The Diary of a Doomsday Prophet

“Diary of a Doomsday Prophet”

She had been running for days. Alone. She was tired and had not seen a single soul since before the world as she knew it had ended. The sounds of emergency system sirens still blared in the distance. She had come to a very well-hidden treehouse looking dwelling and stopped to rest a bit. It was time to add some notes and thoughts to today’s journal disguised as letters. She was starting to lose track of time. Since the chaos had ensued, she could barely tell day from night. It was dark for 20 out of the 24 recognized hours of the day. The closest she came to pinpointing a timeframe was that the hours between 11 am and 2 pm had close to real sunlight. 10 am was somewhat of a very dark dawn and from around 2 pm till about 3:30 pm there was a very supernatural looking dusk. The day the world “went dark” as she was calling it, the sun dimmed around ten am and everything went totally dark sometime shortly after 3:33 pm. Her watch stopped at that time and has been stuck on it since. Writing had kept her focused and sane.

063020770

Dear Grandmother,

Today I thought of you as I often do, and I smiled because I felt strength instead of sadness. I remember when we used to spend the mornings making breakfast and lunch real early and packing everything in a picnic basket. We would stop and pick flowers along the way, and you always told me that I was even more beautiful with flowers in my hair. You also told me that I had inner strength and inner beauty that no one could ever take from me. I loved those walks and picnics by the stream. I sure could use one of our walks right now. I saw a bird today. He was blue and he flew right up to me and hummed a tune for just a second or two. It gave me a tiny glimmer of hope. That is the first sign of life that I have seen since the sun stopped shining. Oh, grandmother that reminds me of the stories you told me as a child! I get my love of mythology from those stories. I wish you could come and tell me a story. I miss those most.

I have a long journey ahead of me grandmother. I must go. I love you always.

H2H S2S

Missing you,

Avira

The first day when she ran from her home, she had hidden in the forest nearby in a secret place where she played as a child. It was there that she “counted” the hours to establish a timeframe. A full day passed and then 19 more hours. None of her electronic devices worked but her phone’s alarm still functioned somehow. She set it for 4 hours and slept for the last time in her favorite hideout.

She finished up her journal entry and put her items in her backpack. Luckily, she was always prepared for an “escape”, and it had paid off.

Avira had few friends because though she was an attractive and intelligent girl, she was also headstrong and a self-proclaimed psychic which most people just called weird. She did not care one bit because she didn’t trust anyone. Ironically, that also helped prepare her for days and days of no human interaction. She had to keep moving. After scanning the area for potential threats, she reached for her gear and with a quick hard tug she fastened her pack in place. The ground beneath her seemed to move slightly. She paused. Nothing. She then took a step forward and as she did, the floor gave way and she begin to fall backwards into the trunk of a tree. She gasped. She was falling quickly but had time to brace for impact. With a thud she landed. She opened her eyes and felt around her. Just earth. She then realized that the backpack and gear and softened her landing. She was never so glad to be a “crazy conspiracy theorist” as she was now. They all thought she was crazy and stuck in a fictional world in her head when she talked about preparing for things like zombie attacks and alien invasions. Or any other type of invasion or war. She laughed to herself a bit. Okay focus Avi, she told herself mentally. She needed to find a way out of this tree. Oh, the irony of this moment. Grandmother would enjoy this story of my adventure she thought to herself.

Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness but there was nothing to see. At that moment she noticed something shining to her right. She crawled forward slightly and reached for it. The ground beneath her hands was cold but comforting. As her fingertips made contact with the object it shocked her. She snatched her hand back and repositioned herself to a kneeling position. She reached with her other hand to her side pack and pulled out a flashlight. The light illuminated the area where the object had been, but she could not see it now. Were her eyes playing tricks on her? She rubbed them a bit and turned off the light. To her right something glowed even brighter now. Moving towards it, she then reached with the opposite hand as before and hesitated before touching it. It was calling to her it seemed. She slowly placed her hand down over it and hoovered there for a moment before gently picking it up. It is a necklace she thought. A heart shaped necklace. As she ran her fingers over the detail, it filled her with a different shock and she briefly saw a woman about her age standing in front of her, glowing as the necklace had. She dropped the necklace and stood to her feet quickly.

She looked around in the dark frantically. Was someone else in here with her? Was she dreaming? She tapped on her watch. It was still on her wrist. She then pinched herself as hard as she could. It stung.

“Okay,” she told herself out loud. “I’m not dreaming.”

She started to feel around the inside of the tree trunk. There were certain areas with what seemed like branches nailed to the inner side of the trunk. She kept feeling slowly. For some strange reason they could not be seen with the flashlight on. They seemed to disappear when she had the ability to actually see.

“Stairs!” she exclaimed.

She found an area of the tree where the branches became bigger pieces of wood that led up the side of the tree. She quickly made sure all her gear was fastened and prepared to ascend. She glanced down at the glowing object. With a quick motion she bent down and grabbed it and stuffed it in her pocket.

“It’s time to go home Alice!” she yelled, as she half scaled, and half climbed the trees inner stairs.

Once at the top, she sat under the tree branches and began to formulate a plan forward. She was running aimlessly and getting very little sleep. It was time to have some strategy. Or some sort of magical intervention, but that was the kind of thinking that people called her crazy for.

“That’s it!” she exclaimed aloud to the darkness.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out the heart shaped necklace. It didn’t shock her anymore like it did at first, but it did have a warmth to it. The moon had almost ceased completely when the world went dark, but tonight there was a tiny glow in the dark sky that was reminiscent of the moon. She ran her fingers over the necklace and for the first time noticed it was not even on one side. She held it closer to her face.

“It’s a locket.” She murmured, “well, are you going to let me open you?” she asked the heart shaped locket.

She placed it in her palm and then placing it between both hands took her thumbs and slid her finger nail through the space. It opened easily. There was something inside, A piece of paper. No, a picture. It was too dark to see the details. She ran her fingers over the picture and noticed raised places where a pen had written on the back. There was something else. A stone? She was not sure, but it felt like a small smooth stone set inside the locket.

She decided to climb back in the tree and rest here till she had a clear direction in mind. She felt strangely safe here and with any luck the dark tree would hide her too, while she slept.

She set her alarm and tucked the locket in her cross satchel closest to her body. Her backpack was positioned as a pillow on the ground. Curling up with all her stuff, she placed herself up against the darkest part of the inner tree and drifted off to sleep.