Short Story 736p67

Flashbacks Celine Khalife 3/23/2015

As a widow was going through her pictures, she touched one and could imagine the earthquake that killed her husband, and others, changing the future.

04 Aug 2014 06:10 GMT | Environment, Humanitarian crises, Asia Pacific, China

ALJAZEERA An intense rescue operation is under way in China after an earthquake killed at least 381 people and injured thousands more, leaving scenes of devastation across a mountainous area. More than 12,000 houses collapsed and 30,000 were damaged in the quake zone in the southwestern province of Yunnan, China's official news agency Xinhua said. Soldiers on Monday stretchered the injured away from the scene in the immediate aftermath with residents fleeing as aftershocks hit. 7,000 emergency personnel, including 5,000 soldiers, police, and firefighters had been mobilised, Xinhua said on Monday, and Premier Li Keqiang was heading to the scene. Rescuers took victims to local hospitals and continued to pick through the rubble of destroyed homes in a desperate search for survivors, AFP news agency reported. The official Xinhua news agency said the epicentre of Sunday's quake was in Longtoushan town in Yunnan's Ludian County. Communications have been seriously affected and rescuers are still heading to the scene, the report said. Al Jazeera's Adrian Brown, reporting from Kunshan, China, said: "This quake has happened in a very very remote area of southwest China. "The difficulty for rescuers is going to be the time it takes to reach this area." Pictures posted online by state media showed troops stretchering people away, and bricks which had fallen off buildings damaging cars, Reuters news agency reported. Many people rushed out of buildings onto the street after the quake hit, electricity supplies were cut, and at least one school collapsed, Xinhua added. "The problem is a lot of the structures in this area are simply not quake proof. This is a very impoverished region and very remote", our correspondent reported. The US Geological Survey said the quake ed at shallow depth of less than 1 mile (1.6 km). Chinese state media said the tremors were felt most strongly Yunnan, as well as in the neighbouring provinces of Guizhou and Sichuan.

The government is sending 2,000 tents, 3,000 folding beds, 3,000 quilts and 3,000 coats to the disaster zone, the report said. Equipment brought to the area included life detection instruments and excavating tools. Ludian is home to some 265,900 people, Xinhua added. China is frequently struck by quakes in this part of the country. A quake in Sichuan in 2008 killed almost 70,000 people. A quake in the same region in 2012 killed 80 people. Earlier in the day a less severe quake struck Tibet, causing no casualties. A Ludian resident described the scene as resembling a "battlefield after bombardment", telling Xinhua: "I have never felt (such) strong tremors before. What I can see are all ruins." Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

I am Clara, and I have a lot of flash backs. This can be a problem at times because they are bad flash backs. They are not just any flashbacks, when I touch a picture I flash back to that event. I can change the future by doing something different in the past that I did not do before. There was this one time, I was looking through my pictures, and I saw the picture that my husband and I took before a big earthquake took him. The picture was taken at our honeymoon before the earthquake. We were having a grand time until the earthquake struck. It was a 7.2 earthquake so it really shook. We were at a skiing hotel, so we had to go downstairs to grab our skies. Clara said, “I need to grab something from under the hotel. I will be right back.” When I came up with what I needed, my husband was gone and I could not do anything about it. I did not feel the earthquake, so I did not know what had happened until the owner of the hotel said, “There has been an earthquake! Everybody calm down. We will be ok.” I had to go back to Oklahoma without him but I still had the picture. Then I thought,” Maybe I can flash back and save him before it is too late.” I went back and relived the whole honeymoon until the earthquake. Instead of leaving him upstairs in our hotel sweet, I took him down with me. He said,” Why do I have to come down with you?” “Just trust me,” I said, “it will be worth it.” He trusted me and we went downstairs together. This time I knew when the earthquake would come, so I told him to hold on to something. One, two, three! This time I felt the shake of the earthquake. I don’t know how I didn’t feel it before. I never knew that I could not flash to the future without the picture so now we were stuck until we got back home. This is when things started to get weird. I completely changed the future! My house was a mansion and I was living like a queen. Before I saved my husband, Jess, I lived in a shack. Apparently, Jess was a lawyer and he won every case. What he still did not know was that I can flash back and change the future. He also did not know that he temporally died. I knew that I should have told him right when I saved him but too much was going on and I forgot. When Jess got home, I told him. “Jess,” I said, “I have something to tell you. You know that earthquake that I saved you from?” “Ya.”

“Well, what you didn’t know was that I flashed back to the past. If I couldn’t do that, you would be dead.” “What! You mean that I would not be here! Why didn’t you tell me there and then?” “There was not enough time. If I told you, you would not have been alive. I had to save you.” “Wait, how did you… how did you flash back?” “That is what I was about to tell you. Whenever I touch a picture, I flash back to that time. I have to keep the picture or we are stuck there and we cannot get back. We would have to relive all of the past until we got back here.” “I am glad that you told me or I would be very confused.” Until that day on, we relived moments together. We never forgot the picture and we always had it on hand. You never know what might happen just do not stuck in the past.