The dissociative

The floor was vibrating. The walls shook, pathetically trying to withstand the shifting below the foundations of the apartment complex. The television fell over, coughing up shards of glass in it's last breath. I cursed all the money wasted, calculating the price of the setback in my head. Outside my window lay a contrasting scene of a magnificent Sun shining over the city. Inside my home, though, I was miles away from it. I was tossed back and forth, without an end in sight. I had likened my situation to being a reluctant passenger upon Charon's ferry, riding the tumultuous rivers of Hell straight to it's depths. I could see the televised warning in my head as I stumbled. They had warned of a minor earthquake, but they didn't say it would be after the one that would cause the building to collapse upon me. I had never experienced an earthquake before, and anxiety's overtly heavy breathing became a schizophrenia I couldn't get rid of. Attempting to keep my balance, I began to make my way to the doorway to my apartment bedroom. A particularly strong tremor pushed me back. Trying to steady myself, I stepped upon a long piece of broken television screen. I didn't have the strength to stay on one foot. The shard that entered through my heel was too painful. The bloodied floor didn't stop shaking. The earthquake was too powerful for me. I began to limp a step, trying to put as little weight as possible on my injured foot. My timing was off. Then I fell. I opened my eyes. I was laying face down on a carpet that was stained with my blood, and it had now browned into a gross reminder of my accident. At least it wasn't a large pool of blood that would I couldn't remove. There was an indentation in my temple, a pocketed wound that dug deep past all the caked blood. I could feel a scabby layer of blood over the part of my face below the wound, and picked it off. After testing them, I found my wounds yielded no pain, so I rolled over and sat up. The lights were off. A digital clock that had survived displayed nothing. My cellphone was on the floor in the kitchen, the screen in pieces from being knocked off the counter onto the tile. And the curtains were closed. Strange, as I usually always have the curtains open. I tried to recall the details of what had happened. Had the curtains been open? Seemingly insignificant, though. I decided to find out how bad the damage was. After a preliminary glance, I saw the outlines of a trashed apartment. Almost everything that could have been broken wasn't just broken, it was destroyed. The side table my head fell upon had a corner painted in a dark red. All meaningless items now, though I wondered if they had ever been anything more. I pulled the shard out of my foot fluidly. Perhaps the nerves had been killed. I stood up, walking over into the kitchen to wash the blood off my face completely. Turning the faucet had no effect, and I began to wonder just how bad the earthquake had been. The multiple stories of the apartment complex had survived, but what about elsewhere? How many buildings were brought to their knees? How many were now homeless? In the ensuing days, would we have food or drinking water? How would the local common man get by now that his workplace was destroyed? Who was dead now? I could see the casualties in my mind: people crushed by their homes, impaled by the metallic odds and ends that supported the growth of skyscrapers, and then the ones it hadn't killed, the ones lying under a pile of debris, hoping the suffocation would be quick. The curiosity that lay behind the door leading out of my apartment distracted me, and I quickly forgot each and every death I had just contemplated. I walked to the door, and opened it. My peripherals caught the blandly painted black 8 on my door, and then I was greeted with more darkness. I stepped out, looking down the hallway. The ceiling had collapsed, blockading any conventional exit I might've been able to take. I was furthest from the elevator, with neighbors to the left and across the hall. I took a look at the my neighbor's door, seeing a