Falling

Two different shades of red dance before my eyes:

The scorching brilliance of hot flame and the maroon of spilled blood.

It's hot, excruciatingly so. My entire body feels scalded, charred by some unknown, intense heat. The flames that burn on the ground next to me beat on me like rays from the sun. Smoke is in my mouth, my eyes, my entire body, and I cough - which in turn, makes my chest blaze with pain.

With a shaky hand, I try to level myself and stand. But it's difficult. Something inside of me feels broken, an aching that feels both physical and metaphysical. There's some kind of wound to my left leg rendering me incapable of standing - I pick up a lengthy piece of steel that had broken off the.. something, and used it as leverage.

I struggled to rise nearly a dozen times.

And I looked around, panting. I was under a roof of some sorts, inside of a building. But everything was in ruins - there was a train, laying on it's side, pieces of concrete and steel and debris everywhere and.. the people. Human beings, trapped under pieces of cement, under segments of steel, or just lying there, motionless and sprawled across the rough ground.

And the maroon. The blood. It was everywhere. On the walls, on the floor, on the people, the maroon of spilled blood.

I coughed again - No, I retched. It took all I had not to vomit on the spot - the stench of death in the air, singed by smoke and flames, reeked worse than anything in the world.

Then something - no, someone caught my eye. Two of them.

A man and a woman. They were collapsed under a large section of debris, looking as if their final moments were spent trying to reach for me. I stared at the two motionless corpses with fearful eyes.

I knew them. But how?

I realized my vision was getting blurry again - I reached up and wiped my eyes. They were wet - but it wasn't raining. That was impossible. We were inside, inside of a building..

I fell to my knees, still using the steel bar for support so I wouldn't collapse completely as I tried to keep focus on the two figures. And then, all too suddenly, I knew who they were, and what had happened.

The scalding heat of the subway station turned to ice cold in an instant. Completely beside myself with shock, I shivered.

They died. They weren't breathing anymore, nothing told me they still had any life in them.

Mother. Father.

Both of them were dead.

I'm going to die now too.

I could still feel the trembling of the ground as the rest of the building's support began to collapse. My breathing was shallow, and every breath I took felt like a knife skewering my lungs. I lost grip on the steel bar, and I fell, my ribs stinging upon contact with the ground, but I didn't resist.

With a final effort, I turned and lay on my back, tears dripping from my eyes like a wine cup overflowing with drink, facing the shaking, trembling ceiling.

To me, even it seemed scared. I reached out towards it with one hand, hoping to reassure it in it's discomfort -

And it cracked. It cracked and chipped and broke and fell to many pieces. A particularly large piece of the concrete foundation started getting closer and closer to me, in very slow motion.

My outstretched hand fell to my side.

I couldn't even find the strength to keep my eyes open any longer. Slowly, but surely, I let them fall.

And I saw two different shades of red dance from behind my eyelids;

The scalding brilliance of hot flame, the maroon of spilled blood -

And something else, too. Another color, faint at first but growing brighter and more intense.

This color didn't reek of death nor threaten to burn - it was soft, kind, and loving. A mysteriously calming mixture of pink and violet cast a wave of comfort over me as if to say, "everything will be okay."

But I couldn't hear it speak.

After all, I was already gone.