From Sarah, With Joy

*Poet * Author * Wanderluster*

Friday, December 21, 2012

Not With a Bang: Choose Your Own Apocalypse Blogfest

Chuck of Apocalypse Now has a question.

How do you think it will end?

I subscribe to the quiet end of the Apocalypse spectrum. Eerie in the vein of Twilight Zone or Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

It starts with a soft rumble, maybe a flash of light, though not a blinding one. You are in your basement when it happens. For a second you feel a bit dazed and lose track of yourself, but you shake it off and are fine.

Wondering what happened, you walk up the stairs. Your mother, who was in the kitchen, is not there. The oven is burning the lasagna she was making.

Then you walk outside. For as long as you can see there is nothing but flat, unbroken ground, white with what looks like salt. There is nothing, not a tree or hill or mountain, to break the horizon. Your neighbors houses, the playground across the street, the bell-tower of the church half a block away, even your mailbox, is gone.

You don't know how long you stand there. The urge to call out for someone comes in waves, and maybe you do it once, but half-heartedly, because you know there is no one there.

At the farthest edges of the horizon, towards the north, there may or may not be a spot of black shadow, a something, something different than the blank white. You stand there for another unknown length of time, watching, and the black something doesn't move but it doesn't go away.

Now you face a decision. Do you wait here to see if something happens, or move towards the black shadow?

It will make all the difference.

12 comments:

  1. Let me guess. The "black shadow" is God?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sounds like "The Nothing." No problem. I got my Luck Dragon around the back. Need a lift? :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Big fan of The Road -- I've always enjoyed survival stories.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I want to go road warrior style, but now... not Saturday. Alas I was told I cannot go outside to play until Sunday...

    Did we make it?
    My link is dead, I ask again did we make it?
    [Visit my post for that to make sense]

    Great end of the world post!!
    Jeremy [Retro]
    Oh No, Let's Go... Crazy

    ReplyDelete
  5. Love that you went with "you" form! Choose your own adventure style. Creepy. The quiet way is always scary in its own right.

    Thank you for participating!

    Shannon at The Warrior Muse

    ReplyDelete
  6. Very well written Sarah. You said a lot in short post. Thanks for playing!

    ReplyDelete
  7. I'm certainly not going to check it out!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Scary to think the apocalypse could be man made.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Nicely done! Very Choose Your Own Adventure style--and I was a huge fan of those :) Love the open ending, the sense of hope, the veiled threat. That is what choices are, aren't they? Truly great post!

    ReplyDelete
  10. I think the fact you imagine yourself totally alone on the planet is scary enough as it is! It would swiftly send you demented as you try to work out why you alone appear to have survived......!

    I'm not sure I walk towards the 'black something' or run the other way!

    Thanks for posting all this - certainly thought provoking!

    SueH (I Refuse To Go Quietly!)

    ReplyDelete

I absolutely love hearing from you! Thank you so, so much for your thoughts and comments, they really do make my day. Consider yourself awesome. Also, I do my best to respond to every comment within 24 hours, so I invite you to come back and continue the conversation :)

To have weekly posts delivered to your inbox, just sign up here!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...