Last night I was in a blissful abyss, a place where there was nothing but serenity and beauty of nature. I close my eyes and enjoy the calamity of the surroundings around me, all of the sudden the peace and quiet breaks from the screaming and yelling of people. I open my eyes and find myself in a chaotic office. There were gigantic screen hanging everywhere displaying destroyed buildings and land with hundreds of people injured. – Darkness falls – after a few seconds I find myself over hearing someone’s conversation about an attack on a near by town. I start to panic, “I need to warn those people,” I think to myself. – Again the darkness falls – All of the sudden I find myself in a beautiful valley. There are friendly people everywhere; everyone greets me with huge enthusiasm and a big smile. “Oh God! All of these people are about to get hurt. How am I going to break the news to them?” I try to calm myself down and think of ways to warn people and get them to a safe place. I know I need to take quick steps but I just don’t know how. “Over thinking won’t help you, Meera. Do something now!” My thoughts and feelings overwhelm me. – Once again darkness falls – Now I find myself in a repair shop. The owner seems to be a nice person. He walks up to me and tells me that no one believes my warning about an attack. No one will attack this place since it is not as crowded as the cities. I try to explain to him what I heard but he doesn’t believe me either. The drizzling rain starts turning into a storm. I try awfully hard to convince the guy that I am telling the truth that all of the sudden I notice the change in the direction of rain and the wind. And we spot some f16’s flying over our heads towards the town carrying some sort of container. The guy looks at me and runs to get his family. I run towards the nearest homes and gather the people. They run up towards the hill and realize that the f16’s have changed their direction and are heading our way. We all try to run in the opposite direction, I run and grab couple of toddlers and take them with me so they won’t get hurt. As I turn around to see if anyone’s left behind I notice that my family is amongst those villagers and I am holding my two cousins. The jets get closers to me. My family screams my name and my dad tells me to hurry up. All of the sudden my whole body freezes with fear – my breath is stuck in its place – I try to move but I can’t – my heart starts beating fast with the fear of death and my cousins cry – they have no idea what is going on. Oh my God, I’m going to die – the f16’s fire a missile towards the container and it explodes – I see rapidly growing flames coming my way – my heart’s beating so fast that it hurts and I try to wake myself up, I pray to God this is just a horrible dream. I pray and I pray – I try to move but I can’t. I finally break free and open my eyes…

…to the surprise it really was a dream…

…my heart was still beating really fast…

…I thanked God and got up…

Now that I look back at it, I wonder where Jack Bauer was in my dream… I wish he was there. At least I would’ve gotten to meet him before I died.