Chapter Seventeen

“I wonder what that guy’s name was,” I thought out loud. I enjoyed seeing the scorn come across Luke’s face. “What do you think, Mr. Lucas?”
“Really? What’s his name?” I asked.
“Why should I tell you?” he snapped
“Well, why shouldn’t you tell me?”
Luke groaned, rolled his eyes, and turned away. “His name is Philip.”
“Ah. Philip! Sounds classy. Oh, I’m excited now.”
“For what?”
“For dinner tonight with Philip, of course. I mean, the real me is sick, and can’t go out with him, and he is an extremely attractive man. Plus, he makes you grind your teeth, and I have no idea why. But I find it amusing. So, there you have it. I am going to dinner with Philip tonight.”
“Fine,” Luke said, and without another word, he turned away from me and faced the empty hall that was the top floor of the shortest building in the city.
“Very fine,” I replied. And then I giggled silently to myself.
“What the bloody hell are you laughing about?” Luke snapped again.
“Oh, I was just thinking about Philip. Damn, I must be so much more attractive in this dimension than I am usually. I mean, if I am to score a guy like Philip. Did you see how that wavy hair falls in his eyes?”
“He was wearing glasses,” Luke said through gritted teeth.
“Yeah, his glasses. I’ve never seen a man pull off glasses like that.” I sighed loudly. “Hey, do you think I should wear something a little more slutty or classy for when I go out to dinner with Philip tonight?”
Luke groaned, so I figured that annoying him with thoughts of Philip would have to pause for a while.
So the two of us walked to the edge of the building and looked out the wall, which was actually a giant window. You know how walls can be made out of glass sometimes. We were watching the sun slowly go down as the sky turned more and mor epink.
“This is nice,” I said.
“Huh?” Luke asked.
“I mean, just sorta chillin’ here. On the top of a building. Gazing at the blazing sunset. I mean, you know, the two of us. Watching the sunset.”
“Yeah,” Luke said, actually smiling. “It is nice.”
We were quiet for some time. It was actually hard to tell how much time exactly we were quiet. As far as I knew, they had probably built almost three hundred more floors to the building before Luke spoke again.
“Shouldn’t you get ready for your date with Philip?”
I smiled to myself. “Possibly.”
Again, the silence lingered between us.
But it didn’t last for long, because suddenly, the ground began to shake again, and this time it was more violent than ever.
“Luke!” I screamed so that he could hear me. “What the bloody hell is going on?!”
“Caitlin!” I could barely hear him scream back.
“Luke!”
“Caitlin, we have to get out of here right now!” he screamed again. “Come on!”
I looked back for a brief moment and saw that the tallest buildings were the first to start to topple over into the sea. The few that didn’t fall into the sea fell onto the tiny land mass that was the island, and almost immediately started fires.
“LUKE!” I bellowed.
“COME ON, CAITLIN!”
He grabbed my wrist, and pulled me towards the elevator. He hit the button feverishly at least twenty times. He swore loudly under his breath.
“We are not going to make it with the elevator!” he screamed. “Everyone in the building is trying to get out!”
The ground continued to shake more and more, and it became nearly impossible for me to stand on my two feet without toppling over.
“WE HAVE TO GO THIS WAY!” he grabbed my hand again, and pulled me towards the stairs. We were on the top floor, how the hell were we supposed to get down onto the ground in time before the building completely collapsed.
I decided not to ask considering that I needed to save my breath for the running and panting down the stairs than asking questions: running was more important at the moment.
We went down just a few floors before the whole building jerked. I could tell it was ready to crumple down to the ground next.
“LUKE WE WON’T MAKE IT!” I screamed. “I have to tell you something before we die! Luke I—”
The building jerked again, and we were both flung to the other side of the room.
“Aha!” Luke said. “A dining table!”
“A dining table?” I repeated. “Listen, I understand we’re about to—” another jerk of the building— “but this is no time to get excited about a bloody—” one more jerk “—dining table!”
“NO no no no no!” he said. “Not like that! Because where there’s a dining table…” he pulled off the large piece of fabric that was on top of it “there is a dining cloth!”
My eyes widened. “You cannot POSSIBLY be thinking what I think you are thinking!”
“HOLD ONTO ME!”
I wrapped my hands around his neck and held on for dear life.
“LUCAS, DON’T DO THIS!”
He ran towards one of the smashed wall windows and flung himself off of it. I held on even tighter than before, if possible, and then Luke opened up the dining cloth like a parachute, and before I even realized it, we were slowly decellerating and going down slower. It was almost the speed of the elevator again. I opened my eyes and looked around as I saw the buildings continue to topple over and crash and burn and fall into the sea.”
“This is horrible…” I said quietly. The whole world was completely falling apart, and yet it all seemed completely silent.
“I don’t know who could have done this,” Luke said, just as quietly as me. “I mean… dimension hopping can cause small quakes… but nothing that would last this long or be this violent. None of the other quakes have destroyed cities… or killed so many people…”
My eyes were filled with tears, and I sobbed into Luke’s shoulder. Thankful for being alive and for being with someone as resourceful as he was, we finally hit the ground after what felt like a year of simply drifting downward.
Luke grabbed my hand and pulled me away just as another building toppled near by and burst into flames. And so the silence ended.
“COME ON! We’ve got to get out of here! We need to go to our motorcycle! LET’S GO, LET’S GO!”
Again, I didn’t ask questions, nor did I say a word, because all of my breath was gone while we were running towards the shore, where Luke’s motorcycle was waiting for us at the edge of the sea.
We hopped on it, and he revved the motor.
“WHERE ARE WE GOING TO GO?” I screamed. “We’re on an island!”
“Across the sea!” he said, revving his motorcycle one more time.