Wow, here's one that gives away a bit of where I live and that I must have written this in my teens or early 20s as it is very 'perfect situation' type of bad writing. There is promise of a decent story, but the perfect-ness of where it is at and the details would need some serious re-working...this is a junker...I have no desire to build upon it or to fix it up....
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The first indication was when the lights in her lecture class died and then came back on. The rest of the class paid it no attention, but she had a bad feeling about it. And though she kept her eyes open, looking for another, the next would not appear for several months, at a time when she couldn't even remember there having been a first.
The earthquake started when I while I was running for the doorway. I knew it was coming before the shockwaves even reached us, I've always known when the earthquakes were coming. An adaptation that comes from living on the Pacific Rim as I do. But although I knew it was coming, I had no idea until it hit how bad things would end up. once it did hit, I knew something was wrong, the earthquake wasn't coming from across the land as usual, it was coming up from below us, from in the earth. My sister realized this too and when she looked at me, there was pure terror in her eyes. We knew, this one wasn't gonna end anytime soon and we had to get out of there, immediately.
It wasn't any better outside, but at least it wasn't any worse. More and more families joined us and for the next few hours there was nothing to do but huddle together and watch our homes fall apart before our eyes. Maybe they should have put "Built to withstand all Ground Quakes" instead of Earth Quakes on the buyer's lease. Compared to this, all the earthquakes we'd been through were nothing. That brings us to where we are now, taking a beak from shifting through the rubble that was our house. Mom and Dad are somewhere halfway across the continent and we're all waiting for the next round of quaking. It is coming...
"I can feel it," my sister looked up at me from her seat on what use to be our dryer and immediately began to scramble to her safe spot, a solid niche among the rubble. We both had one, padded with blankets and pillows, we could safely sleep through the quakes now. Some of our friends had followed our example and when felt the coming trembles, scrambled also for their 'nests'. From my seat I close the journal I had found and began to search through the pile of stuff I had rescued. My favorite teddy bear sat in my lap as I began to shake dust and grime out of the piled clothes, books, and trinkets. Keeping myself busy I finally sat back with a knitting project I'd uncovered and sat to watch for anything new.
After we'd discovered how to predict and deal with the quakes, they very quickly became very boring. We were lucky, it didn't look like it was going to rain. Our neighborhood had also been lucky as the worst injuries had only been minor scratches and bruises. We knew that other parts of our town had not been so lucky.
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