Au Naturel

“The legends say, they came from outer space…”

“Legends? The fuck you mean, ‘legends’? That shit happened just last year.”

“Yeah mother fucker, they gonna be called legends some time, might as well start now.”

“And what’s with this outer space shit?”

“Mother fucker, they gotta come from somewhere! And I heard one came falling out of the sky.”

“Says who?”

“Don’t worry about who said it. I said I heard it.”

“Well I heard one of them came right up out the ocean, looking like a tsunami or some shit but backwards.”

“Ok. Fine. Fine. We don’t know where they came from. All we know is one day they just appeared.”

“Who?”

“The Titans…”

“Once upon a time, the Earth gave birth to several Titans. It’s unknown how many there were. What’s more, they were less like beasts and more like living natural disasters. We don’t know how or why, but by the time they retreated from their respective rampages, the entire landscape of the Earth had been rearranged. We also do not know if it was their intent, but because of what they did, billions died and most of our structures were levelled.”

“It was a normal sunny day, then, everything changed when the Titans attacked… They came out of nowhere as a surreal barrage of mythical mayhem. The ground was torn asunder, the water rose from every puddle that housed it, the land burned and the wind raged. Our communications failed and our buildings crumbled. The world changed as the death toll rose indiscriminately. Was this divine intervention? Was this punishment? So much confusion. So much panic.”

“I didn’t see any Titans per se, but I certainly felt them. I mean, who didn’t. First there was no water, anywhere, then the earthquakes started and went on for what felt like the whole day. I was lucky enough to have been on a retreat in the mountains, away from the tall buildings and tsunamis and avalanches. I had some friends who were on spring break in Florida. When the water went, the whole tip just broke off and fell into what was the ocean.”

“Yeah, it was totally crazy. I had been hiking when everything started to happen. I got really lucky, because the wind was blowing like crazy, like hurricane or F5 tornado crazy. One of my friends, her dad works in L.A., totally got blown away, like right off the side of the mountain. It was crazy. But she only weighs like ninety-eight pounds so it makes sense. God she was so skinny, like my ideal weight. I cried for like three days. We were like best friends.”

“I’m used to that kind of thing. As a volunteer firefighter we see all kinds of stuff. But I’m honestly not sure how we survived without water. I mean eventually it all came back and put out the fires, but there was nothing we could do and it was too much for our other retardants. I’m just thankful we were able to save the ones that we did. The memory of the ones we couldn’t is something that will haunt me forever.”

“They said I was crazy to bury a bunker in my backyard. They said I’d watched too many of those shows and that it made me paranoid. But look who's got a bed and food and shelter now. It’s a shame about Ma though, but to get her, someone would’ve had to’ve risked going into town. It’s alright though. She’d lived a full life. Just celebrated her seventieth birthday. We had gotten her this heart shaped locket with a picture of Pa in it. But they’re together now.”

“All I can say is, if there is an afterlife, I can’t wait to tell my ancestors ‘Back in my day, we had to rebuild the entire world, you had it sooo good.’”

“It’s absolutely incredible. Of all the theories of ‘end of the world,’ who could have possibly guessed that sentient beings would have, I guess ‘awakened’, from the deepest reaches of the planet. I mean, the oceans, the volcanos, the winds, the moon, and the tectonic plates themselves apparently just came to life. Contrary to popular opinion, I believe this is the beginning of a new era for the world, not the end. Over the past year, I’ve been travelling nonstop and as far as I can tell from my own eyewitness account and from others I’ve spoken to, the beasts may have actually reformed Pangea. We’ll know for sure once we get our digital communications up and running again. God, I want to know what it looked like from the space stations so bad…”

“There’s no way we could have prepared for this. We spoke to the other stations and they confirmed what we saw. The moon actually broke apart and entered Earth’s atmosphere. It somehow pulled the water from everywhere, fish and all. The water began to look and act serpentine, writhing and wriggling all over the globe. Past them, we could see EVERYTHING, the deepest crevasses--there really is a city down there. We were trying to get pictures of everything we could, but then two things happened at once. The continents started to move! It was like that old myth about them being on the backs of giant turtles. While they moved, the tornados came. They went everywhere for a while and then moved away from the land masses altogether and began to circle each other in a kind of huddle. That’s when the volcanos sprang into action. They didn’t erupt, more like, broke apart and made their way across the landscape. It was sort of like a dog, circling it’s bed. They made a lap around their area and then went back to being volcanos. The continents settled then, rubbing their edges against one another and creating new mountain ranges.The tornados returned, putting out some of the fires as they went then disappearing simultaneously. The water fell; some had spiraled into blobs and formed lakes and ponds, while others formed rivers. The pieces of the moon did a sort of dance where they came together over the center of the new continent, then broke apart again in opposite directions before reuniting to its orbit like nothing ever happened. The only masses that didn’t move were the ice shelves in the arctic and antarctic. I have no idea what it is we just witnessed, if those were gods or spirits or what. I just pray that they are able to rebuild communications on Earth soon and that nothing happens to us before we can tell them what we saw. We also pray that our families survived, however unlikely that may be.”