The very ground trembled as if a discord shockwave penetrated its alloy core. Lava spewed from the crust cracks, once rigid, now as brittle as a soft eggshell. Molten peridotite leak from the astenosphere, almost burning your sock to embers. For the last time, you're fashionably late.

This isn't a tale of how the planet ended. It's of how your prudence did.

You should have known better than jog your way back. You could have galloped like a hungry Australian kangaroo. Or rode an operational vehicle. Like the cyan sports car you bought last week. Or maybe an outdated automobile. Any vehicle at all.

Now, you'll drown in a deluge of antediluvian magma. Scientific wonders you did not bother to know when you had time. Time to cherish and save. Now you had very little left.

Your face looks like an intricate labyrinth of apathy and shock. What's the matter? You don't know?

Perhaps a retelling will offer you the paraphrasing you needed. Or even more than that. You might rediscover the grave mistakes you committed and the actions that pushed you to commit them.

How far should we go back? An hour should be enough, or do you need to know more? Is the notion of how you failed sufficient information or does your heart beats like it needs to figure the very cause of this all?

Very well. When you were a toddler, an infant rather, when your mother would sway you in her tender embracing arms, you would laugh and laugh until tomorrow. The way you gave an affectionate smile and say mah-mah, the serenity of it all, is like an untarnished cloth waiting for a blemish to change everything. To change how you grow.

Then when you finally took your steps, when you were a kid, a child at pre-elementary, you would be bullied. You no longer laughed. They laughed at you.

Every time you hugged your mother tight, you'd tell her, "what would it take to be accepted?" The answer was always the same.

"You have me always. And my everlasting love is worth more than theirs." This, accompanied with a tranquil caress. You keep telling yourself that she alone was not enough.

Things started to tweak at university. Your charms are no equivalent to their superior intellect. But you struck something more precious than oil or ingenuity. A project that could revolutionize the world. Thrice as powerful as modern seismographs, it could detect an incoming quake within split seconds.

Of course, it wasn't you who built it. You invoked the idea, but you were not the one who jotted down the meticulous sketch on blue papyrus or the person who assembled miniature screws and nuts and bolts.

Yet you escorted the invention to the market. Everyone remembers Edison, and not Joseph Swan. Well, this was no lightbulb fairy tale. Accusations, lawsuits, constitutional complaints. And they all point to you. Everyone hated you.

You would spend the residue of your forsaken life in the clutch of depression. Melancholic tears, bitter deja vu, those kinds of pungent things.

Not today.

The back-stabbing renegades, the foolish traitors to the common good, or at least to your good, had experienced what the Buddhists call karma. In their grandiose exposition, the unveiling of the avant-garde machine, your stolen machine, they indirectly yet intentionally caused the climax. Doomsday. Armageddon. Ragnarok.

And while everyone shivered in fear, you laughed. You bellowed from your voice box, and what came out was an outburst of cacchination. They never knew anything.

They stole your prized innovation, but they did not take away your segments of knowledge. The remainder of what you know.

Instead of sensing the wave energy, they emitted it. And a cataclysmic one, for the record. You knew this would happen. You always did, and you dreamt of it.

You yearned for their failure, no matter the cost.

And just a minute ago, you were on their office. Ruckus and clamor dominated the edifice. Everyone was shouting at each other, and so did you. All eyes were on you.

Each chaotic impact you rubbed in their faces. Every crime, every sin. You wanted them to feel guilty, to feel like they're lower than dirt.

You wanted them to feel what you did for these past years. Disapproved of, criticized, condemned.

And they did. They knelt below you. With raised arms, they glorified you. They chant, unified in a chorus, "Please, help us fix this."

But you know the timing was too late. Yet enough to downgrade everyone who ever doubted you.

Each residence of each bully. Visited and screamed at. They called the police, who were still busy in evacuation. They called you moronic madman, but it did not matter. What gave you pride was that they no longer laughed at you. They were frightened at your very sight.

Their names are even listed on your leather notebook. And you begin to cross some out. The some who finally feared you.

Veronica

Peter

Gwen

Lucio

Percy

Hannah

Does it feel good? Do you feel better suffocating your enemies during the world's end? Does it delight you knowing they have paid the price they owed you when they killed you internally a decade past?

Now the list is full of horizontal lines. They all dread you now. And you can finally run home to tell your compassionate mother how you rose to be a champion.

Two blocks away and the first lava explosion took place. It obliterated two alleys of dilapidated houses, including your apartment. The machine's destruction. It was more critical than anticipated.

It has gotten too far. Too calamitous. You did not wish for this, did you?

One block away. You could see a deformed mantle with your very eyes. Currents of scorching semi-liquid substance enveloping crushed bikes and chopped trees and pulverized roofs.

But you keep running. "Mom, I'm almost there."

Three skips away. The soil underneath you ruptures, causing you to plummet a thousand miles below.

You call out. "Mom! Mom!" No avail.

You were so desperate for other's approval. You wanted to be a champion. Wasn't you already her champion?

"You have me always."

Not this time.

You keep falling. Into your pitfall end. Into the abyss of flames.

Seconds before you burn into nothingness, you see her. Far far away, but enough for your naked eye to clearly visualize. Can she hear you?

You muster your remaining strength. You gather your croaky voice into a hurricane of pitch and dynamics.

Now's the chance. Don't miss it this time.

Anything. An utterance of redemption. A phrase of gratitude. A poem of forgiveness.

Just scream.