All stories have a beginning, and most tend to have an end, although there are exceptions. I’m not sure which mine is going to turn out to be yet, but that’s okay, I’ve been one for living in the moment for the most part as it is. That said, that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a good thing. Arguably, if I’d been planning for the future rather than living in a perpetual state of self-indulgence mixed with disdain and ambivalence for the things around me, then I probably wouldn’t be in such a mess. If you’re reading this, no doubt you’re aware of everything that’s happened over the past few months, seeing as you’re still alive. On the other hand, you may have been one of the majority who have been bed-ridden or in a coma for the duration of our stay here. On that note, let me congratulate you on the whole ‘being alive’ part, not many people can say the same. Good job, you.
But I digress.
My name is Thomas Nye, but everybody calls me Fez. I can’t remember why, just go with it. I’m Six foot Two, in my mid-twenties, and a human. That last one should be obvious enough, but reason for its disclosure will become apparent pretty soon. Just bear with me, I’m writing this at three in the morning and it’s pretty loud outside. The world ended four days ago, you see, and everybody is still trying to get to grips with everything. Oh, and I’m fine by the way, for the most part. I can’t say the same for other people; at a guess I’d say there are probably only a few thousand of us less, but it’s an uneducated guess at best. Believe me; things are going to get a bit weird so I’ll explain further.
Remember at the end of The Planet Of The Apes, where Taylor finds the Statue of Liberty at the end of the film, screaming about us blowing up the Earth? Yeah that kind of happened, but at least in the film, some sort of society recovered. The whole planet is gone, obliterated into dust, at least that’s what we’re told. Scientists playing with things that should never have been touched, and dooming us all, that sort of thing, you know how it goes. I’m not sure on the specifics, but needless to say, it didn’t end well.
I will be writing about events that will seem ludicrous and of the mind of a mad man, and at first, I did believe this to be the case, however. It’s become more apparent that this is real, it’s happening, and if I don’t treat it as such I’m going to end up in a ditch covered in petrol, on fire, or something else overly dramatic. I would hope if I’m going out I at least get to make a loud bang while doing it, both metaphorically and physically.
Earth is gone, destroyed by our own devices, and if we can’t stop the same thing happening here, everybody dies, Humans and Ponies alike.
Yeah, I know, but I did tell you things were going to get weird.
-=-
Pulling open the fridge door, I had a quick look at the three items straddling the bottom tray, affirming my suspicion that I hadn't anything to really consume tonight. Out of date milk, an egg without a working cooker, and an open beer didn’t really seem like the most nutritious of meals. I grabbed the beer anyway, sniffed it, and took a swig as I shut the door, returning to the sofa, attempting to not tread on the clothes and rubbish on the floor. It was a dark, wet Friday evening in the south of England and I had made very specific plans to do absolutely nothing while vegetating in front of the TV. I hadn’t paid my television license bill, so I was stuck with leeching the basic terrestrial channels from the neighbours. Currently, BBC was doing a live report on an experiment at the Hadron Super Collider, something about the risk of black holes and ethical problems that scientists at Geneva didn’t seem to be too worried about. And why would they? This was SCIENCE after all!
I took another sip of the beer and immediately spat out the flat fluid mixed with mould on to the carpet, beer running down my chin and mixing in with the unkempt facial hair. I really needed a cut and a shave, my black hair, rather than growing longer down my back and shoulders, usually decided to defy gravity and build up on the top of my head. I looked like I was trying to audition for The Beatles. That is of course if they were looking for guys with blood-shot eyes from a maximum of three hours sleep a night, a dodgy knee that clicked whenever a step was taken, and a scar running across the left eye from misjudging the ducking distance from a bottle thrown by an angry pub patron. He DID look kind of like the love child of Margaret Thatcher and Shrek, though.
I got up, stumbled towards the bathroom, and grabbed the hand towel atop the lamp by the door, wiping my face free of lager. I took the razor from the cupboard, running cold water on the blade (I don’t think I’d had hot water for at least a month). Bringing it to my face, I put the razor to the four hairs sitting between my eyebrows, and cut them away. ‘Perfect’ I mused, replacing the razor and moving back to the sofa, taking care not to trip over the empty pizza box pile by the bin.
I lay long-ways with my feet resting on the arm-rest at the other end of the sofa, and glanced idly at the television. The reporter looked notably worried, seemingly shouting, though the audio on my TV had apparently cut out so I couldn’t understand what he was getting at (the teletext button had broken on my remote long ago). Regardless, everybody seemed a bit more panicked than was warranted, I felt, and turned the other way, burying my face into the cushion in an attempt to get some sleep. ‘The world is still going to be here tomorrow’ I said to nobody in particular, as the previous night’s lack of sleep caught up with me, and I drifted off.
-=-
The world was not there the next day.
Well, it was for a bit, but that didn't really last too long. Luckily for me, I woke up a few hours before that came to pass, so I had at least a bit of time to experience the entire destruction of everybody and everything. There was no signal on the TV, no electricity outside (judging the electricity inside would have been pointless; it didn’t work half the time anyway) and slightly more startling, the sky was a dark blood red. Patches of gold dotted the horizon, like cracks in the fabric of the sky. I had only been up for a few seconds and already I could tell this day was going to be terrible. As I slowly woke up from an uncomfortable slumber, it dawned on me that something very, very bad was happening. My apathy quickly turned to panic as I realised something very serious was happening here. Bolts of light comparable to thunder burst through the golden cracks at sporadic intervals, the loud booming echoes drowning out the screaming of people in the streets below.
I looked out of the window, my fifth floor flat being high up enough to see the length of the street either way for a good three hundred metres. It was absolute chaos. Cars were left littering the street, some of them overturned. A few men lay dead in the street, surrounded by scorched earth. A woman, probably only in her early thirty’s, sat huddled in the corner of a shop door, cradling her child as they waiting, screaming at the sky. A million thoughts rushed through my head, my brain trying to make sense of the situation before me. All I could manage to utter was a muffled ‘Bloody Hell’, gagging into my arm as I spied a decapitated corpse at the foot of the stairwell to my building.
I turned my back to the window and slumped down, leaning my head against the sill and staring to the ceiling. I was in too much shock to fully comprehend the implications this morning had brought. I couldn’t even attain the level of fear that would be appropriate.
Plenty of people have thought of, written about, even made movies depicting the end of the world. Zombie Apocalypses, Nuclear War, the male gender suddenly being unable to perform in the bedroom, that sort of thing. Nothing written into fiction could ever convey what this was like. There would be no band of heroes fighting for a cure to a deadly disease. No mismatched survivors holed up in a shopping mall trying to live out as many days as they can, and take back the city. This was it, we were all dead, and we all knew it. There was no way out.
If I hadn't been so busy making my internal dying monologue, I might have noticed the white light slowly growing to fill the room around me. As it was, I buried my head between my knees and waited for the end. I succumbed to a fatigue I hadn't been aware of, and allowed the weariness to carry me into sleep; a more peaceful way to go, as I saw it.