these electric words viii

I am with Karen. It’s our first night together, she feels warm, like she’s glowing next to me. I want her. I have her, she has me and we are one. It’s the highlight of my life: the woman I love - and afterwards in each others arms, sleeps comes. Reality and sleep collide – tearing me awake; it sounds like splintering wood and falling rubble, a thousand panes of broken glass. I hear a shriek through the darkness – quickly muffled. As I reach towards Karen I am violently lifted upward and darkness crushes me, pins me to the ceiling and my body splinters. The darkness continues to roar like the sound of an earthly anger an eternity in the making. I feel my blood every where, streaming from me and then I feel like…like my life is departing…

Reality again – this time it is my agony I hear as I scream through gritted teeth. It is still dark and I feel so contorted I barely know which way is up. I think one of my legs is hanging loose… maybe; it’s hanging down? That’s a clue. I'm almost in a standing type position; my upper body is pinned between something so sharp that every wretched breath I take is a fractured agony. I can’t even feel my other leg – it feels like there is just space there. “Karen!” I howl. “Karen!? Can you hear me?” I hear nothing. “KAAAAAAREN! KAAREEEEN!! KAAAruuugh...” Exhausted and breathing heavily, I suddenly feel weak and I’m out. Death is toying with me…

I awake again – hazy and diluted, my agony more a throb now than the sharp torture of my previous awakening. I sense that light is gathering somewhere; morning. Something is in my face though – squashing my nose, right eye and cheek, too close to see what, I think it’s white. The left eye is dried closed with blood. For the first time I am thinking; cooler and calmer. Thoughts that had been pushed away due to my panic now surface. ”What happened?” the obvious one. Earthquake? Bomb? So violent. I'd like to say I had no idea - but in the back of my mind I know: I knew this was coming.