Write or Die Challenge: Day One

I decided that since I rarely write anything but bad poetry and fan fictions (oh, and that silly little novel) I decided that I'd take fifteen minutes every evening to get on Write or Die (http://lab.drwicked.com/writeordie.html) and take whatever idea comes to me first and run with it. Tonight I kind of pulled some inspiration from Rhiannon's fantastic short story "Ashes to Ashes" and wrote about the end of the world. Let me know what you think and try this exercise yourself. I was pretty pleased with what I came up with, you might be, too.

Lots of love,
Helen

*****

So, I suppose this is the end. I never thought it would come like this. It isn't as horrible as I thought it would be. Sure, the whole situation basically sucks and everyone around me is in a strange state of frozen shock, but it is a beautiful day outside. The birds, apparently unaware of the calamity occurring way beneath the thresholds of their nests, are singing songs that today could be called mournful, but in reality are simply just beautiful. They are the same songs that they have always sung, but the mood of the atmosphere makes them sound so sad. Its a shame, really. I used to love listening to the birds.

I can't decide if I see this as the end of the world, or simply as the end of my world. I can only know and control what happens until the minute I draw my last breath. After that, its anybody's guess. Everything could shatter. The world could implode. Everything could simply disappear. Or maybe I will be the last, and after that last breath of mine everything will go back to normal. Maybe no one will even notice I'm gone. I don't know, and I never will. I highly doubt I'll be sitting on a cloud somewhere with a harp in one hand and the answers to life in the other watching it all play out. No, this is it. An end. Maybe not the end, but it is my end. I just hate that it is so darn beautiful outside. Its like Irony is getting its last laugh. On the day that everything is to end, the sun is high and nonthreatening, the wind is blowing softly, stirring the grass and barely upsetting the birds as they sing the funeral march of this Earth.

It wasn't supposed to end like this. I recall tellings of seven white horsemen and some other crap like that. There was supposed to be disaster, calamity, not just this: the sudden knowledge within the heart and soul of every single living being on this planet that it all will be over soon. It all started as a pinch, a sharp, sudden pain deep within us, telling us that something was afoot. And then nothing. For weeks, there was talk of heart conditions and mass hysteria, but mass hysteria could hardly describe what came next.

The feeling spread through us, like a disease carrying a painful message: you are going to die. It was as simple as that. No explanation, no chance to ask questions, just fear and an odd acceptance of our fate. This was it, and so it would be.

No one knew when it would be. But the feelings spread within us, consuming different parts of us day by day. The weeks wore on and we felt as if we were drowning, nearly submerged in this intuition. Some said it felt as if standing up in your own grave, with the earth slowly closing in around you.

We knew it was close when the feeling engulfed our hearts. It had made a full journey through us and our consciousness and returned to where it had started. We knew it was close, and there was nothing to do but wait.

I looked to the sky, hoping for signs that it had come. The sky was bright and cloudless, nothing suspect, though maybe it did seem a little darker. Nothing else was out of place. An eerie calm had settled over the earth as we waited in anticipation. We waited with the wind swaying back in forth, waltzing to the beat of our deep, even breaths, waiting for death to come. We waited and the birds sang, every note surrounding us and bringing us closer to our imenent demise.

We waited, slowly counting the seconds, marking them with memories that would soon be lost, one step closer to our peaceful, beautiful death.