She considered tapping on the nearest table leg with a chunk of brick in the hopes that someone might hear the sound, but couldn’t bring herself to do it, fearing that the slightest touch would bring the roof crashing down upon her.

Christine had always expected her death to be ironic. Prior to taking refuge from an avalanche of cinder blocks under a folding table on the Israeli/Syrian border, she had often imagined being nibbled to death by rabid squirrels while on the way to a PETA rally, or having a massive coronary while playing Hearts in the cardiac ward of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart hospital on Valentine’s Day. She vaguely suspected that the only reason she was still alive now was that the Universe was waiting to finish her off until it had come up with a better punch line.

She didn’t pretend to know much about the Universe, but one thing she knew was that it had a pretty good sense of humor. She was also pretty certain that she was something of a favorite target for the Universe’s new material. Death by folding table was a decent gag, she thought, but not really worthy of the Universe. Better than slipping to one’s death on a banana peel, but not by much. She definitely preferred some of the Universe’s earlier work.

She tried to distance herself from her circumstances and imagine how funny it would be to a far-off observer – perhaps an elderly gentleman in Akron, Ohio fifty years from now – if she were to tap on the table leg in hopes of drawing attention to her plight, only to cause the table to collapse, delivering a load of three thousand pounds of bricks crashing down upon a plucky brunette with green eyes and $180 in unpaid parking tickets in Glendale. Still not really Universe material, she thought. But then maybe she just didn’t get it.

The air was becoming muggy but the dust refused to settle, and between the lack of oxygen and the increasing pain in her head, she was finding it more and more difficult to make sense of the Universe’s setup. It was difficult to remember, in fact, whether she wanted her situation to be funny or not, and who the gentleman in Akron was, and why he wasn’t helping her out with this whole deal rather than just sitting there staring at her and wondering if maybe there wasn’t something better on Pay-Per-View.

While all of these semi-coherent notions bobbed about her head, she noticed movement through cracks in the rubble. It was a person, clawing toward her, clearing the rubble, it seemed, with his or her bare hands. Blindingly bright light streamed through the dusty air. The figure was a silhouette in reverse, sunlight streaming through its elegant frame.

Strange, she thought, her impeccable sense of direction still functioning even as she slipped back into unconsciousness, the sun isn’t ordinarily to the north.

SEVEN