She closed her eyes and she kept them closed. She could feel the blood rushing through her veins up to her heart. She breathed in. She breathed out. She opened her eyes. She rejoiced in the cold air which blew softly on her face from the ceiling fan overhead.

She rolled over onto her stomach. She kept her hands neatly by her side and drifted off into sleep. In her dreams, she sat in a desert. A desert which stretched out in all directions forever. She did not walk this desert, she basked in the sunlight, letting the rays hit her in every spot baking her skin into a crisp golden brown.

She woke up. She sat up. She brushed her bangs to the side of her cool forehead. The fan was still on. She got up and turned it off and walked out of her room. The hall ways smelled of burning. She did not react. She walked into the kitchen black smoke came into view. She did not panic nor recoil. She walked out of the screen door through the smoke.

From outside the house she saw smoke drifting out of her small white house. Neighbors gathered outside frantically dialing 911. She walked right through the crowd. She walked the yellow line on the blacktop street. She saw no cars and no other people. She walked until she came to a bench in her favorite park. The park was heavily wooded and the trees towered over her and she enjoyed their shade.

She sat on the bench an old set of problems sitting on her brain. The strange calm which eternally ran through her blood kept circulating but her troubles were unusually present. She could not put a finger on her emotion. She never could.

A man she could not see sat next to her. She stared blankly to the invisible children playing on the vividly colored playground. She shook her wild hair behind her and closed her eyes. She did not open them until darkness fell over the world.

When this time came, she did not mind the darkness, she felt used to it. She walked the same path she had before back to her house. She stood beneath a dim streetlight as the house she once knew barely stood charred and black from fire. The calm in her ran through every capillary in her body and through her heart. She did not feel or react.

She simply kept walking.