Sitting in a room, I look around and sigh.

Everything in my beautiful world had come crashing down and there is nothing left. All of that pain I felt was instan tly numbed by the news. I crawled back into my bed and pulled the covers over me so they just barely went over my nose. There was a pungent smell in the air and I merely sighed. Beads of sweat formed on my forehead and bathed my arms and le gs. It was the summer time and the only comfort I ever seemed to get was sitting under the covers. Something moved within me, or rather above me. My cell phone vibrated an d I carefully extracted it from my pocket so as not to disturb the sheets. It wa s a text message from a good friend of mine. Well, she never called herself a fr iend, but I know sincerity when I see some. I carefully slid the device to unloc k it and gulped. I went through the same thing every single text since the accid ent. PTSD really, but I never liked to own up to actually having that. It made m e sound sick, terminally ill, after all I am a child and children forget quickly most of the time. Shes gone. So sorry. That was all I read yet it meant so much to me, it made the sheets crash down on me, waves pulling me under until all would be lost. My chest expanded heavy with emotion, laden with the fruit of despair. Pain, my best friend was dead. My only friend was dead, never to come back agai n. My body was numb, my heart closed up to all other emotion. I was so far in wi th the accident that all I could think about was my own survival. But there was something about the fact that someone else had used my friends phone mere moments after she held them in her hands teeming with life. The friend, the one who nev er admitted that, she was dead. I pulled myself out of the sheets but couldnt. The dried blood moistened with my sweat clung to the sheets and frankly the stench seemed unbearable. I co uldnt cope with the pain, but my will to survive coaxed me and told me that I nee d to move on. For my friends sake. The room was full of debris and it seemed path etic how I struggled to get to the door. My legs quivered and I felt like I coul d faint. I hate that feeling, it makes you weak, it makes you imagine things; fe el so warm in such a cold world. I coiled my hand around the door knob even thou gh it burned my hand. I turned around and looked at my room where I hid from the world, now I was going to be thrust into the real world, forcefully. Outside everything blended in a mess of blood and I knew I had to leave. No time to pack up, just go to another city, another country, another world. So I walked no matter how hot it was, no matter how much my legs hurt, no matter h ow much my heart ached for the loss. I had to go somewhere, I didnt know why but there was something ushering me, hailing me to go somewhere. I saw others strugg ling, it looked like an alien invasion film. For the time being I amused myself thinking about how many aliens it would take to destroy the entire Earth. Althou gh it was hardly cheerful, it kept my mind occupied. I looked up and saw a familiar face, but I knew it was too good to be tr ue. My friend, the one who I assumed dead, was standing in the window of a store . Well, at least what could be identified as a window. I could hardly walk faste r, but mentally I was running. Although, everything soon came into view. Without my glasses she seemed alive and well, she seemed to be just waiting for someone or something. Now closer, I could clearly see where the glass protruded in her body, where metal had been put to keep her standing. She was a bloody puppet, no t a friend, just another body. No matter how hard it was for me to admit that th is corpse meant nothing to me, I couldnt erase the picture from my memory. It sea red, it taunted, and it took away my will to survive. I have to keep walking. Steps became miles, streets became deserts, and the only oasis was a sho p with a fan which I gladly basked in for a few minutes or maybe hours, days? I saw what I wanted at the far end of Main Street. A shuttle ferrying people to sa fety, a ticket to safety, my ticket to freedom. I walked endlessly but for some reason the shuttle never seemed closer, for some reason all of the people seeme d life less and cold. I kept my imagination from wondering, I was tired, and I w as hallucinating. There really is a shuttle, with blinking lights to signal that it is stopped, steps that people are boarding, a sign on the back telling me it s number. The closer I became, the more hopeful I felt, my optimism was slowly r eturning as I stepped carefully on the first step. I heard people smiling and sa

w people talking. There were happy, hopeful noises from within. I gallantly clim bed up another step, then another, until I reached the part where the door was l ocated and I could say I was safe and sound. I felt a crushing sound in my innar ds, I felt my ribs contract and meet each other, and I felt blood pour out from places I never knew existed. Then it happened. My body was sandwiched between the glass door which kept getting tighter and tighter. Nobody stopped it, nobody tried to help, nobody screamed, and nobo dy was there. It was a dream. There was no bus; I hadnt even left my bed. I opene d my eyes, prepared for whatever was to come. I opened one lid then the other. T hen I saw it. My stomach was opened and enlarged intestines ran around me in a h ot heap. My head had bandages wrapped around the part where a rod had been drive n inside of me to heal my meningitis, and my legs werent even there. I had been t erribly injured no doubt, by the collapse of the huge buildings perhaps. Now I r emember, me and my friend were running away from the earth quake but it was too quick. My legs were entombed under concrete, and to save the rest of me I had to leave my flattened legs. My friend saved me but my gut was expanding from some virus I got from drinking contaminated water from the quake. To save me, she car efully cut off some of the intestine yet it was to little avail. We were in the hospital together only a day ago. Me with my meningitis and her with her broken arm. My time was up, I was expiring, and yet there was something life-like about the death that was over taking me. The last thing I saw was my friend, hunched over, with bags under her eyes, praying I would live. She was crying and holding what was left of my hand. She wasnt supposed to be here, she was supposed to be dead and me alive. I had merely dreamed, without any warning I was dead. Such is life , worrying about everyone else dying and then you wake up from your hallucinatio n and die yourself.