Sara woke with bleary eyes and a foggy head, slumped over something hard. Her desk. Crap!

Sara sat up in a panic. Not because she was afraid of getting caught sleeping in class. It didn’t matter what Mr Graham thought. No, she’d been resting her forehead against the old wooden desk, crumpling her skin into ugly red lines. Sara raised her hand to feel the inevitable wrinkles gouged into her head. Froze mid-motion. Why bother? Hadn’t she stopped caring about this sort of thing? Had told herself she didn’t care. A convincing lie. Still, something didn’t feel right.

Sara glanced at the clock above the interactive whiteboard. 12:13. What day was it? The analogue clock refused to give any answers. It better not be Thursday. Sara had promised herself she wouldn’t let herself be here, in this class, on Thursday. Maybe she’d gone and told herself another one. Another lie.

‘Does anyone remember,’ Mr Graham asked as he drew a lasso around a line of numbers queued up in square formation on the board. ‘The German mathematician responsible for this diagonal argument? No? That’s okay. We only talked about it yesterday.’

Sara wondered why she’d come to school again. To graduate in a few months and then what? Study for a degree she didn’t care about and then become a teacher like Mr Graham, making snide remarks to teenagers by the age of 25.

Graham sighed. He was good at that. ‘It was Cantor. I suppose this means none of you did the reading I assigned for homework either?’

Sara swivelled her gaze before Mr Graham could make eye contact. She avoided glancing at her classmates. There was no way she was looking at them, not if she didn’t have to. Instead, Sara stared at the window. Her seat was right next to it, so at least she could enjoy the ridiculously good view her school offered. They were high up on a hill that overlooked the city’s concrete-strewn mass stretching far into the distance. She could even make out the clump of skyscrapers huddled in the city centre. Little distant rectangles that wobbled in the afternoon sun.

Wobbled? That wasn’t right.

Sara leant towards the pane of glass, squinting at the faraway towers swaying back and forth. Except now it wasn’t just those buildings. The apartment blocks and suburban houses closer to their school had also begun to move, as if all they were all biscuits on a tray being shaken by a giant. And the tremor was still advancing at breakneck speed, directly towards-

Sara clutched her desk with both hands as the floor, walls, everything, began to move. The wood beneath Sara’s hands jerked with violent vigour and she let go of the desk, standing as the desk’s edge bashed against her leg. Someone behind her screamed. No one else made a sound, all too shocked by the sudden vibrations that only seemed to be getting stronger with every second. Sara looked around her, throat suddenly tight. The boy next to her couldn’t have been more than a few steps away, yet it was as if she was looking at him from the end of a long tunnel as everything shrank before her.

How long had it been? Only a few seconds must have passed but it felt as if the tremor had been tossing them about for a full minute, as if they were stacks of jelly stuck to a trembling plate.

Above the strange humming sound all around her, Sara thought she could hear a crack, and then she saw one, a black line at the end of her tunnelled vision, strewn across the concrete wall. She looked outside the window again. Couldn’t tell if the buildings outside were coming down or if her own shaking head was making it seem like that.

‘Mr Graham!’ a girl shouted from the front of the room, his voice weirdly distorted by the vibrations in the air. ‘What do we do? Hide under the desks?’

‘Screw that,’ Graham shouted. He’d pressed himself against the wall, arms splayed flat across the whiteboard. His wide eyes flicked upwards and Sara followed his panicked gaze to the web of cracks in the ceiling, spreading out across the stippled surface. It was like so many splinters in a sheet of ice, getting ready to break and drop a frozen lake on top of their heads.

‘Run you little idiots!’ Mr Graham shouted, running out the door. Seriously? Sara had suspected Graham of being a bit anxious behind his false bravado but never this much of a bloody coward.

Without their teacher, it only took a second for the panic to kick in. The scraping of chair legs resounded as everyone surged towards the door. Sara started to follow, yelping as she was shoved to the floor by a stray arm. She didn’t see who was responsible amongst the blur of navy uniforms rushing past. Sara picked herself up and ran for the door, struggling to keep a straight course. How was everything still shaking? Earthquakes didn’t go on for this long, did they?

Sara made it through the door and turned a corner. Her school was a small one, and she could already see the main exit ahead where the rest of her class had already made it. She picked up her pace as plaster began to crumble from the ceiling, the trophy cabinets along the hall swaying back and forth like angry beasts. This had to be a dream. There was no way-

Something skidded under Sara’s shoe. The air in her lungs left her as Sara lifted her arms and crashed to the floor. She pressed her hands against the rumbling ground and pushed. Hissed, as a wave of pain shot through her right arm. She twisted her arm and felt her next breath stop short.

A sharp, jagged piece of metal had dropped from the ceiling to the floor and embedded itself into her arm where she’d fallen, gouging a fresh pink line along her forearm. It had ripped right through her blazer sleeve and the pale blue shirt beneath which was rapidly turning red as blood spread along the gash. Sara gripped the metal and gave it a tug. The numbness along her arm suddenly flared with pain. Sara quickly pulled back her hand as if she’d touched a hot stove, leaving the metal in her arm. This was no dream.

Sara stood, one hand clutching her bloody arm, as she stumbled towards the door before any more of the building could come down on her. Outside, shocked students and teachers were standing around in the tiny courtyard in front of the school, spilling out onto the street. More students were running off onto the road, amongst the crowds and traffic that had come to a standstill. Sara spotted the headmistress, Mrs Hayloft, in front of the crowd, trying and failing to call her pupils into orderly formation. No way was Sara going to line up amongst her classmates during this mess.

She turned and started to half-walk, half-run in the direction of her house. It was only a fifteen-minute walk. She might make it in time before…before what? This shaking had to stop eventually, didn’t it? Although it only seemed to be getting worse with every moment.

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A huge crash echoed across the street as an apartment block gave up its fight against the tremor and caved in on itself. The people around Sara, school students and regular people alike, picked up their pace, and Sara felt compelled to copy them though she had no idea why. Where could they find safety in the midst of all this?

Sara struggled to breathe with all the ash and dirt suddenly clogging the air. Her arm had started to throb and the running was only making it worse. She squeezed her way out of the stream of running bodies and onto the pavement, perilously close to the collapsing buildings. The throb in her arm was relentless and Sara realised her pounding heart was to blame. She looked down at her right hand and a wave of nausea hit as she gazed at the blood-drenched sight.

Sara’s feet had grown numb with the constant movement beneath them, her ears desensitised to the sound of buildings collapsing all around. She felt confused, not by the quake, but by the sudden fear gripping her. She was going to die, and so was everyone else, but why did she care? This was what she had wanted, wasn't it?

A hot tear escaped from Sara’s eye, rolling down her dirty cheek. Right then, all she wanted to do was see her family.

‘Would you look at this mess.’

Sara turned her head towards the nearby man who’d spoken to her. He was old, really old, with a white goatee and a wrinkly turtle face. Unlike the sea of horrified faces passing by, the man simply looked fed up. He pointed at a nearby slope of rubble. ‘I just paid off my mortgage and this happens. Typical.’

‘Why do you care?’ Sara shouted back at the old grouch. She held up her disfigured arm, despite the sting it caused. ‘Don’t we have bigger things to worry about?’

The man tutted. ‘It’s not all about you, you know.’

Sara stumbled as the tremor strengthened once again. There was a resounding crack as a nearby car on the road disappeared, dropped into the crevice that had suddenly split the street in two.

Sara took a step back, staring aghast at the new gorge as it continued to grow as if by magic, carving a valley through the tarmac. A minivan a few meters from Sara teetered on the edge of the new cliff before tipping over, its bottom vanishing into the wide gap. She could hear no crash as the vehicle was swallowed up by the earth’s depths.

A scream from the other side of the gorge made Sara look back across the street. At first, she guessed the shriek had come from the cloaked figure stood next to the collapsing buildings, but then she spotted a woman much closer to the fault’s edge. She was gesturing wildly with her arms, a terrified look on her face. ‘Georgie, don’t come here. Stay away!’

Sara followed the direction of the woman’s gestures and saw a toddler on her side of the crack. Tears were streaming down his face as he wailed, staggering blindly towards his mother. Headed straight for the drop between them.

Sara gritted her teeth. Stretched out her good arm, but her feet wouldn’t move. Her body was frozen in place. It didn’t want to save the child any more than she did. He was nearly at the end of the tarmac. It was too dangerous for her to go near him, and surely someone else would save the child anyway. No one had to know she’d stood there doing nothing.

‘Please!’ The woman had spotted Sara. ‘For God’s sake stop him.’

Damn. No way to hide now. Sara ran forward, cursing herself for how stupid she was being, telling herself not to think about the unseen drop she was rushing towards. She scooped up the toddler just as his foot went over the brink, yanking him back from the edge.

Sara turned. Fresh tears welled in her eyes as the pain in her mangled arm from holding the heavy child became unbearable. The old man was coming forward to help. Sara took a step towards him.

Then the next tremor hit. There was a dreadful groan under her feet as the ground gave way beneath her. Sara gasped as she felt her stomach lurch and chest constrict, her heart stop, as the world fell apart.

Without thinking, Sara threw the child at the man’s running figure which was starting to tilt further and further away. The momentum of the throw propelled Sara further into the gap, deeper into the empty space. As she fell, the people and the city vanished, replaced by brown soil, layers of clay, and an ever-narrowing strip of sky. The valley of earth around her grew darker and darker. Sara was speeding up with every moment, air whistling in her ears, as she whipped past unseen rock. All Sara could think was that she didn’t want this. She’d been wrong. She didn’t want to-

Sara’s head bucked forward and everything went black.

***

Sara woke with bleary eyes and a foggy head, slumped over something hard. She must have hit her head and passed out from the fall. No. There was no way she could have survived a fall like that. She must be dead! Sara sat up in a panic. Realised she was sitting on a chair…at her desk.

Sara blinked the mist out of her eyes as she looked around her classroom, the very same that had been crumbling to pieces minutes ago. She looked above her head. The ceiling was back to its normal, unbroken expanse of white. So, the earthquake had been a dream? But the metal in her arm had felt so real.

Sara looked back down to her forearm. It was fine. Even her navy sleeve was back in one piece. She tried to lift her arm for a closer inspection but found her hands locked in place to the desk, her fingers white where they clutched at the wood. The world was no longer shaking, but she was, every part of her clinging tight to the wonderfully still wood. It was still with her, that sensation of the never-ending plunge into the earth’s heart.

Something rose in Sara’s throat. She quickly closed her mouth, tasting bile on her tongue. Tried swallowing the wretched stuff. Tried breathing. Tried to think of anything other than the hell she’d just gone through. Was she mad, conjuring up something as vivid as that in her sleep?

Sara scanned the classmates closest to her and was met with the usual mixture of boredom and indifference. Great. Nobody else had suffered a visionary episode of the world ending in the middle of class. Just crazy Sara. Another thing to set her apart. Hopefully no one had noticed her sudden upright jolt.

‘Does anyone remember,’ Mr Graham asked as he drew a lasso around a line of numbers on the board. ‘The German mathematician responsible for this diagonal argument?’

Sara frowned. That was strange. Graham had used the same question in her dream. And he had been drawing on the same set of numbers. Sara’s next thought was a really stupid one, but it wouldn’t hurt to check anyway.

Mr Graham seemed shocked when he saw the raised hand. ‘Yes, Sara?’

‘Was it Cantor?’

‘Spot on,’ Graham clapped his hands together, face beaming. ‘Good work Sara. I’ve always said you’re going to go far, haven’t I?’

‘No you haven’t,’ one of the boys at the front said.

‘Shut up Tyler.’

Sara lowered her hand, too dumbstruck to care about the inevitable eye-roll Tracy would be giving her friends right now. This was the same lesson.

Sara looked at the clock above the whiteboard. 12:14. Even that was identical. She wasn’t stuck in another dream, was she? Sara clutched at her arm with her free, trembling hand. This couldn’t be…real?

Sara could now feel the frantic beatings of her heart, the sleeve beneath her palm damp with sweat. She swivelled her eyes from the clock that had just struck 12:15, to the city below. She squinted at the cluster of skyscrapers, waiting for the first wobble. The first sign of the imminent quake.

Nothing.

Sara’s breaths slowed as the buildings remained stationary. No tremor. No piercing metal or endless fall. She was safe.

A sudden, tremendous bang bellowed through the skies, carrying a shockwave that rattled the window next to Sara’s desk. Mr Graham trailed off his lecture as Sara sensed everyone in the room look towards the windows and the source of the commotion. She moved her gaze, slowly, scared of what she would find. As she took in the skies and the momentous sight gathering above them, Sara realised she was anything but safe.

The method may have changed, but it was happening again. The world about to end.