From The Moon

The world is shaking, violently. Lori wakes with a start, unaware she had drifted off and immediately regretting it, no matter how necessary it might have been for her.

This time the tremors are much worse than before. Her chest heaving, she scrambles to her feet. Panic fills her head, blurs her vision. Her head whips round and round but try as she might she cannot seem to pick out where might be a safe place to seek refuge. She is overwhelmed by so many thoughts; worst is the one screaming in her ears that she is going to die.

“Not helpful!” The blonde woman spits without realising it and as debris continues to fall because the tremors are getting worse.

“I don’t want to die. Don’t let me die in here.”

As if to remind her that she is not in-charge of her own destiny a section of the already collapsed building shifts. Lori screams, ducks and covers her head. The debris slides and collides with some other mound of broken building, narrowly avoiding crushing Lori’s skull.

In response the woman explodes into a frantic crawl that sees her heading nowhere. For she manages a few metres only to have to change direction and take evasive manoeuvres a number of times until the tremors begin to subside. It is at that point Lori ceases her crawling and sits back on her haunches sucking down short sharp breathes. She is in the early stages of hyperventilating and needs to get her breathing under control.

It takes a while but she manages to escape hyperventilation, just not the dust in the air. That sadly fills her mouth and throat, sending her back into disgusting sounding coughs. Faced with a choice between swallowing the coarse fine particles or risk running out of air she chooses the former, and hates herself for it.

That is until she catches something out the corner of her eye. Instantly she freezes unsure of what it might be. Then hesitantly turns her eyes toward it.

When she learns it is not a who but a what she throws her head back and heaves several deeper breaths, relief.

Part of Lori would like to smile but can’t and so once turned back toward the revelation allows her eyes to linger until they readjust and she is able to confirm that what she is looking at is not some illusion. Rather, with the dust continuing to clear, Lori finds she is faced with a sliver of light. Her immediate assumption is that it is daylight, so she crawls towards it on her hands and knees.

Alas, no sooner does she reach the onset of the debris pile through which the light is shining down a ‘tunnel’ than the tremors resume their quaking.

Panic having returned in a flash, Lori tries to retreat. Regrettably the space behind her is where massive chunks of dislodged and crumbled building land with thunder booms. The woman shrieks and without thought dives forward into the rough tunnel formed by part of the fallen structure.

Her nails claw at the rubble as she worms deeper. Part of her hopes by forcing it aside she might be granted access deeper into this tunnel of accidental creation. As she goes the tremors continue to increase in severity until part of what she has crawled through collapses behind her sealing her inside.

With the air clogged with thick dust yet again, making it difficult to see and even worse to breathe, Lori feels this is her end. She doesn’t want it to be and so refuses to accept death no matter how much it might want her, which is why she continues to pick at the debris blocking her path, beyond which lies the shining light. Whether it be artificial or natural she does not care, or consider, any longer.

In fact, all that goes through her head is that if there is a light there is space and if there is space then she might find some form of safety. Certainly more than she is being afforded compared to where she finds herself currently.

But with the smaller items dislodged and moved, and the tremors showing no signs of weakening, Lori finds she can forge no further ahead. What continues to block her is too heavy for her to pick at with her exhausted, cramping fingers caked in filth, and so the woman awkwardly goes about doing a one eighty. It might seem mad, as if she intends to go back the way she has come, even though it is sealed, but that isn’t her intention at all. As is proved when she begins to kick at the blockade with all her remaining might.

Coinciding with her frantic bid for escape the tremors grow worse still. The tunnel around her begins to shift, tighten, narrow. It is collapsing, Lori is sure of it. Still, the woman continues to kick at the blockage more certain than ever that it is her only option.

Luckily it begins to give; this blessing spurs the blonde on. Alas, the tunnel partially buckles, tightening around the woman who almost spent and defeated manages to deliver a final kick with both feet. It works! The blockade explodes outwards leaving a narrow passage through which the blonde can escape. And so Lori wriggles and writhes. Using her hands she pulls her body along as best they can, until finally she is free of the passage. And just in the nick of time too seeing as it collapses, releasing a plume of choking dust alongside a loud bang, which had she been in the midst of would have ended her.

Coughing, exhausted and blinded by whatever the cause of the light is, Lori struggles to her feet. Stumbling about unsure of her footing and her surroundings she tries to gauge where she is. Yet, it doesn’t take long for her to taste air, fresh, clean, cool. The blonde sucks it down in deep breaths, desperately. She even manages to throw her head back eager to claim more air for her lungs. That is until she notices that not only is the Mission Control building in ruins but the rest of the launch complex too.

Her jaw drops and she stares, wide eyed, at the devastation that has been wrought.