The Television at the End of the World

He dragged himself up the wooden stairway for the third or fourth time today, a pinkish wet mess of body-shaped parts. A torso, one arm, a twisted and angry face, an array of unrecognizable protuberances. Whatever it was that withdrew humanity from his body was cruel enough to leave him alive. In spite, in discord with the definition of life.

The great physical effort to get upstairs with no recognizable legs wasn't the bad part; it was the slow, barely-controlled tumble back down that he dreaded. The walls of his house, once meticulously clean, were now a series of small, damp streaks where he'd lurched back towards the first floor, scrabbling for any kind of control but usually finding none. The railing fell off years ago. But he'd always make it upstairs, and back down again. There was no other choice. No other purpose.

Everything sat in a state of stubborn, quiet disrepair. He'd stopped keeping track of time. Time didn't mean as much since the skies turned orange and everything stopped. He couldn't hold tools to fix things, or clean things, or maintain. Time stopped mattering when he realized that he didn't know if he could even die, or if he was still alive. All of the warn out, functionless appliances sat in the warm, constant glow that peeked through the ragged blinds into the dark rooms; it would be beautiful if it wasn't horrifying. The puddle of liquid under the fridge dried into a tacky, white radius of sweet-smelling filth forever ago, and it was consumed by a generation of insects that lived and died another forever ago, leaving behind hollow bodies that littered the floor. Everything was forever ago.

He loped over to the couch in the room at the top of the stairs, an inch at a time, avoiding the splintering floorboards. The only thing that still worked was the television, a fizzling blue glow in a world of tangerine light. It wasn't entirely clear how much of the world had disintegrated; it all happened too quickly to tell, but the TV still worked. Some persistent system, some redundant mechanism, some comforting thing kept the broadcast alive.

It was nothing important. It was never anything important. Sitcoms from the 1980s, or a late night talk show to mark the passing of time. A music video on one channel. Commercials for products that no longer had any utility, or even a place to buy them. The practicality of an air fryer or an exceptionally ergonomic pillow became almost humorous now that he had no need to eat or sleep, or a human body.

But it was something. It was some kind of proof that there was still some familiar function in the world, somewhere. He flicked through the channels, paused on a scene from a musical where a trio of handsome, aspiring criminals were singing about how easy life was going to become after one more caper, swinging a heart-shaped locket around and kicking holes in the walls. A commercial for a motorized mobility chair featuring a variety of elderly people who almost definitely weren't still alive. One of many reality shows about wealthy people doing things wealthy people used to do. It was nothing important, and nothing new had been made in years. But when the dancing blue light from the television battled the orange daggers of light on the warm walls, it was comforting.

He thought that the end of the world would be more dangerous, or at least more interesting. Instead, it was nothing, and that was the worst part. When he looked out the window into the suburbia that surrounded him, there was a suffocated stillness. Once, he thought he saw a pair of sad, indifferent eyes looking back at him from across the street, but they quickly vanished. What could they do anyway? There was no hum of the furnace, no buzz from the exhausted light bulbs, no bird songs, not even a whisper of breeze through the overgrown bushes that were creeping over the windows and doors. Vines silently strangled the doorways. It was the same quiet, orange nothing, without respite. Everything was an unsettled, indifferent pause.

A cop show, a drunk lady resisting arrest. Dark. A clip of someone getting hit in the head with a baseball, with a comedic sound effect. Dark. A travelogue to someplace impossible to get to. Dark. A beautiful woman crying in black and white. Did people even look like that anymore? Did they all look like him? Worse?

He hadn't gone outside after parts of him went missing and his body seemed to fold in on itself. He screamed a lot at first, maybe for hours, maybe for days, but when there was no response, there was no reason to scream anymore. It didn't even hurt. He had ten fingers and ten toes, and over a stretch of five minutes, most of them were just gone. He didn't know why. Even if he could make it outside, he wouldn't be able to make it far. So he stayed inside and waited for something.

The hardest part about the end of the world was not knowing if it had actually ended.

There was no news, only reruns. As he sunk deeper into the couch, he stared. He stared at the TV, and his mind wandered until the screen was a blurred point of light a hundred miles distant, a meaningless undulation of sound and color. He didn't sleep, but the quiet end of the world was great for meditation. He closed his eyes and manifested images of nothing in particular, losing himself in improvised patterns, gently tugging at the tether that kept the horror at bay, keeping himself bobbing just outside of the madness of the orange skies outside.

Through his eyelids, the room became bathed in a neon green. He heard a crackle, and a breath. A cough. His eyes shot open. The desperate face on the TV asked,

"Hello? Is anyone there?"