Everything what happend a few hours later I remember like it was yesterday. It's been a year and three months since those events, and I still can't come to terms with them. Why now I let myself discuss this? I think I finally understood that I can't always run away from bad memories. I'm hard - just like my dad said. I have to be. I can't close myself, especially now when I am alone in the world. Without home and worst of all without parents...

I had a really deep sleep that May night. At the time, I thought I would never be more tired after a hard day. I was naive thinking that in the morning I will run upstairs and eat my Saturday breakfast with my parents. I know we would eat sandwiches with bread baked by my mother. They would be made in all the colors of the rainbow, and we would drinking orange juice. Always been like that. Never it won't be anymore...

About 2 am a tectonic shock woke me up. Then I didn't know what time it was, but now I know. I didn't understand what was going on. For a moment I stared at my desk in front of the bed. I watched as the liquid bounced from the glass with water and spilled onto the computer keyboard. Then glass turned over and shattered on the floor.

The walls were cracked, furniture was overturned, and the TV had a broken screen. I jumped out of bed, bare feet cutting against the shards of the ceiling. I screamed. I was sleepy and confused. Another shock stunned me and knocked me to the floor. A huge block of the outer wall collapsed directly onto my bed and rested on a metal bookshelf. It frame was solid and simply flooded in the other wall when the room was divided to build a bathroom. It withstood.

I rushed to the door and pulled the door handle. I wanted to run to the corridor, but all I saw was a pile of debris. Familiar wall colors on pieces of torn gypsum. Leg from the kitchen table. Shattered and a distorted frame with nothing else but my own graduation diploma. A piece of lacquered door from a dresser in the parents' bedroom. It sobered me up. That's when I understood.

I looked at all this and in a split second I realized that there was no floor anymore, that the dining room, kitchen and bedroom of my parents were gone. That I am looking at the rubble of my own home. So I started to hysterize. I screamed and cried. I shouted with all my strength - Mom! Dad! Where are you! Talk to me! - I tried to pick up pieces of debris, but when I took one out, all their avalanche fell right on me and hurt my legs and arms. I hissed in pain, but my mind was strangely clear. I was perfectly aware of my situation. I had to run away.I didn't know how and where, since the corridor was burried, but I just couldn't stay inside. The house was falling apart as if it had been built of cards. It was began falling on me.

My room was on the ground floor. The bathroom was already leveled with the ground, everything started to collapsed down and in a moment I could be buried. The rafters from the roof folded with a dull crack. Then outside from the triangle formed from the outer wall and shelf I saw a strange light. It shines strong, but appeared and disappeared. Suddenly I heard the call:

- Is anybody out there?! - the voice from outside was distorted, but I understood it. 

- I'm here! I shouted loudly as much as all-encompassing dust allowed me - Here! Behind the wall! Help me!

Someone helped me. The rescuer somehow splintered part of the block and just above the floor appered a small hole - Too small - I thought in first reflex, but I began to crawl into it. The man's strong hands lifted me up. He took me in his arms and carried me a few meters away, then set me on the dewy grass. He let me cough and breathe fresh air, and then asked if I lived alone. I replied that my parents were sleeping upstairs. Without thinking, I wanted to show him the window of their bedroom, where the moonlight always came. But the window was gone. There was nothing but a ton of debris, glass, bent window frames and a triangle formed by a collapsed wall in my room.

I started to rush toward the house, but the man stopped me. I struggled, sobbing and yelling like crazy. All at once. I pushed away terrible thoughts because the truth was too painful. Nevertheless, it must have been. Real and honest till it hurts. As I am. I couldn't turn this down. Regardless of the fact how bitter it tasted: Parents were dead. They couldn't be alive. If they ran out of the house, the rescuer wouldn't have to ask me if I live alone. They would be downstairs. Next to me.

Instinctively I looked around me and shiver pierced me. All the houses looked like ours. There were fallen trees on the street. The roots protruded above the stratified road. I saw only rubble and darkness everywhere. Intertwined with each other. Blended together - I closed my tired eyes but when I opened them nothing has changed. I was still there. Rubble and darkness lurked ominously around me. I drowned in them. I was suffocating. The darkness frightened me and the debris was surrounded me. I knew that they would happily sink their fangs into me. But something pulled me out of their clutches. This one and only fire truck standing out from my street. The awareness that I didn't have any familiar person next to me was excruciating. Mum, dad or even neighbors. Only me. Just me…

Pain pierced my body again and I curled up in the grass. The lifeguard, who turned out to be a fireman, embraced me and carried me to a car, where a sore face nurse began to feverishly rummaging in the medicine cabinet. I remember I didn't say anything, only crying and shaking my head in disbelief. The woman was washing my hands and legs, taking shards of glass and debris from my feet. It hurt, but I didn't react. She said something about my dressing-gown. I guess it's good that I had it because it protected me from more severe injuries. I'm not sure. I didn't listen to her carefully. I was waiting for the return of the fireman. I prayed for him to brought mum and dad to me. I begged God to make them live. That I would see them again. Smile at them. Say to them. Anything.

The fireman returned after a few minutes. Alone. He sat on the driver's seat and remaining silent. So terribly, damn long and stubbornly silent. Tears obscured my view. I was afraid to ask. I wanted to, although I knew I didn't really have a reason. He looked at me in the rearview mirror and shook his head slightly. And although it was certain, I could not believe it. So the nurse asked for me:

- Nobody else on this street? 

- Only she - he replied with clenched throat and he started the engine.

I couldn't utter a word. I watched on him and tears were running down my cheeks. I know they tried talk to me, comfort me, pat my head, ask about various things, but I didn't answer. I didn't know why, but I stopped responding to any stimuliatons. I felt like a rag doll. Images and faces flashed in front of my eyes. Known and unknown places. Other people wounded just like me. Paramedics, firefighters, doctors, field hospitals and cars. Someone was leading me, someone was carrying, putting me into bed, dressing, washed and changed clothes. Still the same things. Hour after hour.

I woke up from this lethargy when another nurse took me off nightgown given me by my parents. She already had hospital pajamas prepared for me. As soon as she put my hands through the sleeves, I immed iately reached for my gift and hugged nightgown tightly to my chest. It was mine, I got it from my mother and father, so I didn't want anyone taking it. When the woman noticed it, her eyes glazed with tears. With a slight smile and tenderness in her voice, she said:

 - It is yours, Darling, nobody wants to take it away from you. Don't be afraid, the authorities will look after us. Everything will be fine.

I nodded as a sign that I understood. I still didn't want to say anything. It was unnecessary. I looked through the hole in the tent where the morning sun was beginning to break through the clouds. I was shaking all over my body. 

 The paramedic came to the bag and picked up a syringe. I watched with indifferent eyes how she put the needle on it, took some fluid and gave me an injection. I was already numb when she put me down on a camp bed. My eyelids began to close themselves. After a while, I only heard the steady beeping of machines connected to other patients.

The dream came unexpectedly. However, I didn't wait for it as for deliverance. It didn't bring me any peace. On the contrary, I felt like it wasn't there. Neither dream nor I counted. Everything seemed so unimportant. Empty, expressionless. I only had one desire. Just one dream. A thought that I repeated like a mantra in my head.

The same sentence over and over again: I want to fall asleep and never wake up again...