Epilogue

I'd always thought that the world would end dramatically. I'd pictured it a thousand times over, the darkness, the rain, the blinding flashes of lightning in the sky and the rivers of fire would score the earth, the screams of panic and pain and suffering and despair and terror, and death, sweeping its smothering robe over the orange horizon. Or perhaps it would be a watery grave for us; the low rumble that crescendos to a ripping roar, the sea risen, tearing rabidly against the shore, and then plunging towards civilization, engulfing us in its suffocating jaws.

But never like this.

Looking back now, perhaps I would've characterized it an unnervingly serene. The calm before the storm, as far as cliches go. Though there is a flaw with that convention; nearly any ordinary day would seem eerily calm in comparison to the events that followed. Perhaps, then, it is purely a matter of contrast rather than a foreshadowing.

Either way, it matters not. The wheels of destruction had already been set in motion against our existence long before we were aware, the earth churning beneath us, the laws of physics and fate aligning each minute hapchance, accumulating steadily towards our demise. And by we, I bear no self-indulgent notions to infer the destruction of humanity is comparable to the destruction of the world (that would merely be another extinction, an event with which we are all too familiar, and contribute regularly to) and extend this to mean the entirety of the planet on which we reside.

With the dampening effects of hindsight, the destruction of one planet in on solar system among the billions of solar systems and millions of galaxies in the world and the trillion stars and supernovas, it hardly seems a very significant event at all. What is the destruction of one little lump of rock in comparison to the disintegration of entire galaxies as they are devoured by black holes?

But I digress.

It was a rather dull morning. Steel grey clouds smothered the sky and everything had faded into a blander shade. It did not pour, but neither was it dry; a dampening misty drizzle rendered visibility to about the distance between the tip of your nose to your outstretched fingertips. It was not bone cracking cold, nor was it pleasantly warm, but a musty chill that nipped gently at un-gloved finger tips and slipped its way under woolen coats.

At precisely 9:14 in the morning, there was a shudder. Nothing big, just a small jolt, the same feeling you get when a car shifts gears. Life in the metropolis didn't even halt long enough to acknowledge it, the tell tale signs of imminent doom. Lying in bed a the time, I'd associated it to those falling sensations you get half between sleep and awakening.

About half an hour later, for no one really bothered to look down at their wrist watches when the world was ending to record the exact time at which it ended, everything suddenly went dark.