The End

Ever since I was a child, I had always had a wild imagination. I can still remember times where I would stare off into the clouds thinking about the mighty dragons flying behind them, dodging and weaving through the plumes to stay hidden from human eyes. Sometimes it got me in trouble, like when I was in class and my teachers were droning on about something I had deemed unimportant. Their voices flowed in one ear and out the other as I watched the fairies dancing in the clover fields outside the window. Sometimes I would even look down at my hands while my fingers fluttered across the type-writer keys and could still feel the sting of the rulers as they came down across my knuckles. Or maybe it was just Carpal Tunnel… but that was a lot less interesting. 

It didn’t take long for me to decide what I wanted to do when I grew older and “Writer” always appeared on my Career Goals papers throughout school. I remember the first time I had told this to my mother, and I remember the disappointment in her eyes as she envisioned her daughter living with her forever as a “starving artist”. It didn't dissuade me, though, and I worked my imaginary tail off all through college to learn everything I could about grabbing readers' attention and, more importantly, hearts. There was one overwhelming dilemma, however, and that was the endings. I had always been ashamed to say that while I had woven beautiful, elaborate stories filled with wonder and whimsy, I had never once finished a single one. Friends, families and colleges would beg me to share my writings with them, but how could you share a story with no ending?

Sure, there are some people who say that an ending is really just a beginning, but I’ve always believed those people to be hopelessly optimistic. A beginning is a beginning, and an ending is an ending. That’s why it’s called an “ending”. Sure, another beginning can start after an ending, but that still doesn’t make it in itself a beginning. Beginnings were always the fun part, and most of the time it flowed out of me like hot lava… it was just unfortunately flowing on a straight path towards ice water.

Just like every other girl, I had always wanted my parents' to be proud of my accomplishments. I made it my resolution on my 24th birthday that I would finally finish a story before I turned 25 so I could prove that all the blood, sweat and tears were worth it. I worked tirelessly day and night by the light of the candle to fill page after page with heart wrenching, adrenaline pumping, mind boggling goodness. And I had never been more proud of what spilled from my mind onto these pages. My fingers ached, my butt was sore and my eyes were dry and stinging at the end of every night. Which is, of course, how you know you did well as a writer. At the end of every night as I secured the doors and windows, I felt proud of my work and would go back and reread what I had written, making tiny notations here and there to make sure that it was absolutely perfect. And in the end, it was absolutely perfect.

Like any other day, I tightened the mask around my face as I opened the doors to my home and stepped out into the sunlight. The warm rays caressed the tops of my cheeks and my forehead, and a smile found its way to my lips. The sun was my favorite part of this beautiful earth, always radiant and consistent. I had always had an appreciation for the perfect relationship between the giant ball of gas and this big blue and green rock. There was a delicate balance in the solar system that allowed the planet to dance right between the danger zones of being too close or too far from the sun which was something that had always made me somehow feel proud of. We got lucky, and that was something amazing in itself. 

My eyes danced along the shelves filled with crafting supplies as I searched for the perfect material to wrap my masterpiece in. Who knew there were so many choices when wrapping a book? Hard or soft? Leather? Suede? Definitely not plastic. After a grueling 20 minutes of staring at the options, I finally settled on my supplies. I dug around my bag and plopped myself ungracefully onto the floor. The pages of my masterpiece were as thick as ham and just as juicy, in my opinion anyway. I carefully laid them out inside the hard shell I had chosen to wrap it in, and I gently applied the glue along the edges. I stared off at the dimly lit ceiling, only partly illuminated by the light that spilled in through the broken windows behind me. A tuneless whistle spilled from my mouth as my brain demanded I fill the eerie silence. After I was confident that the glue would hold, I lifted the book above my head with a grin that, frankly, hurt my face.

Rustling through my bag, I pulled out a giant black marker as I made my way from the crafting store towards the library atop the hill. This small town was convenient sometimes, since everything could be reached by foot. Certainly saved me the heartache of trying to find gas, at least. There was a satisfying “pop” as I used my teeth to remove the markers cap and began scribbling my title on the cover. The door to the library hung awkwardly from one hinge, and I had to carefully navigate around it so it didn’t fall on top of me. If I were to get pinned by the huge, solid oak door, there would be no one around to help me, after all. I know that my parents would have been proud of me for getting my book to be put in a library, even if I was the one who put it there. Maybe someday there would be someone around to read it, even. “Hopefully, it wouldn’t be archaeologists, though.” I thought drearily as my mind wandered off...

Ever since I was a child, I had always had a wild imagination. But never a dark one. I never could have imagined that the world as we knew would cease to exist. That it hadn’t mattered what I had chosen as a career, or that I had suffered through 4 years of college to become a professional writer for a crowd of no one. That my parents would never see my finished work on the shelf of a library. I’m not sure why I had somehow escaped the fate of the rest of the planet, but who could really be sure I had? Maybe, just maybe, that this last year of my life was just my overactive imagination going into overdrive in my dying moments? I shook my head to clear those scary thoughts and shrugged off the questions I couldn’t possibly answer. My fingers shook ever so slightly as I slid my book gently into place among the other auto-biographies and beamed like the sun as the title, “The End” slowly disappeared from my view.