The END.

I was drifting in and out of consciousness as the evening news played and my parents droned on about nothing in particular until something caught my attention. Suddenly I was jolted awake as the screaming coming from the TV startled me. The news anchor seemed to be signing off for the night and a lunatic toppled onto the news desk and said the world would be ending on New Years Eve at exactly midnight. "These crazy people, the world is ending" remarked my father in a mocking tone.  The man didn't say how the world was ending or how he knew....but I had an uneasy feeling.

I went to bed after that, though all I seemed to do was toss and turn all night. The next morning I didn't have much of an appetite either; so I went to the den and turned on the TV. It turned onto the news and the same guy was talking about the world ending, except this time I was a real news story and this guy had convinced others of this sort of doomsday. It was everywhere so it seemed I couldn’t avoid it. Even though it seemed silly,  I had to admit the pit in my stomach only grew deeper.....

The rest of the day passed fairly quickly. I stayed away from the TV to avoid the stories of all these mysterious happenings like planes hitting buildings and more pile-ups on the highways than ever before. Some thought these were just unfortunate coincidences and others thought it was all the craziness around this world-ending business. Could it really be a coincidence? These things were happening all over the world thousands of stories it seemed. Did I believe this? I wasn't sure how I felt, but regardless my best friend dragged me to her party anyway. 

The party was full of talk of the end of the world business, the exact thing I was trying to avoid. I mingled for a while, talked to a few people met some people. All anyone seemed to want to talk about was the world ending. Some thought it might something serious, some had conspiracies about what was happening some a little far fetched if you ask me. Some didn’t care at all or made fun of the situation. When I hadn't seen anyone I knew for a while I grabbed a drink and slipped into the backyard and tried to rationalize in my head. How could I get so worked up over this? The time at this point was 11:34  in 26 minutes I would realize how ridiculous I was being. Then this boy came out and talked to me a bit. “So the world is ending,” he said as he shook with pretend fear”. “Yeah, I guess” I had replied with a shrug. “So who’d you come with?” he asked making another attempt to make conversation. “Just a friend I remember replying without making much effort to keep the conversation going, as my mind was elsewhere. We sat there in silence for a long while. Then some girl came running out and grabbed mystery boy from behind. “We are going the play “its the end of the world at midnight”. I rolled my eyes and it was as if she noticed me for the first time. “Who is this she asked with a snarl”. “No one” I replied with equal irritation. She scoffed and began dragging what I assumed to be her boyfriend back towards the party. “It was nice talking to you,” he said before he got dragged too far away. “Yeah sure,” I waved over my shoulder without putting in enough effort to even turn around. Maybe if I had known that was going to be my last conversation before it happened I would have appreciated it a little more ...but on the other hand, maybe not. Snarky girlfriends aren’t exactly my favorite, people, aren’t in general. I heard them begin to play “it's the end of the world” far louder than I would have liked. Then checking the time I realized it was 11:56. Four minutes to midnight. I guess the time really flew by while I was obsessing ...maybe I could have done something a little more useful. But I did not. About halfway through the song, everyone began to come outside and fill up the lawn. Then they began to countdown 6 my chest was tight ...5 I couldn’t brethe…...4 the dread filled me so completely. Then we all looked up and saw it coming down. 3...2...1.