The world doesn’t give a damn what we feel or want. Only what we are, and what we do. - Steven Barnes

It was on one of those terrible, fever-clouded days when the serpent beneath southern California awoke. It stretched from slumber, shedding its skin, the screams of its wrath heard in the shriek of tortured steel, of splintering wood and concrete.
Maxine was torn from her slumber by the moans of the dying and the awful sound of her ramshackle apartment shifting on its foundations. “Earthquake!” She pulled herself from the bed, stumbled from her building into the street, and watched the lurching structures and snapping powerlines, the buckling sidewalks and exploding water mains, as a seismic debt long outstanding came due.

He had no choice. And that one thing turned Heaven into Hell.

And your life is ruined because you tried to do the Right Thing. Join the club honey—guess what, there are a few more of us out here who’ve had our brains beaten our with our own dreams.