Sometimes Nightmares Are Much More

Sometimes, nightmares are much more than nightmares. I had a sudden, terrifying vision that the Earth split in half from pole to pole. The rest of the hallucination (because it had to be more than just a dream) flashed photographic pictures in my mind of the world being blown to literal bits by unknown forces deep within the land mass. As I watched in horror, a massive hole appeared to have begun over the region I called home, and within minutes, everything had changed.

There is no longer a United States. As though peering through a portal I can see the entire east coast and most of the Midwest is destroyed. There is barely enough left of the state of California remaining to be called a state with just a narrow strip zigzagging alongside the Pacific Ocean. Ironic after all the jokes about how California was going to slide into the ocean one day. The split seems to run right to left from about where Greenland used to be. The ocean now surrounds what is left of the land, held in only by the upheaval from the split that left a mile high ridge along the length of that piece of Earth. Otherwise, I doubt there would be an ocean at all.

By the time the damage had been completed, there wasn't much left of the world as I knew it and fully one third of the world had completely disappeared, along with all the people, the cities, the land itself. It was just gone as though it had never existed, other than the cloud of dust that now followed what was left of the planet throughout its orbit of the sun. In fact, there was no longer a world, but two separate pieces, not even complete halves floating just miles from each other.

I am surprised that there is an atmosphere left and that the people that remain can still breathe and see the sunlight through the dust. Yet, they must because I can hear voices that sound as if they are being broadcast on a radio. I wonder how that can be? Reports are being issued and they are saying that none of the remaining scientists can predict how long that will last. Someone said that there would be doomsayers screaming in the streets "the end is near". Big surprise there, I guess.

I don't believe there is anyone left of my family. I haven't had a chance to search, however, when an entire family and all its generations were settled in one place for hundreds of years and that place no longer exists, the chances of running into a cousin, let alone a sibling is almost a desperate thought.

As if I am moving in slow motion, I turn from the view and look behind me. People dressed in white and blue uniforms are standing there, trying to get a look at what is in front of me. I slowly move out of the way to make room. I can only wonder now if and where we will be allowed to land. Sometimes, nightmares are much more than nightmares.