One Last Dance

If it was the end of the world, what would you do?

For the citizens of Sector 20 of the Galaxy MW.43, this is not a hypothetical question. They have exactly 3 hours before everything they have ever known is gone. This once beautiful planet, reduced to floating debris, in some forgotten corner of the universe. Maybe the ashes of this dilapidated planet will one day become part of the stars again, or maybe they won’t, maybe this is truly the end of the story for the human race.

While the rest of the planet is a frenzied mess, seeking their loved ones, a man named Clarence is alone, sitting in his favorite chair, thinking. Just like his demeanor, his face has lost all urgency, what used to be composed of sharp lines is now deflated, like a disheveled balloon. Clarence is not scared, it has been an hour since The Announcement and all he can feel is a bone crushing sense of relief. One cannot be lonely in death. 

His house is a shrine of photographs, depicting a time when Clarence’s eyes were not filled with longing for something long since passed. A woman frequents the majority of these pictures, her long brown hair falls around eyes that taste like honey and sound like distant violins.

 Clarence has lived his whole life surrounded by exotic colors and tastes. He was at his first school dance when he figured out that not everyone could see the dancing of senses. Clarence held his heart in his palms when he told the girl who sat next to him in English class, that she smelt like petrichor and tasted like the sun after it had rained, warm, welcoming, a gentle distraction. It only took a cruel smile and a dismissive laugh for his heart to be cracked in two, the breaking of his most precious belonging. Clarence learned after that dance to keep his heart hidden under layers of protective indifference.

But that all changed when he met her. Everything stopped, the colors that clouded his vision dulled into gray compared to her, she was all he could see, his very own rainbow. When he met the eyes of this wonderful symphony, he could not help but wear his heart on his sleeve. But it has been years since her myriad of colors graced the earth, and now Clarence is left behind, the world devastatingly gray without her.

When you get to an age when you are the only one left, the end of the world doesn’t seem so scary anymore, Clarence thinks. Bring it on, I have watched everyone I have ever loved die right in front of me, you think you can break me? So Clarence does what he has always done when the world gets so deafeningly quiet, he turns on the TV. 

It has been exactly 1 hour and 30 minutes since the voice of… well, we don’t quite know what or who it is, some claim that it is God, others claim it to be aliens. But for those who have just tuned in, here’s the footage:

“You have all failed. Never before have we seen a planet that would rather stare at their screens than the destruction they are causing around them. Our council has decided that you have violated not one, but 5 articles of the Universal Code. We take no joy in killing younglings, but your actions, or lack of actions, have forced our hands. You have 3 hours-”

In all that has been said Clarence only hears one word: younglings. He married the woman of violins and honey one year after they met. She was called Ida, and they loved each other with their whole being. Their home was filled with love, music and books, so many books. She loved to read, she consumed words like fire consumes paper, desperately, with no restraint. Yet the longing for children courses through the house, an empty nursery a reminder of all they do not have. 

Life is all fireworks, lemon cake and yellow when you have someone that understands you, really understands you, and all empty coffee mugs, rusted metal and broken glass when they are gone and you left, weeping without them.

 It took 2 hours for the best day of Clarence's life to turn into the worst. The kind that no amount of time can let you forget. He drove them to the hospital as quickly as he could, in anticipation for the baby that they had waited so many years for. They arrived just 20 minutes after her waters had broken. Ida was crying with joy, and Clarence could only hear the all encompassing melody of violins. When the screams gave way to quiet, Clarence was left in the room, standing still, while a maelstrom of medics and nurses erupted around him. Long after the still bodies of his wife and baby had been wheeled out, Clarence remained standing, like a lone tree in a felled forest. To lose two people that you love in the same day is something that you never quite recover from, Clarence still hasn't, 40 years later.

It was faint at first, the sound of one lone voice, singing a tune that Clarence hadn’t heard since the passing of Ida. Then, like a crescendo of hope, more voices joined in, some off pitch, others echoing a hauntingly sorrowful melody. Clarence hobbles to the window, some part of him hoping to see her standing on a balcony, singing the frail melody of a long forgotten song. While she is not there, so many others are. People so devastatingly human, are singing and dancing for the last time in all of human history. And so Clarence unlatches the stiff window, and from within a voice unused to speaking joins the song. One might almost forget that this is it, the end.  

There are only 15 minutes left before this is all gone, but it doesn’t matter, because Clarence is smiling, the beauty of the colors engulfing him once again. The last sunset to grace this forlorn planet is breathtaking. And when Clarence closes his eyes, a smile ghosts his withered lips, he is no longer alone, no longer gray.