He stands, fading under the flaming red sky, which streaks the river below with shades of
orange and pink and yellow. Boats drift behind him, peacefully unaware, and his fellow
countrymen amble down the bridge he has found himself on. The low sounds of their muttering and the quiet crashing of the waves are as unknown to him as the tomorrow that awaits him.
He stands staring, unable even to scream— transfixed by horror, bound in agony. His eyes are brutally wide, his hands unable to shield them. They hover uselessly. He can not look away. The sky, for an instant burning scarlet, fills with grey. His hands fall and the world comes crashing down.
There are sirens now. The murmurs behind him have climaxed to a roar, but he hears only the impact. Aluminum against glass, and then deafening silence. Again, and again, and again, it strikes. It won’t leave his head. He’s never known something so thunderous before. A sound so full of anguish, of death. He will feel it in his bones until the day he dies.
The vessels below have been, in one cataclysmic moment, restored to their biblical purpose. Each fishing craft, ferry, and ship is a lifeboat. There are too many people to carry, and yet there are two thousand nine hundred and ninety six seats that will never be filled.
His sense of safety has shattered in an instant, like the windows and the floors and the families that will never be whole again. He steps back. There are people coming towards him now. They are in shades of blue, of grey, of black. He breathes in, out. His ears ring. Again, and again, and again. The air is thick, impenetrable. He turns to run, but there is nowhere to go. So he walks with the crowd, towards oblivion.
The bridge becomes a river of its own, rushing in time with the one beneath, and the man is swept along in the current. Smoke settles on his ashen skin, on his weather-beaten overcoat. He does not notice. The sun, somehow, shines bright above them. He coughs. He is not the only one. It strikes. Again, and again, and again.