Blind leading the blind

A blast shakes the bomb shelter.  Another, hard; dust rains from the ceiling.  Lights flicker, flicker, then zzzt just like that we’re in the dark. My boyfriend’s hand slips out from mine in all the commotion and I am alone, blind, scared.  

People swirl around me, talking, screaming, crying.  An eternity of being randomly jostled and bumped.  Finally, finally the emergency lights come back on.  People rush for the exit.  I fight to stand still in the stampede.  Where is he?

The overhead emergency lights are old, incandescent, a barely-remembered yellow.  Without the aggressive blue tinge of fluorescence, the world seems  transformed.  The corners harbor soft shadows. 

I’m trying to breathe, quell panic, when I spot him.  Maybe twenty feet away, near the exit, barely able to keep his feet in the streaming crowd.  Pale.  Shaken.  He visibly recoils at each touch as people stream by him. 

When his eyes meet mine I can feel his relief from where I’m standing.  “I SEE you,” he says, rushing towards me, and when I take his hand again, he is trembling.

Everyone is in black gauzy silhouette, he says. Why can he see only me?  He’s desperate to know, do I see the people in silhouette too?  Are we both dead?  Are they? Are we surrounded by ghosts, and us the only survivors? 

But no.  I see everyone just fine.   I tow him by the hand through the crowd, and he keeps his head down, shrinking into me, trying not to look directly at anyone else.

The bomb shelter is actually a tunnel, a labyrinth really, of underground hallways commonly used when the winters get cold.  I turn left, right, right, swimming upstream, away from the exits.  I am heading for my parents’ kitchen.

Ten long minutes later I emerge into a vaulted room.  A staircase winds in a lazy helix around the perimeter, and at each level opens onto a wide plateau where small groups of people are working on different parts of the cooking process.  My parents are at the very top; I can hear them arguing, something about cilantro and onions. 

Near the top of the stairs, I pause for breath, preparing myself to introduce Andrew to my parents.  We flew in from the coast last night; they’ve never met.  I look back and he’s standing a landing below me, speaking nervously to two dead goats propped against the wall, trying to make small talk.  Before I can correct him, I realize my parents have disappeared, headed down the back stairs to the basement.  Shit.

“They’re DEAD,” I hiss, and Andrew looks stricken.  “Not my PARENTS,” I say.  “Those are GOATS.”  I realize the world looks more different to him than I can imagine; it’s like he’s suddenly half-blind.  “Come here, I need you,” I say and as he reaches me I tug him toward the door at the far end of my parents’ landing.  If we hurry we can catch up to them.

Two steps down the stairs, my childhood fear of this basement journey kicks in.  It is five long steps down before you can feel the hanging metal switch that turns on the one ancient lightbulb.  I don’t understand why it’s not already on; my parents just went this way.  I reach forward, find it blind, pull.  Nothing.  I pull again.  The light clicks on, then flares and dies.  I inhale sharply, dig my fingers into Andrew’s arm. 

“Fuck,” I hiss.  “I fucking hate the dark.”  It’s weird, he tells me, but he can see everything.  He guides me through the blackness, helps me stumble down the thirty-seven stairs, while my heart beats nearly out of my chest.