It began with me, my parents, brother, sister and partner in a little suburban house in Christchurch. We stood in the dining room and heard a rumble in the distance. We all stood stock still - having experienced our fair share of earthquakes, we knew what was coming (a major fault line runs straight through Wellington and we were supposed to be the ones that got "the big one" - I wrote a poem about it). The house started to shake and I held onto the doorway next to my partner, while the rest of my family ran for cover. We held on for dear life and it seemed to go on forever. Even when we thought it had stopped, it came back again.
Suddenly I was back in Wellington walking through the centre of the city and another earthquake struck. This time I was on my own and I didn't know where to go because there were glass shop windows on my right, cars on my left and old masonry above me. From what we saw of the Christchurch earthquake, you are not safe anywhere in a big one. So I was running around in all directions - in circles really, and then gave up and just stopped in the middle of the footpath and hoped for the best.
Then I was in the middle of Auckland city and the Wellington earthquake seemed to continue there. It stopped briefly and I looked up to see the Sky Tower (the tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere) leaning over like a tree in the wind. There were people all around me who hadn't noticed and I pointed, saying: "Do you see that? It's going to come down." Everyone looked then, and it leaned further over and suddenly snapped in half without making a sound.
The Sky Tower has a point at the top, and the half that snapped off went point first and drove itself into the sand on a beach nearby. We all knew there would be people in there and we also knew there was no chance they could have survived, but a whole crowd rushed over to help. There was no noise. No one was crying out for help. But we still went anyway, but we never got close. No matter how fast we were all running, no one could get there - we all stayed in the same place.
Then I found myself in a building that had been set up as a makeshift hospital and I volunteered to help. People were coming through the door on stretchers covered in blood and moaning in pain.
So that's my dream... FREAKY RIGHT?!
