The sounds of the night suddenly ceased. She thought she heard the
sounds of an electric motor die away somewhere in the distance.

Suddenly she heard the sounds of clumping, hundreds of feet perhaps?
They all seemed to be moving away from where she lay helplessly, her
arms pinned to her sides by some invisible weighty force. She felt
as if she weighed a thousand pounds. Breathing was incredibly
difficult. Her head felt as if it were beginning to spin. Then
without warning, that awful smothering feeling of heaviness
subsided.

Relieved beyond words, she gasped for deep life-giving lung-fulls of
air.

Her head slowly spun to a stop, a deep throbbing headache setting in
like a mule sitting directly on her head.

Frightened beyond words, unable to see anything in the ebony cloak of
total smothering darkness, she raised her hand to hold her forehead
against the pain.

Her elbow hit something hard and unyielding.

There was something incredibly huge and smothering directly above
her. She could sense it.

She raised her hand encountering its smooth glossy surface. It felt
like some sort of thickly coated metal. She could feel its
unyielding strength, though the surface felt just a slight bit
squishy. Whatever it was, it was quite smooth and felt almost
slick.

She thought she heard muffled shouting. Then the distant crashes of
what could be gunfire sounded. Unable to bridle her imagination, she
felt, then smelled, the hideous shame of her trembling queasy body
soiling itself.

In her heart gripping fear, she was sure that the sounds of battle
lasted for an eternity.

After that eternity suddenly ended, she again heard the muted sounds
of conversation, the clumping of hundreds of feet, then the sound of
an electric motor winding up. As the muted whine sped up, the
sensation of gaining weight again encapsulated her whole body.
Within seconds she could not breathe again without extreme effort.

She sensed movement above her prostrate form. With incredible
effort, she reached up to feel the surface above her seeming to rise,
slowly, then seeming to accelerate away from her.

Then it was gone, moving beyond her ability to touch it. As it moved
farther away from her terrified form, her body seemed to lighten, to
regain its former, slighter weight. She felt her unfettered breasts
regain their elasticity, to rise from her armpits.

In just a few more moments she could see directly above her a
rectangular outline against the sea of stars. There were other
rectangles floating there too, as before. All of them seemed to
slowly begin moving off toward what she knew were the mountains in
the far snow covered distance.

Lying there, her gasps for air slowly returning to deeper breathing,
her head now feeling like it had been smashed by a sledge hammer,
tears streaming down her face, she had this heart breakingly awful
feeling that her darling son was dead. Her gut wrenching fear for
his safety gave her the will power to rise.

Running as fast as she could in the deadly silent starlight, she
heard no sounds, no snoring, no night birds, . . . . . . . . .
nothing.

She stumbled upon a tent.

It had been smashed flat. Those inside had been pressed into the
ground, flattened, as if a steam roller had driven over them. She
detected no signs of life.

Rising in a panic, blindly stumbling on in a zigzag path, tears
streaming down her face, fear gripping her very soul, she ran, trying
to find where her son and she had, together, pitched their tent only
hours before.

Her heart died when she finally found it, it had also been
flattened.

Her heart filled with terror, she yanked back the edge of the tarp.

She felt more than saw him.

His small form was deathly still.

She fell to her knees and felt frantically for any signs of life.

There was only sticky broken wetness in what had once been his
vibrant wiggly body.

Screaming in mortal agony, she collapsed down beside her son's body
and held what remained of his broken form, the sole remains of her
once normal life, her life before that awful earth rending quake and
brutally efficient tsunami.

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