My greatest fears...

(I should note that this is still a work in progress. I decide to flesh it out a little more.)

An earthquake will hit Seattle and I'll be injured to the point that I'd be unable to save anyone else...

I awake to the motion, ripples in the walls. The entire house shakes as if Arges was lifting the house like a snow globe. Painting fall from their hooks and novels tumble to the carpeted ground before it begins to give way entirely. It slowly drops away like a puzzle in reverse. I grasp the trembling walls for safety but there is none to be had. My body is captured in the ruble. A searing pain shoots up from both my legs and my right wrist. I struggle to remove the sheet rock and asbestos holding me down. My throat burns with debris. I can feel blood slowly draining from my many wounds. Suddenly the ground is still. An eerie presence enters the scene. In the distance I can hear cries of agony. The sound continues to grow, with every passing minute a new voice joins the choir. I exhaust myself trying to break free before I slump down in defeat. My watering eyes begin to lose focus and all I can hear is a young girl, “Help me”.

I'll never meet God...

I can see the smile of old friends and know how their houses smelled. I remember lying on the cement sidewalk along a strip mall when she reached down, gave me my first kiss, and I felt nothing. I drive a car through a long dark night in the desert where I want nothing more than to be home. I’m lying in my bed at home writing long odes to no one. My eyes grow heavy as a lack of sleep drags me closely to Hades. I watch a young man in a white suit stands on the seawall tempting the waves. I’m in a bar with all my closest friends celebrating an anniversary of someone. I’m in the emergency room surrounded in my own blood while no one responds to my calls for help. I die and the one person I wanted most never came.

I work the same job for the rest of my life...

Each morning I wake at 7:28am. The anchors on the morning news have something new to say but the same tired old face. I walk to the bus stop and board the same bus as the day before, greeted by the same driver in the exact same way. I arrive at the office and immediately reach for a mug of coffee. I sit at my desk and answer the phone. No one new ever calls. For lunch I eat a turkey sandwich on whole grain bread; only one slice of turkey left, I’ll have to get more. I leave work at 5:32pm. I take the same bus home that I took yesterday, greeted by the same driver in the exact same way. I get home and watch some TV. Simpsons, Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy. As the prime time programming begins I wonder if things could ever be different. Then I set my alarm for 7:28am.

That everything I'm doing in my life to help fight the effects of climate change are all for not and I'll spend the rest of my life paying the price for faults of past generations...

The water continues to rise. It’s now above the recycling bins. Panic has long passed. We knew this was coming. I remove all of the compact fluorescent light bulbs from their sockets in hopes that they aid in keeping my makeshift raft afloat. The compost has mixed into the permanent deluge and has started to smell. There hasn’t been any food for days. As I strap the bulbs to the bottom of the raft my son pulls on my Goodwill jeans, “Daddy, did it always used to be like this?” I didn’t have the heart to tell him it didn’t.

I always live in Seattle...

The people I care about become lost and I have no ways of finding them...

After the dust settles I realize that I’m alone. My father, who was right next to me before, is nowhere to be found. My sister has vanished. My brother gone. All my friends have scattered the continents. I start off towards the east certain they are near. I cross the Cascades and the Rockies. I trek across the great expanses of the Midwest and through the densely populated cities of the east coast. After swimming the Atlantic I try Stonehenge and Paris. The Coliseum and the Parthenon. Tripoli and Baghdad. Somewhere along the shores of the Ganges a priest approaches me. “You have the eyes of a wanderer,” he said softly. “I search because there is nothing else I can do.”

I die outside of the Pacific Northwest...

I never dream again...

I'll die and have done nothing worthy of remembrance and all meaning to my life will have vanished before they even get me to the crematory...