After Disasters

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The moment the earthquake hits, Ted has a premonition: a burning sensation on his feet. Not the pins and needles from sitting cross-legged for too long, but like the restlessness of the soles after standing on the subway for an hour. Like the blood wants to burst from his skin. No blinding vision, no sudden trance — it’s not until weeks later that he realizes what the feeling was. But in the future, he won’t tell the story this way. In his version, he knows the premonition’s exact meaning when he feels it. The strange friction on his feet is a harbinger of subterranean plates, tectonic movements, earth grinding against earth, playing out on his skin, as if he were indistinguishable from the world, and the world from him. And if anyone challenges him about his predictive powers, he will simply say, But it happened. It really did.

For now, though, it’s the end of January, and the city outside is covered in a crystalline mist that fails to coalesce into snow. Soon, definitely, it will snow. But not tonight.

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