The End Came

Nick Silverpen:

A Sense of Finality

And there was some satisfaction of being finished, fulfilling the task to its completion. Something felt good about having the entire job done, to see everything in order, whole and orderly. The chaos had been tiring, and all I wanted was to be done. Looking over the dining room, I smiled to Kate as she wrapped the cord of the vacuum in a final coil before stowing it in the closet.

With goodbyes said, I walked out the door, a feeling of pride in my chest. Though it had been a late start this summer, I had done my duty well. My body slumped as I stumbled out of the restaurant, and I climbed in my car, a chuckle as I sat in the darkness. I threw my phone in the glove compartment, and turned the ignition on, pulling out of the employee driveway.

I zoomed out of the neighborhood, through the backstreets of the island. A crumpled list lay in my fist, and I chuckled. All those shifts, fifteen shifts in ten days, they were done, and I was done. No longer would I have to come here for work. I could relax, and do what I wanted in the last fleeting days before leaving for college. The radio was left off, feeling that peace of completion as I gassed the car forward. A pocket full of money, a good sense of work ethic, I had done my job. Flicking the turn signal on, the car was turned onto the main boulevard. And as I went up that bridge, looking into the stars, I laughed, on top of the world as I passed the peak of the structure. They were bright tonight, and the darkness around me grew more complete as I left a world of streetlights behind. Down the bridge I steered the car, onto the dark highway, and I was gone.

Aimee/Aderia:

“Don’t make me go! Don’t make me!” Amelia clawed at her mother’s arm, squealing like there was no tomorrow. “I’ll die! Mommy!!”

Amelia’s mother rolled her eyes, reaching down to fix her daughter’s round and wire glasses. “Stop being such a drama queen.”

“But Mom!!” The tiny ten year old crawled over the waiting chair’s arm onto her mother’s lap. Even though she was small, she wasn’t small enough to fit comfortably into her mother’s lap anymore.

“For mercy’s sake, Amelia! It’s a booster shot. Be a big girl,” her mother shifted so Amelia could half sit on her lap, half lean on the arm of the chair.

“I don’t like shots! They hurt!!” she protested.

“It builds character, my dear. And immunity.”

Amelia tried turning around to face her mother and better plead her case, but again, she was growing too big. She let out a panicked squeak as she began to fall backwards to the floor. Her mother grabbed her wrist, preventing anything unfortunate or more embarrassing from happening.

Springing up to smooth her jumper, Amelia glared at her mother. “If I don’t survive…” she trailed off in what she thought was a threatening tone of voice.

“Amelia?” A nurse poked her head into the waiting room.

The little girl turned to her mother with a look of utter horror on her face.

“It’s not the end of the world. Don’t worry. I’ll go with you.” Her mother grabbed her hand and practically dragged her through the doors.

***
Not even ten minutes later, Amelia skipped out of the doctor’s office with a new Justin Beiber band-aid and a blue raspberry lollipop. No, it wasn’t actually that bad, she had told her mother, and now it was time to go out last minute Christmas shopping for Grandma and Grandpa.

And then the world ended.

 Will/Tolkien:

The Trumpet

When the trumpet sounded, we left our homes and went to watch. All our bickering was over—all our greed, our avarice. It was suddenly worth so little in the face of the coming end. The trumpet echoed over field and mountain, from the city to the waste, and into every corner of the groaning earth. Birds scattered across the sky, and the beasts of the field fled to their hollows, and far below, the dark things stirred and awakened, exulting.

The stones of the mighty causeway upon which we travelled had been laid down long ago by the giants of the earth, bound by their oaths to the gods. Their sleeping forms lay sprawled across the land on either side, clothed with trees and green grass. The fire would soon wake them if the trumpet did not. It was louder now: splitting the clouds above us as the mass of humanity made its way down the track. Down toward the mountain of the gods. There we would watch. There we would be safe. So we thought.

A hand gripped my arm as I trudged onward, head down. I turned and saw a wrinkled face, a gray beard, a one-eyed gaze piercing me. The old man leaned upon a twisted stick. He looked weak, and I stooped to support him. Suddenly his grip tightened, and I felt the strength in his fingers.

“My time is done, lad,” he rasped in my ear. “The trumpet sounds for me.”

“Surely not yet, old one,” I replied and tried to smile, but he shook his gray head. His one eye looked distant.

“The trumpet sounds, and death is blowing upon it. Its jaws are wide, and soon I must fall into those jaws...”

He stumbled again and sank to the ground. I knelt with him as the stream of humanity trudged around us. He fixed me with his good eye once more, and now a smile played round his mouth.

“My thanks for your kindness, lad but go now,” he said. “I’ll rest here and wait. My time is done, but yours isn’t. Only remember my words, when the jaws open wide for me. Seek the darkness when the fire comes. She’ll wait for you. She will.”

He sighed and pushed me away, clutching his stick, and the press of bodies carried me along the causeway, wondering...

Soon the pillars of stone rose before us, and the high ridge, white as bone, that sheltered the earth from the light of heaven. We camped there, and at last looked back on the lands we’d left behind to follow the call of the horns of heaven. The end was a terrible thing to look upon.

On one hand came the hordes of the unfettered dead, marching from their caverns beneath the earth, cold and dripping and hungry for the light. On the other hand rose the raging sea, brimming with the waterlogged bodies of the drowned, and on its surface came the stone ships of the fire giants—vast rafts of pockmarked pumice, floating on a foam of boiling surf. They raised flaming eyes to the shores of earth, and in their hands was fire, unquenchable.

The shorelines quailed at their approach, and steam went up to darken the sky. The fields of earth smoked and burned, and far above, carrion birds mixed their cries with the trumpet sound, and the howling of wolves echoed on the empty hills. They hoped to sate their greed when the battle was over. They hoped in vain.

There was a crash away behind us as the gates of heaven opened, and deadly light flickered forth to strike at the armies of the dead. They grasped at it in droves, hungry for life, but found only more death, and the dust of their corpses mixed with ashes on the battlefield while mighty men fought and fell and swelled the ranks of the dead all the more. From the boiling sea came serpents, and writhed across the dry land in waves of poison. Spears flew and swords flickered, and the footsteps of gods shook the earth as they had not since the beginning.

I fell back from the edge of the ridge in fear, for the tide of battle was drawing near. We had thought to find safety here, here in sight of heaven, but the end came on regardless, inevitable. It would all burn, and us with it. The gods could not stave off fire and death, for they had seen their own ends.

Suddenly there was an apparition at the crest of the bone-white slope. A spear raised, scattering light from its nine-bladed tip, and the hand that grasped it was strong. A horse reared up, its mane and tail aflame, and the rider pierced me with his ancient, one-eyed gaze, gray hair framing a wrinkled face, full of fury.

And I remembered his words, as the jaws opened wide for him. A wolf-like shape reared up behind the rider, and the sun turned black, and I fled.

I fled, and as I ran it seemed that the nature of the world was revealed to me: the mountain walls of heaven dissolved, and there was a narrow defile leading on beneath the sky. Deeper and deeper, dark walls of stone rising on either side, until the walls fell away, and at last I saw, thrusting from the horizon, the shape of a tree.

It was a withered tree, twisted branches hung with a thousand nooses, and I stumbled in the blood-soaked earth. Still I went on, and the dead canopy stretched over my head, and I felt the weight of despair bearing down on me. I stumbled again, and almost gave up—

—but a hand gripped mine and pulled me up once more. There was light again, and I saw that it was a woman, clad in rags. Her face was desperate, like mine. “She’ll wait for you,” the man had said…

Wordless, she pointed to the base of the tree, and in the flickering I saw a hollow between the roots.

“Seek the darkness when the fire comes.”

A glance behind, and I saw the source of the light: red and angry, the horizon blazed with unquenchable fire. The fire giants danced upon the graves of the gods, and a mighty wolf lay with his jaws broken, the nine-bladed spear buried in his side. A broken serpent writhed in its death throes as the inferno rushed forward, and a thousand, thousand souls went screaming up as we plunged headlong into the final darkness beneath the tree.

And the trumpet fell silent.

Onarax/Omar:

Um, so yeah, bro listen up man. So not sure why I’m writing really, and I don’t normally write so you better be chill with typoes and what not.

So here’s what’s happenin’ I heard from a friend of me, real chill bro he is, that the world is ending. 

Now I’m all like, man you’re crazy, but he just won’t be hearing it. Yeah, he’s sort of one of those paranoid types. Kind of gets annoying after awhile, but what you gonna do.

Anyway, where was I, oh right. Well you see bro, my friend was all like we need to write letters for the next generation, you know the guys who gonna be a seeing this ruined planet so they know what happened. So here’s my message.

Screw you all. 

I mean seriously, where were you guys when the world was ending, that is if it’s ending. Well if you’re reading this then I guess it did end, ugh time is all confusing and what not. Anyhow, dude, why the heck did you not show up when ya know, the world was ending. I mean you dould’ve helped or something and don’t spout some BS to me about it not being feasible or what nto. You’re bloody aliens you make it work.

So again I must reiterate.

Screw you man.

Anyhow if you’re some bloody scientist, well here’s what you need to know. Humans were extremely feeble characters, both in mind and body. Now don’t get me wrong, we could have straight up geniouses(Is that how you spell it?). Whatever.

See but here’s the problem, we were utter idiots when it came to so much. Love confuzzled us, hatred seemed to run rampant, we could even get our act together for more than a few days. Always screwing up. Our world was at constant world with itself, Humans killing other humans and don’t even get me started on how we kept screwing over this planet.

I don’t know man, why couldn’t we all just be bros and sing kumbaya or somethin. I never understood why we all had to be all y’know, screwy. As a species we could have done great thigns, instead we kept squanderin it on self gain and what not.

My prof was quite fond of saying that, but you know what, screw plagiarism it’s the end of the world.

But seriously man, why were we constantly at war with one another, I mean come on. We’re all the same species right, when all laugh, we all cry, we all applaude, we all feel anger y’know. So why couldn’t we work together like a family. Sure we might have been a bit of dysfunctional family, but atleast we wouldn’t be killing one another.

And I mean seriously, who doesn’t enjoy watching some  dysfunctional family on television.

Alright, you know how I said before we were all weak, I kind of lied. There were some great man among us, man we should have all aspired to be like, we just sort of failed. Blame fate for being cruel or something, but really it was just a stupid human nature.

There were great man we could’ve looked up to like MLK and Gandhi. They were bros, always striving to bring peace and what not. But those were only the well known ones, there were plenty of bros in everyday life. The little kid who decides to help the grandma across the street. The guy walking down the street who bends down to help you pick up some stuff you dropped. Those guys were bros as well and well I wish we could all be as kind hearted and open as those folks.

Anyhow Will’s yelling at me to finish up and what not so I suppose this letters done but I’d just like to take a moment and say to you Aliens again.

Screw you man.

Hubert:

Unlike what many would have expected, the end of the world did not involve a religious event of doom, nor did it involve a giant rock slamming into the planet and wiping out humanity. It did not even involve a nuclear apocalypse, and to the sadness of the writer, there were no giant abominations of doom hugging everyone and turning them into orange goop.

Instead, absolutely nothing notable happened, which did disappoint many of the suicidal conspiracy theorists awaiting the end. The world did end of course, but to everyone on the planet, it seemed as if it hadn't, for it ended up resetting itself a mere instant after its destruction. There was, of course, an explanation for this strange occurrence, but it was rather convoluted and made no real sense.

Suffice to say it involved a lack of scale, robots and people punching the walls of time.

Having ran all his ideas into the ground, the writer actually had no real thoughts on how to continue his train-wreck of a story, although he did think of shoehorning as many references as possible to the theme of the world ending, which was a rather broad subject if one were to think about it, especially seeing that there were hundreds of millions of … okay, there was lots and lots of worlds out there in the cosmos.

Of course, the theme was not actually the end of the world, but merely 'The End Came', which is so ridiculously broad, making pretty much everything possible. Anything could be written under that theme, including apocalyptic wars between giant robots and shonen protagonists, but the writer didn't include such things, possibly because he was making everything up as he went.

He also wishes to apologise for his incredibly bland and awkward writing, developed through years of writing awkward and confusing texts.

Finally, after much thought and distraction from the music blaring in the background, the writer decided to finally get his brain into gear and write properly for the theme.

The End. (It arrived.)

Eli:

The sunset, a brief flash of colour on a faded screen of blue.

Slowly growing to encompass the vision, abolishing the old and bringing the new.

The waves, churning the unfathomable depths of the sea.

Slowly bringing them to the surface, showing them to us, letting us see.

The clouds, white, floating pillows of a majesty we cannot understand.

Soaring above us, leaving us with a longing, left here on the land.

Our life, that which we use with abandon, that which we recklessly use,

Quickly beginning, and quickly ending-symbolic, some philosophers might muse.

Our death, a sudden, indescribable, not-understandable thing,

Completing the cycle, the last link in the chain, the last bit of the ring.

The beginning, the point from which all things come,

Indecipherably complex, and a period all is expanding from.

The end, come so soon, so unexpected, so fast,

Yet we continue to celebrate, to live, laugh, and love, until the very last.

Tekulo/Lin:

     Did the world always seem this… grey?  Wasn’t there a time where everything was filled with brighter colors?  Yes, there was something… music, that’s what it was.  It always sounded so pretty.  I think it came from a box of sorts.  I know that sounds a bit silly, music coming from a box.  But yes, I’m certain that’s what it was.  There were also other things as well…  We called them… laughter... bliss… hope… rapture… sorrow… pain… deceit… lies…  Yes, those were the colors that had filled the world.

     Now it was as if all of those colors had been absorbed.  It’s as if the artist’s brush had retracted everything and… well, that was just it; and what?  Wherever those colors were now, they most certainly were not here.  Everything seemed blank; lifeless and barren.  The universe itself was now a blank sheet of paper.  What was to become of such a form?  Would the artist paint anew, or would it be decided that painting was simply not worth the time and effort?

     How did the world come to be like this?  A world that was filled with such colors; how could they all just vanish?  It was all here just a moment ago, wasn’t it?  There was… there was a noise…  Yes, it was called… a shriek?  Yes, the woman in front of me; what did I call her?  Mother was it?  She was the first to go.  I think I held onto something…  I thought… it was important…  It had something in it…  I just can’t remember.

     Now the world filled with music, joy, wonder, suffering and pain is gone.  Now all that is left is me.  Am I the last to leave?  I close my eyes and I feel something.  It’s a key.  I turn it around and around then wait for the music to stop playing.