THE IDENTITY THIEF



I didn't realise when it was beginning, but it soon got everyone's attention through a violent awakening. From the rattling of an old bus on a rough road came a new frightening feeling as the stomach emitted a low rumbling sound of the body being stretched and pressured into an unnatural direction. My thoughts were of crashing. I was at the very head of the bus, where the handicap sit with their wheelchairs in a place where normal seats can be taken out for convenience. I knew the sound and the feeling from my memories. I had nothing to hold but my chair in terror as the wheels seemed to skid in all directions at once, the driver swore and tried to correct but the bus threw its weight off the road and onto its own head. It is the most unique feeling in the world, in slow motion you can see everything preparing to turn onto its side, and in fast motion you hear the screach of the crash gathering momentum and as everything explodes and overloads every sense you have. In fast motion everything is over, and slow motion takes hold as you try to understand that you were just in a crash. The bus came to a rest having flipped completely over to the right side up. Being trapped in my chair, the cutting belts had kept me safer than others as people were thrown out of their seats onto the breaking windows, the roof, and then falling onto the floor. The bus rocked on its busted wheels as it settled and I felt an enormous feeling of luck that I was conscience, in pain and therfore alive. I gasped for air like a fish gasping for water after its world had been taken away. I looked about as much as I could have, the pain in my neck I knew travelled down my paralysed spine and I was afraid of further damage if I tried to extend myself. I couldn't see anyone, not even the driver, but I could hear women, men and babies crying. A few called for names, others for help. I started crying with fear and confusion

This was the calm before the storm.

I heard the panic of the other passengers before I knew anything was happening. The moans of the helpless suddenly became screams of the hopeless. Panicked, I turned all I could to see what was behind me. But soon the fire that was eating its way through the bus came to me. It wasn't an ordinary fire, its colour was a flurescent blue that made this experience entirely supernatural, and it flickered and danced more like a stormy sea that was swallowing us whole. Because of my paraplegic condition I could not feel what others felt as it slowly covered them, but I nonetheless felt as panicked as they did. But I couldn't move, I had to sit there to scream for all I was worth. I held my arms up futiley as it rised up and up; when it reached my chest, when I was feeling it, I could feel my lungs being raped of air and my body of any warmth. It was like pins and needles and then scissors and hammers all through the thick sensation of becoming numb. When it covered my head, I felt it fill my ears and bore through my eyes to grasp my brain from the inside of my skull. And then I lost conscience.