I Tried to Warn You

I was there at the end of the world, you know.

What? You don’t believe me?

I can tell you don’t.

You’re sitting there saying to yourself, “what a cliché”, rolling your eyes, ready to click off of the page.

But I was there.

It didn’t happen the way we all thought it would.

It wasn’t a nuclear war, starvation, climate change or aliens.

It wasn’t some religious zenith. God didn’t descend from the heavens and Vishnu didn’t show up on his white horse.

None of that.

It was a normal Tuesday. Actually, maybe it was a Wednesday. Honestly, I can’t remember, either way it was an absolutely normal day.

I bet you’re thinking now, “Well that’s stupid. Who doesn’t remember what day of the week the world ended? Of course you’d remember that day.”

Well guess what? Time kind of looses its meaning when the world ends. You don’t really give a shit what day of the week it is anymore because time doesn’t have a value. You’re not going to work, waiting till five to clock-off. You’re not picking up the kids from school or meeting your friends for weekend drinks. All that kind of stops after an apocalypse.

Oh ya, this isn’t a metaphor either, before you go down that psycho-babble, bullshit avenue. This was the real deal, Spielsburg-New-York-City-destroyed armageddon.

Name a city, I can tell you whether your hometown is still worth looking for. Odds are it’s been abandoned. Anywhere that use to be worth living had to be.

Do you believe me yet? That I was there at the end? You probably want some background. I guess that’s normal.

I was an analyst back then – boring tech job full of numbers that made other people money. I was at my desk when it started, Excel spreadsheets on two monitors, my soul-sucking banshee of a boss lurking somewhere. I remember looking down at my coffee and watching individual rings forming and reverberating out, as if tiny droplets kept falling into it. I thought I was having a stroke or something because it didn’t make any sense, nothing was falling, nothing around me could possibly be doing that. It defined physics. I remember how the air changed, something I still can’t describe rightly. I suppose that makes sense given it was well outside the realm of human experience at that point. It was like currents or electricity or vibrations, something intangible that seemed to irritate every cell in my body.

That was when everything, and I mean everything – from the way people thought, moved, breathed, looked at each other and understood what had been ‘normal’ just minutes before – changed.

Oh, a word of warning: bottled water will not be your friend. You might feel the urge to stockpile it. Don’t. I won’t go into the details now but, ya, avoid bottled water.

I can tell you still don’t believe me. I guess I can’t really blame you, I wouldn’t have believed me either I don’t think. Hell, I still wake up some mornings and can’t believe how little is left of everything. It all happened so quickly, like, astoundingly quickly. You know that old phrase “Rome wasn’t built in a day but it burnt down in a night”? Well it took less time than that to un-make the world.

All I can say that might help is invest in pantyhose. There’s no end to how useful they’ll be.

Damnit, this isn’t working is it? I’m not very convincing am I? I wish I could make you feel what I’m feeling, the urgency, the panic, the desperation. Then you’d believe me.

You think these are just words on a screen. You think there isn’t someone on the other side looking at you as you read. There is. There always was.

I’m not going to sit here forever trying to convince you. It’s not for my own good I’m doing this.

Look, basically, you either make the choice to believe me here and now or you don’t.

Well?

No?

Fine.

You want the end to be a surprise, by all means, I’ll leave you to it.

If you won’t listen someone else will.

Carry on waiting for some story about a heart-shaped locket.

Just remember when it happens, I tried to warn you.