Five to noon, the power plant exploded.

My immediate reaction was to pack your shit and get the fuck out as soon as possible, but just as panic can spread like a deadly disease in a crowd, everybody else in the room seemed to already have accepted their fate. My instictive urge to escape faded as if they had severed a part of me, the only living part left, and drowned it into a bucket:

My mother's inner survivalist was nowhere to be found, and Bill Nighly from Guest House Paradiso had put on the most cheerful face he could find; the others didn't seem to have a clue about what was going on.

After what seemed a lifetime, we climbed into a tiny navy blue car and drove. Instead of driving away, we drove straight to the edge of town where the plant was. It was dark and snowy outside. Everybody else was driving in the opposite direction. I couldn't get myself to say a word and it wasn't due to being paralyzed by fear of dying. I simply couldn't tell if the man behind the wheel was a fucking idiot simultaneously hoping there was a good reason for this. The reason? We pulled over next to a thick concrete wall built on the other side of the river next to the power plant: a safety zone. Inside we found an old school friend of mine and a baby, abandoned.

I didn't know what I was doing. I walked through the tunnel we were in, opened the door at the other end and stared at the disaster area across the river. It seemed like a million miles away, and it was five to noon again, and there was an explosion that brightened up the sky with a mushroom cloud that followed. As I focused to see how bad the damage was, the power plant seemed to get closer until it was at a walking distance. I saw electric pulps of what I assumed to be some sort of radioactive waste come out of the cracks in the wall; like green webs of electricity with a life of their own diving into the river. The water wasn't drinkable. How long would we have to stay here? We didn't have any food.

Quickly closing the door behind me confused about how the explosion happened now while I had been informed it had already happened when we were still at home, I walked back to my family and the man who was there without any reason. None of the questions I posed got a definitive answer, and it seemed like a joke when I pointed out that standing next to a wall made entirely of glass gave us no real shelter.

The abandoned baby was blisfully ignorant about what was going on, but as the explosions outside made the tunnel tremble my mother held it and tried to calm it down as I could see something starting to grow on the baby's chest, beneath its clothes. It was going to die, and my helplessness took the shape of anger as nobody was doing anything.

Suddenly, we were outside, trying to cross the river to get to the power plant. Why; I had no idea, but somehow my mother had ended up in the river and as she tried getting out, one of the seemingly living electric webs caught her and I was sure she would die before getting out, but I still couldn't look away. With her floating lifeless, face in the water, almost ashore, I turned around to find my brother in the water and tried to convince him to get out, but it was like we were in two different TV shows and I was on mute.

Back in our living room. Everybody was alive again. Five to noon. Take two. This time; no. We weren't going to drive in the wrong direction. If I came to survive without dying from cancer or poisoning, I'd become a stand-up comedian. "If this is point A and we're here, and this is point B where the nuclear power plant is, and all we need to do is stay at a 2-3 minute drive from it to stay safe, why are we driving towards it instead of away from it?" (Crowd laughs; I know, worst joke ever.)

In the car again. I don't know where we're driving anymore, but I feel a desperate need to leave this place and the need pours out in a stream of words; the list of reasons to leave grows as the last reason(s) I had to stay is wiped out by a wave of tumors. At this point I'm ready to consider marriage with a man I've never met, until I am informed it would cost me more than I can afford.