Today was one of the scariest days of my life. It was a day of forgetting and remembering, of sadness and relief, of life and death. Because today, everything was alike, but nothing was the same.

I sat on my chair, eager to learn, waiting for Dax to acknowledge my raised hand and answer my question. And through the commotion in the room, and the voices that played around with our ears, came a blast. One which sounded like a roaring hammer striking an iron wall. But I asked away. It was a philosophical question, deep and strange like all other philosophical questions but I cannot remember what my question was due to this deadly affair.

Dax was to answer with a philosophical answer, bleak and peu clear as my question was. At the middle of his excitingly dreary speech, there it was. The second blast. Coming from another direction as the first one. About 50 metres away. Suddenly, the lights went out. And new, unknown lights went on. Blinking lights, tiny ones, accompanied by sirens.

Everyone was shocked. Questions started flashing through Dax's emotionless eyes, as he stood up in symphony with the rest of the worried fellows, who were now scurrying their possessions into their bags. Shouting, screaming, gossiping. Ideas sprouted out of everyone's mouths. But these were broken by a near silent call of silence and calmness.

We walked out of the room with stocked up emotions rattling in our minds as I wandered my eyes across the hallway looking at the other classes. They were like us, scared.

The crowd moved down the stairs, like gazelle, knowing of danger, yet not where it is. Our eyes darted across one another, trying to read the telepathic messages each one of us were sending, and listening to the voices, silenced into whispers by the chorus of sounds and verbs and and other kinds of words.

We reached the second floor, trapped by one main question: to delve the innards of the building and go out the back, or scurry to the main exit. Our eyes rolled to the left, then to the right, abused and confused by this fork shaped dilemma. That was until a sound of both victory and doom. The third explosion, louder and nearer than ever before. We were close to the boom.

So we decided to take the right and delve down to the basement through the back door. Yet victory was not in my mind. It was a shape. The shape became a person. The person, a woman. The woman, Amanda. Her image wrestled my mind, my imaginations, my emotion. I could not stop thinking about her, or what had happened. If my memory and sound depiction served me right, she was exactly where the sound came from.

I prophesied and imagined. I was shaken with my knees on the ground. Tears spread across my face, quenching the heat rash from the flames which surrounded me. And in my arms, sweet as ever, was the burnt corpse of Amanda, peaceful, beautiful, and covered in the dust of ground cement just as I was. Around us were the burning halls and trees of Plaza V, dancing on our behalf.

The crowd was already steps away from the exit. We heard the final blast, and it was right beside us, in the parking lot. Cars screamed and cried their horns out. They silenced the officer just ahead of us, waving his hand violently to and fro, us to the exit.

Then came the stampede. We all ran, irrational, emotional. We squeezed two by two through the turnstiles, Tripping on stairs, Looking back at our building as Sodom and Gomorra, collapsing into the salty dust from whence we were.

As I stepped out, I remembered the star of my worries, Amanda. I remembered my visions, my sorrows, her death. I reached into my pocket and browsed my directory for her name as if it was instinct. I pressed the little green phone and listened to the ringing of her phone, repeating, repeating.

Then, the repeating stopped. Following it was silence. A silence of relief. She greeted me and called my name. It was a sound sweeter than honey. Sweeter than honey. My mouth fumbled at her words of affirmation. All I could say was "Oh God" and randomly sounding sighs. My weight was pulled off.

We hung up on each other as I ran to the other side of the building as a galloping horse, stabbed by spokes, dodging every telephone post, electric box, and fire hydrant I could find. As I passed the first corner, my heart raised. Second corner, my heart raised. By the time I reached the opposite crowd, my lungs and heart started to seize.

I was several feet away from them. My vision teleported from person to person, head to head, hair to hair. My heart roared as a lion.

And there she was, safe, charless, sweet. She looked majestic, as a fawn would feed her young, covered with the bushes and fruits. I stared. Seconds became years.

As soon as my heart relaxed, it raced again. It raced with me, and the ribbon was my favored friend, my first friend, my constant.

I reached her, closing my arms, misting my eyes. I took her to my chest and I leaned my head on hers. And time stopped. We were the only people in the world. She was the only person in the world. It was bliss. Sweet, poisonous bliss.

After we let go, we noticed the tarpaulin on the fire truck, "Fire Awareness Month 2008." My soul would have raged in fury, but it was too focused on the girl in my arms. I felt confused.

And lo and behold, the fat fire inspector, jolly, smiling at my horror.