Finally the news reaches Seattle; the end is in 2 hours.
1 Hour, 59 Minutes
Neighbors say 120 minutes, Anchors say 7200 seconds, but it is all the same spectrum of time, no need to dramatize it. The end is the end, and 2 hours are 2 hours.
The end is near, that’s for sure. Anyone who says otherwise is desperate or drunk. Most are both. But who am I too judge what they say in their last moments? I am no better then the fools who say such things, in fact I’m worse. I could be at a bar now drinking my thoughts away, or out on the streets hardening them to clay, but instead I sit here drinking tea and gazing at a buzzing screen of black and white thinking “To he** with it all. I’m going to watch CSI.”
1 Hour, 45 Minutes
“To he** with it all.” Story of my life. You graduate, expatiate, compensate, for what? Do you know what you’re doing? No. Everyone around you knows what you’re doing, and they can say yes or no, but in the end you don't care, because you’ve been spinning your whole life and when the world clicks in place the room’s still moving counterclockwise, and no one can see it but you…
…no one wants to.
Friends and family create a portrait of you. You take a look and observe the tie too tight or the suit too black, but then and there you deal with black because you’ve seen it too many times to spot a difference.
Your friends and family leave you with no face or name, and you try to paint the thing again. How should that work? You’re no artist. You say “to he** with it” and you tear the image up. When you hold the pieces in your weak fingertips you call out cause there’s nothing left: “Mom…?”
You’re empty. Life gutted from you. You bleed away in front of the TV your mom isn’t here to turn off. Eventually you call yourself what your father always called you, a “Couch-potato”. You think, “To he**, why not laugh at the words?”
It hurts…
Until… ‘Bob’ from the news says that some foreign bomb is going to turn you into a mushroom cloud in 2 hours, and there’s no escape. You panic, you forget, you remember, you turn the TV off and only really think of one word: “He**”.
At last, you wake up…
1 Hour, 10 Minutes
There’s an old man singing outside my apartment. He’s singing something sad… but too sad to hear what the gurgled words mean. He plays his guitar in a terribly melancholy fashion: he barely plucks the strings. The whole thing is sickening. It builds to an icy crescendo, and as I wait for the last note it doesn’t come. The man has broken his guitar.
50 Minutes
Some lunatic is waving a gun outside the window a few stories below me. I hear him say “my family!” and other blurbs. I have no idea if his problem is real but his gun is certainly. It went off in his hand… by accident I think. A women of about my age is on the street, bleeding. Saving her… is useless. We’re all going up in the cloud anyways, bleeding on the street or not; gun in hand or not; blood on hands or not…
40 Minutes
‘Bob’ on the TV is beginning to lose his cool. You can hear it in his voice. His hands are twitching, and his eyes take on a persona of hunger. He’s forgetting his cues and neglecting his fellow Anchors. He’s looking to the cameramen for help. You can almost imagine them holding up the script, or even maybe acting the thing out. Bob is stumbling through the words like a chain being pulled up a stairwell. From the way he moves his rigid hands, you could almost think this sort of raving he’s doing is completely impromptu…
30 Minutes
It’s totally impromptu. He’s not even using real words anymore, and he doesn’t know what he’s saying most of the time. What’s come upon this man? Bob: the man who commentated on the fall of empires; the man who watched starving children skittering on the floor, while telling the story of some kind of dictator! Bob: a genuine let-them-eat-cake kind of guy… now as crazy as the rest of us. Actually crazier… if you don’t count the guy with the gun…
Actually count the guy with the gun…
25 Minutes
Bob just dropped an F-bomb on live TV. The whole show is cut. Right there. Should it be cancelled for that? I don’t even know why the cameras were still running after Bob told us about the nuke soaring above our heads. I don’t think anyone was watching in the first place after that. Who would even care…? Why worry about an F-bomb being dropped on TV when there’s a real bomb being dropped on our heads…!
20 Minutes
The old man with the guitar is back…! It’s a stellar, crimson red beauty! A flimsy tag is still ringed around it: It’s stolen. But who cares? It hums as he plays it. The melody becomes sweeter with every note! Sweeter, and softer, and… sadder. I sit here wishing the man knew some happier songs… when it hits me that he probably does.
A small crowd is forming around him now. The huddled mass is full of sticky faces with tears and alcohol, but I can make out a few oblivious children, whose mothers have taken the initiative of not telling them about the end, or the ticking 2-hour clock that’s almost up. They’ve got to be catching on though… drunks tend to shout what they’re thinking… and what else are they thinking now?
13 Minutes
I am walking away from the window when the man plays a new song: one more upbeat. It sounds familiar, but I’ve been tuned out for so long I can’t put my finger on it. Another voice besides the man’s chimes in. It’s a little girl’s voice, which is strikingly different from the man’s. It is a mystical contrast, and a phenomenon that the song doesn’t sound abnormal. Slowly, more voices join in. They all know the tune… and the words… all of them but me. Who am I to not know this song? What is it? They start to sway, and I am trying to get this song in my head! The words, the words! With each one I feel a nerve in my mind ringing, crying out, as if it missed another chance. How many will I get? Does the song repeat? Oh I wish I knew what it was! It is killing me…
It’s the National Anthem.
The whole thing would be beautifully cinematic… if the woman of my age wasn’t bleeding out into the streets, parallel to the singers…
8 Minutes
I’m standing at the door to the outdoors. I can feel the wind seeping through the cracks in the door, running up my skin. It’s Summer, but it’s the coldest day I’ve ever known. I think I’m going to go to her… the bleeding woman. I don’t know why. I don’t care why. I just can't ignore her. Is she alive? Yes, she’s alive. She tosses and turns as if in an endless nightmare…
Oh I don’t know what I’m doing! I’m in my pajamas for god’s sake! I think I have between 5 and 10 minutes ‘till the mushroom cloud. 5 to 10. The bar’s about a 6 minute walk away. There’s money in my pocket. I could go there, forget it all. But I’m standing here about to walk out the door to a woman I don’t know who’s going to be as dead as I am in about 7 minutes. Why? Some would say compassion. Some would say pity. Some would say love. Some would say “To he** with it all”.
“To he** with it all.” Story of my life. But where’s that all going? Up in smoke, right? This isn’t how it was supposed to end. But had I really a plan? A goal? Anything? I had no idea what I was going to do. I was still spinning! People see that woman bleeding on the road and say “To he**…”. And why not? Isn’t that where we’re all going? But we’re going together, right? Doesn’t that count for something? But I don’t see the woman on the road singing a song with the others. Isn’t she going with no one? Some could say, “No time”, but sometimes you just got to hold your breath and check the clock you’ve set for 2 hours and say:
“Don’t I have 7 minutes?”
--- The End
1 Hour, 59 Minutes
Neighbors say 120 minutes, Anchors say 7200 seconds, but it is all the same spectrum of time, no need to dramatize it. The end is the end, and 2 hours are 2 hours.
The end is near, that’s for sure. Anyone who says otherwise is desperate or drunk. Most are both. But who am I too judge what they say in their last moments? I am no better then the fools who say such things, in fact I’m worse. I could be at a bar now drinking my thoughts away, or out on the streets hardening them to clay, but instead I sit here drinking tea and gazing at a buzzing screen of black and white thinking “To he** with it all. I’m going to watch CSI.”
1 Hour, 45 Minutes
“To he** with it all.” Story of my life. You graduate, expatiate, compensate, for what? Do you know what you’re doing? No. Everyone around you knows what you’re doing, and they can say yes or no, but in the end you don't care, because you’ve been spinning your whole life and when the world clicks in place the room’s still moving counterclockwise, and no one can see it but you…
…no one wants to.
Friends and family create a portrait of you. You take a look and observe the tie too tight or the suit too black, but then and there you deal with black because you’ve seen it too many times to spot a difference.
Your friends and family leave you with no face or name, and you try to paint the thing again. How should that work? You’re no artist. You say “to he** with it” and you tear the image up. When you hold the pieces in your weak fingertips you call out cause there’s nothing left: “Mom…?”
You’re empty. Life gutted from you. You bleed away in front of the TV your mom isn’t here to turn off. Eventually you call yourself what your father always called you, a “Couch-potato”. You think, “To he**, why not laugh at the words?”
It hurts…
Until… ‘Bob’ from the news says that some foreign bomb is going to turn you into a mushroom cloud in 2 hours, and there’s no escape. You panic, you forget, you remember, you turn the TV off and only really think of one word: “He**”.
At last, you wake up…
1 Hour, 10 Minutes
There’s an old man singing outside my apartment. He’s singing something sad… but too sad to hear what the gurgled words mean. He plays his guitar in a terribly melancholy fashion: he barely plucks the strings. The whole thing is sickening. It builds to an icy crescendo, and as I wait for the last note it doesn’t come. The man has broken his guitar.
50 Minutes
Some lunatic is waving a gun outside the window a few stories below me. I hear him say “my family!” and other blurbs. I have no idea if his problem is real but his gun is certainly. It went off in his hand… by accident I think. A women of about my age is on the street, bleeding. Saving her… is useless. We’re all going up in the cloud anyways, bleeding on the street or not; gun in hand or not; blood on hands or not…
40 Minutes
‘Bob’ on the TV is beginning to lose his cool. You can hear it in his voice. His hands are twitching, and his eyes take on a persona of hunger. He’s forgetting his cues and neglecting his fellow Anchors. He’s looking to the cameramen for help. You can almost imagine them holding up the script, or even maybe acting the thing out. Bob is stumbling through the words like a chain being pulled up a stairwell. From the way he moves his rigid hands, you could almost think this sort of raving he’s doing is completely impromptu…
30 Minutes
It’s totally impromptu. He’s not even using real words anymore, and he doesn’t know what he’s saying most of the time. What’s come upon this man? Bob: the man who commentated on the fall of empires; the man who watched starving children skittering on the floor, while telling the story of some kind of dictator! Bob: a genuine let-them-eat-cake kind of guy… now as crazy as the rest of us. Actually crazier… if you don’t count the guy with the gun…
Actually count the guy with the gun…
25 Minutes
Bob just dropped an F-bomb on live TV. The whole show is cut. Right there. Should it be cancelled for that? I don’t even know why the cameras were still running after Bob told us about the nuke soaring above our heads. I don’t think anyone was watching in the first place after that. Who would even care…? Why worry about an F-bomb being dropped on TV when there’s a real bomb being dropped on our heads…!
20 Minutes
The old man with the guitar is back…! It’s a stellar, crimson red beauty! A flimsy tag is still ringed around it: It’s stolen. But who cares? It hums as he plays it. The melody becomes sweeter with every note! Sweeter, and softer, and… sadder. I sit here wishing the man knew some happier songs… when it hits me that he probably does.
A small crowd is forming around him now. The huddled mass is full of sticky faces with tears and alcohol, but I can make out a few oblivious children, whose mothers have taken the initiative of not telling them about the end, or the ticking 2-hour clock that’s almost up. They’ve got to be catching on though… drunks tend to shout what they’re thinking… and what else are they thinking now?
13 Minutes
I am walking away from the window when the man plays a new song: one more upbeat. It sounds familiar, but I’ve been tuned out for so long I can’t put my finger on it. Another voice besides the man’s chimes in. It’s a little girl’s voice, which is strikingly different from the man’s. It is a mystical contrast, and a phenomenon that the song doesn’t sound abnormal. Slowly, more voices join in. They all know the tune… and the words… all of them but me. Who am I to not know this song? What is it? They start to sway, and I am trying to get this song in my head! The words, the words! With each one I feel a nerve in my mind ringing, crying out, as if it missed another chance. How many will I get? Does the song repeat? Oh I wish I knew what it was! It is killing me…
It’s the National Anthem.
The whole thing would be beautifully cinematic… if the woman of my age wasn’t bleeding out into the streets, parallel to the singers…
8 Minutes
I’m standing at the door to the outdoors. I can feel the wind seeping through the cracks in the door, running up my skin. It’s Summer, but it’s the coldest day I’ve ever known. I think I’m going to go to her… the bleeding woman. I don’t know why. I don’t care why. I just can't ignore her. Is she alive? Yes, she’s alive. She tosses and turns as if in an endless nightmare…
Oh I don’t know what I’m doing! I’m in my pajamas for god’s sake! I think I have between 5 and 10 minutes ‘till the mushroom cloud. 5 to 10. The bar’s about a 6 minute walk away. There’s money in my pocket. I could go there, forget it all. But I’m standing here about to walk out the door to a woman I don’t know who’s going to be as dead as I am in about 7 minutes. Why? Some would say compassion. Some would say pity. Some would say love. Some would say “To he** with it all”.
“To he** with it all.” Story of my life. But where’s that all going? Up in smoke, right? This isn’t how it was supposed to end. But had I really a plan? A goal? Anything? I had no idea what I was going to do. I was still spinning! People see that woman bleeding on the road and say “To he**…”. And why not? Isn’t that where we’re all going? But we’re going together, right? Doesn’t that count for something? But I don’t see the woman on the road singing a song with the others. Isn’t she going with no one? Some could say, “No time”, but sometimes you just got to hold your breath and check the clock you’ve set for 2 hours and say:
“Don’t I have 7 minutes?”
--- The End
AthenaMarisaDeterminedbyFate
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SarasotaWonder
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