My roommate,
Kim, and I were at a park, but the park was a strange one. It was a strip of land that was near the house where I grew up, it was the color of straw and flat, just like south-central
Kansas should be in late fall. There was an old swingset that we were sitting on, we were just talking. It was sunset and the moon had risen and was in the Eastern sky. I remember glancing at it, thinking that there was something wrong with it. I mentioned this to Kim, but she glanced up and said she saw nothing.
Our conversation continued for a while and I looked up again. The moon was clearly larger than it should be, and looked like it was getting closer.
"Kim, look at the moon." She kept talking.
"Kim, I'm serious, look at the moon!" By now, I could seriously tell that the moon was growing closer. Not only that, but it was cracked, three cracks running through the entirety of the moon, like a giant Mercedes symbol. She kept talking.
"Kim, LOOK AT THE FUCKING MOON!" She finally stopped talking and her jaw dropped when she saw what I had been seeing. All the physics I know is running through my head at this point as I watch a cracked gray moon take up increasingly larger spaces of the clear sky, and it leads me to one inevitable conclusion, no way around it.
"Kim, we're all going to die."
We hugged eachother and I said, "Goodbye, I love you." Pure panic coursing through me, I've never felt more powerless. I was going to die in seconds, possibly, and there was nothing I could do about it.
I felt around my pocket, touched my cell phone, then realized the absurdity of trying to call anyone at the time. I didn't want to spend my last moments listening to someone's voice mail message. I wondered where my boyfriend was, I wanted to find him, I wanted to be able to tell him that I love him. And suddenly I remember that he's sleeping right next to me, all I have to do is wake up and tell him, and as I'm jerking myself out of REM I think, "Wait a minute, you mean this is all just a dream?"
Sit up, open my eyes, and the room is dark and he's sound asleep next to me. Neither of us is likely to die in the next hour or so, but I got the message.