Wide Awake

I stayed very still in bed, not daring to move as the room shifted around me. My eyes rattled in my head as though it had suddenly grown too big and the single white sheet that covered me rippled like troubled water. Across the room, my sister slept soundly.

The roar of the earth came from somewhere so deep that I felt suddenly unsure of the ground I had trusted to be solid. I imagined myself on an angry sea, and felt panicked by the potential of the body of rock and lava below. The lamp on my bedside table trembled as the windowed doors shook in their frames. The wardrobe edged towards me with a jagged stagger. The tiled floor shrieked with protest as more furniture scraped across its surface.

I wondered if my parents were awake in the next room. Still my sister slept, and I felt the urge to wake her for fear of being alone, but I was paralyzed, watching the wardrobe stumble ever closer and wondering if it would topple.

The noise continued and I managed to persuade my eyes to close. I imagined a fleet of Lorries rumbling through the centre of the room having been led astray by faulty sat navs. Suddenly I felt the urge to laugh. What a ridiculous situation.

Then I heard the children crying in the apartment next door.

Finally, the noise lessened and my eyes settled back to stillness. The life went out of the furniture and appliances, and they once again sat quietly as they should. With renewed courage, I called out to my sister. She roused slowly and grumbled at me to let her sleep. When I asked if she had heard the earth quake, she told me to stop lying and rolled over to face the wall. I marvelled at her ability to sleep like the dead.

In the morning the locals of Kefelonia told us it had only been a tremor. A slight squirm of the earth, like a baby rolling in its mother’s belly. I shook my head in disbelief and decided not to imagine what a real quake felt like. No doubt that wardrobe would have shimmied with a little more gusto.

A year later, another fleet of misguided Lorries rumbled through my room in England, letting me know that the Earth was awake in every part of the world.