staying—”
The phone died.
Where? I shook my phone, willing it back to life, and
it tumbled from my fingers onto the gravel roof. The battery fell out, slid
several feet away from me, and the face of the phone shattered. Stupid.
I dropped to my knees, ignoring the bite of the tiny pebbles
digging into my flesh, and scooped up my broken phone and dead battery. I
pressed them to my chest—my life line—and knew I needed to somehow find a way
to figure out where Dad and Toby were.
When I climbed to my feet after several moments of trying to
convince myself not to fall apart, the devastation of what had happened to my
city almost caused me to fall to my knees again.
No.
This couldn’t be real. No way.
My chest grew heavy as if a Sumo wrestler sat on it,
squeezing the life out of me. My breath came in small spurts when I happened to
breathe at all and my hands shook, the rest of my body slowly following suit. I
wrapped my arms around myself to steady the unrelenting tremors. Don’t cry,
don’t cry, don’t cry.
Cars sat stationary along the roads, lining both directions,
some lying on their roofs, some on their sides. The scene looked normal like a
movie put on pause. Trees had tumbled over, uprooted from the spots in which they
had lived for decades. Power lines, street signs, billboards—scattered like a
box of Legos. It looked much the way my neighborhood had, but on a much larger
scale. Garbage, debris, and dirt covered everything.
A large section of the city no longer existed, gone,
replaced by a large crater several football fields long. Skyscrapers,
businesses, homes—wiped away. Shells of buildings, burned to only their frames,
lined the circumference. More smoking craters dented the landscape to my left,
my right, and behind me. The normally busy freeway in the distance, taking people
to and from destinations, remained stationary.
Miles and miles of stillness stared back at me. No movement
anywhere except for downy clouds floating overhead and the occasional piece of
trash rolling across the street. The lack of noise, any noise, seemed
surreal.
This is not my life.
It had been nearly two months since.... Jeez, I didn’t even
know what had happened. The city and the cities next to ours had all
apparently been evacuated, but this was insane! Why weren’t the people back
already? What was going on? Where were the people who fixed everything after a
disaster?
Red Cross where are you?
My brain could hardly process what my eyes were taking in—a
nightmare of epic proportions—but the one thing that seemed certain was that, whatever
happened, I was on my own.
A thick coating of dust covered the futon couch. I smacked
the mattress several times with my hand, the cloud of yuck swirling in the air
nearly choking me before I spread my sleeping bag on top.
The candles burned down to liquid and one began to sputter
out.
Callie situated herself out in front of the sliding glass
door and began her grooming, completely content to be in this new environment.
I kind of wished I was a cat—self-absorbed and unaware of my surroundings.
Unfortunately for me, that wasn’t the case. I was quite aware. Too aware.
I didn’t bother changing clothes or brushing my teeth or
doing anything normal. Nothing was normal. Not anymore. So I climbed into my
sleeping bag and pulled it up over my head. Screw this. Screw all of
this.
Today was the worst birthday ever, and as much as I willed
myself not to, I ended up crying myself to sleep.
Puffy red eyes stared back at me in the bathroom mirror as I
leaned in closer to inspect myself. Gnarly hair, knotted and crazy, stuck out
from the sides of my head. I felt the same way I looked.
Somehow, in the midst of everything, I had managed to fall
asleep. Weird, since the apartment didn’t belong to me and the world had become
a scene reminiscent of every apocalyptic movie I’d ever watched. Minus the
walking dead or terrifying aliens—at least to this point I had yet to lay
The phone died.
Where? I shook my phone, willing it back to life, and
it tumbled from my fingers onto the gravel roof. The battery fell out, slid
several feet away from me, and the face of the phone shattered. Stupid.
I dropped to my knees, ignoring the bite of the tiny pebbles
digging into my flesh, and scooped up my broken phone and dead battery. I
pressed them to my chest—my life line—and knew I needed to somehow find a way
to figure out where Dad and Toby were.
When I climbed to my feet after several moments of trying to
convince myself not to fall apart, the devastation of what had happened to my
city almost caused me to fall to my knees again.
No.
This couldn’t be real. No way.
My chest grew heavy as if a Sumo wrestler sat on it,
squeezing the life out of me. My breath came in small spurts when I happened to
breathe at all and my hands shook, the rest of my body slowly following suit. I
wrapped my arms around myself to steady the unrelenting tremors. Don’t cry,
don’t cry, don’t cry.
Cars sat stationary along the roads, lining both directions,
some lying on their roofs, some on their sides. The scene looked normal like a
movie put on pause. Trees had tumbled over, uprooted from the spots in which they
had lived for decades. Power lines, street signs, billboards—scattered like a
box of Legos. It looked much the way my neighborhood had, but on a much larger
scale. Garbage, debris, and dirt covered everything.
A large section of the city no longer existed, gone,
replaced by a large crater several football fields long. Skyscrapers,
businesses, homes—wiped away. Shells of buildings, burned to only their frames,
lined the circumference. More smoking craters dented the landscape to my left,
my right, and behind me. The normally busy freeway in the distance, taking people
to and from destinations, remained stationary.
Miles and miles of stillness stared back at me. No movement
anywhere except for downy clouds floating overhead and the occasional piece of
trash rolling across the street. The lack of noise, any noise, seemed
surreal.
This is not my life.
It had been nearly two months since.... Jeez, I didn’t even
know what had happened. The city and the cities next to ours had all
apparently been evacuated, but this was insane! Why weren’t the people back
already? What was going on? Where were the people who fixed everything after a
disaster?
Red Cross where are you?
My brain could hardly process what my eyes were taking in—a
nightmare of epic proportions—but the one thing that seemed certain was that, whatever
happened, I was on my own.
A thick coating of dust covered the futon couch. I smacked
the mattress several times with my hand, the cloud of yuck swirling in the air
nearly choking me before I spread my sleeping bag on top.
The candles burned down to liquid and one began to sputter
out.
Callie situated herself out in front of the sliding glass
door and began her grooming, completely content to be in this new environment.
I kind of wished I was a cat—self-absorbed and unaware of my surroundings.
Unfortunately for me, that wasn’t the case. I was quite aware. Too aware.
I didn’t bother changing clothes or brushing my teeth or
doing anything normal. Nothing was normal. Not anymore. So I climbed into my
sleeping bag and pulled it up over my head. Screw this. Screw all of
this.
Today was the worst birthday ever, and as much as I willed
myself not to, I ended up crying myself to sleep.
Puffy red eyes stared back at me in the bathroom mirror as I
leaned in closer to inspect myself. Gnarly hair, knotted and crazy, stuck out
from the sides of my head. I felt the same way I looked.
Somehow, in the midst of everything, I had managed to fall
asleep. Weird, since the apartment didn’t belong to me and the world had become
a scene reminiscent of every apocalyptic movie I’d ever watched. Minus the
walking dead or terrifying aliens—at least to this point I had yet to lay
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