light fades and is replaced by a ruddy glow. Beyond the trees and houses I can see a large mushroom cloud rising into the air, made mostly of fire.
The shockwave is coming, and the wind, and the heat blast. I drop the binoculars and run for the house. I have to get inside. I have to tell mother to get on the floor. It's all we can do to try to survive what is coming.