such a thing happen at all, because the Light had been so incredibly bright that it had seemingly washed away the moments before it burst into existence like the wiping of chalk from a slate, when I was on the bus headed to work and expecting nothing much to happen but for fellow passengers to cough or laugh while on their phones or to stare out the windows with blank faces watching the blurred flash of opposing traffic, completely oblivious of the event waiting to happen, seemingly oblivious of anything at all until the bus shook and floated and crashed down against the wet pavement leaving us all in silent shock and fearing for our lives, hoping we had imagined the sudden impact, hoping we were daydreaming, but we were very much awake and toppled over in the street, and I found it amazing how quickly such a thing could happen, one moment riding the creaking bus and the next avoiding the bits of broken glass threatening to slice open the palms of my hands, and I continued to make my way through the streets, occasionally stopping to watch someone stumbling blind or check my watch, as if time had retained any meaning or importance, once attempting to help an old woman who begged me to find her small dog, then answering a babbling man who continued to ask me [italics] Why did they do this? Why did they do this? [italics] over and over, following me down a street and weaving between empty stalled cars, what answer I provided I am unsure, but he seemed content with the answer and eventually abandoned me, and eventually I found myself growing tired, my arms and legs seemed to hang heavy, pulling me down towards the ground, but I had no notion of where I was among the streets twisting like the roots of trees, and I looked for a place to rest my head, somewhere with a couch or bench or, if I was truly blessed, a bed, because I knew I would not be able to walk much farther without collapsing into the water, and I passed by ruined store after ruined store, most without lights and with dark shapes shuffling within, likely customers who chose not to venture outside after the Light flooded the air, which is what I myself would have done if I had been lucky enough to be inside a building as opposed to a bus, but I was afraid to enter the buildings for fear of being trapped inside with those dark shapes, as if suddenly the whole of the human race had become dangerous and cruel, and after passing by several doorways into which I poked my head and peered around with squinted eyes, I eventually settled on what appeared to be a small coffee shop on the corner of a street that seemed marginally less flooded than the rest, and I was greeted by two men sitting on chairs near the entrance and a woman lying on a couch just above the water line with her knees pulled up nearly to her chest and her eyes closed as if she were dead, but I assumed she was sleeping as the men would have likely moved her from