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A life shattering experience
A numbness climbed up her legs, and slowly crawled its way to her arms. Just as she felt her breath becoming shallower, somewhere in the ominous darkness around her there was a crumbling. Dust sprayed down into her eyes. It stung, but there was nothing she could do about it. The shifting of rocks had loosened the intense grip that had been suffocating her for five days...
Just five days! Five days that might as well have been eternity. There was a moaning under the ground. Someone asked their teacher what it was. He did not answer. Instead, he screamed. A scream that she never heard. For at that moment she was thrown onto the floor. Someone fell on her and she felt a warm trickle of blood run onto her leg. Then the building collapsed and with it, her tiny body.
She heard everything; yet she heard nothing. She heard crashes, screams, and people running; yet it might have been a dream. She could not tell. All she knew was that she had lain there in a bone crushing position while the sounds of her friends’ cries suffocated her. For a while she had heard her teacher. He shouted out consoling, soothing remarks. He told them they would all be okay. After a while his voice stopped calling out to her. Now she sensed her end was near.
Her innocent mind clouded over. She was seven, and yet she understood the magnitude of what had happened. She did not cry. What was the need to cry, she wondered? Her parents would come and save her.
She waited and waited. As the hours stretched into days, she realised she could not move. For the first time she felt a pang of fear. Never in her short life had the lithe, agile girl been faced with a situation where she felt this helpless. It frightened her. She forced herself not to think of her lifeless legs. Instead she concentrated on the happiness she would feel when her parents saved her — because they would save her. It was with this conviction that her breathing became heavier and heavier ... until finally it stopped.
Four days later the rocks were lifted off her chest, and her body was greeted with tears.
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