Midas Touch

         "These old bones aren't what they used to be." An old woman speaks to her grandson. "They really shouldn't cut the lights out while I'm trying to walk to my room. I could hurt myself. Now you listen here Jeffrey, go find the prankster that caused this, and tell him, I want a word."
         Suddenly the ship shakes violently. The old woman is knocked off her feet and hits the ground right on her bad hip. She is immobilized. The hallway is pitch black.
         "Are you ok, grandma?" Jeffrey asks aloud, as he gropes at the air wildly trying to find her in the darkness.
         What a time for his cell phone to be dead, he thought to himself. He can't see and has no source of light and his grandmother is knocked unconscious on the floor.
         "Fuck! I need some fucking light!" Jeffrey curses the air.
         Light flashes. A loud explosion breaks the silence in the hallway. The ship shakes violently. Everything around Jeffrey is on fire. He can see again. He is also in the worst pain of his life.
         Jeffrey is trapped beneath a large piece of burning shrapnel. He would scream, but he is winded from the force of the explosion that pinned him to the ground. He looks around and sees his grandmother laying on the ground with burns all over her body and fire all around her. If she isn't dead, then there surely wasn't much time left to save her.
         Jeffrey is pinned only by his arm, that was nearly severed by the shrapnel. The bone was broken and protruding from his skin and most of the muscle was even ripped apart. He tried to lift the shrapnel off of him with his other hand, but failed. He looked over at his grandmother and pleaded for the strength to free himself.
         Jeffrey closed his eyes, and in the most painful motion of his life, he pulled his body away from the shrapnel. Surely the Earth had heard worse gut wrenching, terrible screams in its long life, but not often. His arm from halfway down his forearm and down, stayed beneath the shrapnel. Jeffrey had just ripped his own arm off for his survival.
         He was bleeding profusely and would soon be dead if he did not act quick. He knew from survival shows that he would have to cauterize the womb. He stuck his newly amputated arm in the fire, that burned on top of the shrapnel, and screamed in agony.
         He looked over at his grandmother and could see that she was dead. Her head had been blown open by the force of the explosion. As he limped away from the fire, with nothing more than the desire to live, he questioned why he had survived. He questioned if things could have been any worse...