Fiction Friday - Dead/Saved
Did this a few weeks ago for my writing group. It is a first draft.
It was just typical that the newspapers were reporting the world was about to end on his birthday. It was months away and all the organisations that had reported the story were all treating the news with contempt and scepticism, but Barry couldn't help but feel it was a conspiracy directed against him.
Yet another cult had released yet another prophesy based on very vague and idiosyncratic readings of an ancient text. May 21st was apparently exactly 9219 years after the beginning of the world, and the cult claimed that meant that was the day everyone who was good and pure and just would rise up into the sky and disappear up their own belief system, leaving all the sinners on earth to enjoy five or six months to contemplate their misery before the real end came. A fire ball, they reckoned. Or possibly floods, volcanoes, earthquakes or disease. Probably all of the above.
Barry didn't believe a word, but it was still annoying that there was the possibility of another ruined birthday looming over him.
His flatmate Jennie tried to comfort him. “If it does happen at least it means you won't have to listen to the sort of person who predicts that sort of thing any more!”
It wasn't much comfort, since if all the saved people whooshed up all at the same time, then they would have been right all along.
May 21st came. It was the sort of beautiful spring day that makes you glad you're alive, if you're the sort of person who is ever glad of that. Barry was not that sort of person.
It was a Saturday so he had no need to get up early, so it wasn't until almost lunch time that it became apparent that there was something a little off.
Jenny was usually up and about even on days she wasn't working, but either she had gone out already or she was still in bed.
Barry wasn't going to start panicking, after all, it had been ages since those lunatic cult people had predicted this as the end of days and they'd probably forgotten about it themselves by now. And Jenny wasn't really the sort of person you would reasonably expect to be one of saved. Not that she wasn't great, in her way, but she was hardly pure and special and better than everyone else.
He knocked on her door warily. Usually he didn't go anywhere near her room - they led very separate lives and he tried to go out of his way to make sure she didn't think he was interested in that way.
Today though, he needed to know.
“Jenny,” he called, softly. “Are you in there?” Maybe it wasn't an original thing to say, but it was apropos.
There was no answer, so he opened her door, timidly. The room was a mess, clothes everywhere, but no Jenny.
Four hours later she hadn't come home. He tried texting but she had left her phone on the kitchen table. He noticed seconds before he pressed send.
After five hours, Barry decided he was being paranoid and ridiculous, so he left the house, determined to buy himself a nice bottle of wine and a takeaway to celebrate his birthday. Jenny had probably just forgotten her phone. She was, no doubt, out looking for a present for him. It was just like her to forget things like phones and gifts. Nothing peculiar really.
What was a bit stranger was the quiet of the streets. There was no police cordon, so Barry presumed there hadn't been an accident or a gas leak or any sort of nasty crime, but neither was it a power cut. All the lights were on in the shops - but nobody was in.
After seven hours, after checking all the news sites on the internet and discovering that none of them had been updated since midnight last night, Twitter and Facebook (again, no recent updates at all) and Youtube (the usual dancing cats from three weeks ago).
He started walking towards the city centre. After half an hour of sticking to the pavements he ventured into the centre of the road.
Quiet. Still. Peaceful. Nobody at all for miles. It was somewhere between wonderful and terrible, but Barry wasn't sure which. He had never been a people person anyway.
He was on his own. It took him five days to realise this, but sometime on Thursday he concluded that everyone else must have been good and pure and special. All of them - even the murderers and the rapists and the bankers.
Everyone was perfect except for him.
He would have sulked, but it seemed pointless without any witnesses.
By the following Tuesday he started to wonder what had happened to them all, and if they really had all floated up into heaven. It seemed a bit far fetched. More likely there had been some sort of alien death ray. Maybe, in fact, Barry had been spared some brutal, painful death by staying in bed late that morning.
By Friday he had discounted that theory. He couldn't have been the only person to have had a lie in on Saturday.
By July he had stopped theorising and started to make the most of his solitary existence. Dinner at the swishiest restaurants- even if he had to make it himself - sleeping in the penthouse apartments of some of the most exclusive developments in London. All the kebabs he could eat.
Which turned out to be not as many as he would have expected.
Still, if they had all been right he wouldn't have to wait all that long before the fireball. It was sort of comforting, even if pain had never been one of his favourite things. At least that would be an end to it.
A few times it occurred to him that this could just be a nightmare, but his imagination had never been quite this lucid.
The day of the prophesied fireball came, and went.
Barry looked around one more time and decided there really wasn't any point hanging around. The world was boring without people, and dogs and cats had started to eye him strangely.
He had no idea what had happened to the people, but he hoped they were really miserable wherever they were.
Half way down the long fall from the top of the Canary Wharf tower, Barry opened his eyes and realised that people were falling like rain alongside him.
He hit the ground at a leisurely pace, slightly jarring his knee as he landed. All around him people were looking confused and scared.
A short blonde woman tapped Barry on the shoulder. “Do you know what's going on?” She asked.
Barry shrugged.
He walked home. The tube drivers were still a bit too dazed to return to work just yet. Barry caught the middle of innumerable grumbles and arguments at bus stops and outside locked stations. The words “not good enough” were used a lot.
Jenny was in the front room, “Barry, thank god. I wondered where you'd got to,” she hugged him, which would have struck Barry as unusual were it not for everything else that had happened over the last few months. “I got you a birthday present.” It was a book about wilderness survival. Barry had already read it but he thanked her anyway.
Gradually everything returned to normal. Everyone convinced themselves it was still late May, just remarkably chilly for the time of year.
Some astronomers noted that the stars seemed to be in the wrong position for early summer and when it snowed in the middle of July there were plenty of comments on websites, but in the main nobody seemed in the least perturbed that they had disappeared for almost six months.
Most of the cult members who had been so vehemently convinced the end of the world was nigh were found about eight months later. Most of them had taken poison according to autopsy reports. The papers all focused on how mad they were to have believed in the end of the world.
Barry didn't ask questions. Nobody would have answered them anyway - but he couldn't help but feel it was typical that this sort of thing always seemed to happen on his birthday.
Elise Harris copyright 2011 All rights reserved.
It was just typical that the newspapers were reporting the world was about to end on his birthday. It was months away and all the organisations that had reported the story were all treating the news with contempt and scepticism, but Barry couldn't help but feel it was a conspiracy directed against him.
Yet another cult had released yet another prophesy based on very vague and idiosyncratic readings of an ancient text. May 21st was apparently exactly 9219 years after the beginning of the world, and the cult claimed that meant that was the day everyone who was good and pure and just would rise up into the sky and disappear up their own belief system, leaving all the sinners on earth to enjoy five or six months to contemplate their misery before the real end came. A fire ball, they reckoned. Or possibly floods, volcanoes, earthquakes or disease. Probably all of the above.
Barry didn't believe a word, but it was still annoying that there was the possibility of another ruined birthday looming over him.
His flatmate Jennie tried to comfort him. “If it does happen at least it means you won't have to listen to the sort of person who predicts that sort of thing any more!”
It wasn't much comfort, since if all the saved people whooshed up all at the same time, then they would have been right all along.
May 21st came. It was the sort of beautiful spring day that makes you glad you're alive, if you're the sort of person who is ever glad of that. Barry was not that sort of person.
It was a Saturday so he had no need to get up early, so it wasn't until almost lunch time that it became apparent that there was something a little off.
Jenny was usually up and about even on days she wasn't working, but either she had gone out already or she was still in bed.
Barry wasn't going to start panicking, after all, it had been ages since those lunatic cult people had predicted this as the end of days and they'd probably forgotten about it themselves by now. And Jenny wasn't really the sort of person you would reasonably expect to be one of saved. Not that she wasn't great, in her way, but she was hardly pure and special and better than everyone else.
He knocked on her door warily. Usually he didn't go anywhere near her room - they led very separate lives and he tried to go out of his way to make sure she didn't think he was interested in that way.
Today though, he needed to know.
“Jenny,” he called, softly. “Are you in there?” Maybe it wasn't an original thing to say, but it was apropos.
There was no answer, so he opened her door, timidly. The room was a mess, clothes everywhere, but no Jenny.
Four hours later she hadn't come home. He tried texting but she had left her phone on the kitchen table. He noticed seconds before he pressed send.
After five hours, Barry decided he was being paranoid and ridiculous, so he left the house, determined to buy himself a nice bottle of wine and a takeaway to celebrate his birthday. Jenny had probably just forgotten her phone. She was, no doubt, out looking for a present for him. It was just like her to forget things like phones and gifts. Nothing peculiar really.
What was a bit stranger was the quiet of the streets. There was no police cordon, so Barry presumed there hadn't been an accident or a gas leak or any sort of nasty crime, but neither was it a power cut. All the lights were on in the shops - but nobody was in.
After seven hours, after checking all the news sites on the internet and discovering that none of them had been updated since midnight last night, Twitter and Facebook (again, no recent updates at all) and Youtube (the usual dancing cats from three weeks ago).
He started walking towards the city centre. After half an hour of sticking to the pavements he ventured into the centre of the road.
Quiet. Still. Peaceful. Nobody at all for miles. It was somewhere between wonderful and terrible, but Barry wasn't sure which. He had never been a people person anyway.
He was on his own. It took him five days to realise this, but sometime on Thursday he concluded that everyone else must have been good and pure and special. All of them - even the murderers and the rapists and the bankers.
Everyone was perfect except for him.
He would have sulked, but it seemed pointless without any witnesses.
By the following Tuesday he started to wonder what had happened to them all, and if they really had all floated up into heaven. It seemed a bit far fetched. More likely there had been some sort of alien death ray. Maybe, in fact, Barry had been spared some brutal, painful death by staying in bed late that morning.
By Friday he had discounted that theory. He couldn't have been the only person to have had a lie in on Saturday.
By July he had stopped theorising and started to make the most of his solitary existence. Dinner at the swishiest restaurants- even if he had to make it himself - sleeping in the penthouse apartments of some of the most exclusive developments in London. All the kebabs he could eat.
Which turned out to be not as many as he would have expected.
Still, if they had all been right he wouldn't have to wait all that long before the fireball. It was sort of comforting, even if pain had never been one of his favourite things. At least that would be an end to it.
A few times it occurred to him that this could just be a nightmare, but his imagination had never been quite this lucid.
The day of the prophesied fireball came, and went.
Barry looked around one more time and decided there really wasn't any point hanging around. The world was boring without people, and dogs and cats had started to eye him strangely.
He had no idea what had happened to the people, but he hoped they were really miserable wherever they were.
Half way down the long fall from the top of the Canary Wharf tower, Barry opened his eyes and realised that people were falling like rain alongside him.
He hit the ground at a leisurely pace, slightly jarring his knee as he landed. All around him people were looking confused and scared.
A short blonde woman tapped Barry on the shoulder. “Do you know what's going on?” She asked.
Barry shrugged.
He walked home. The tube drivers were still a bit too dazed to return to work just yet. Barry caught the middle of innumerable grumbles and arguments at bus stops and outside locked stations. The words “not good enough” were used a lot.
Jenny was in the front room, “Barry, thank god. I wondered where you'd got to,” she hugged him, which would have struck Barry as unusual were it not for everything else that had happened over the last few months. “I got you a birthday present.” It was a book about wilderness survival. Barry had already read it but he thanked her anyway.
Gradually everything returned to normal. Everyone convinced themselves it was still late May, just remarkably chilly for the time of year.
Some astronomers noted that the stars seemed to be in the wrong position for early summer and when it snowed in the middle of July there were plenty of comments on websites, but in the main nobody seemed in the least perturbed that they had disappeared for almost six months.
Most of the cult members who had been so vehemently convinced the end of the world was nigh were found about eight months later. Most of them had taken poison according to autopsy reports. The papers all focused on how mad they were to have believed in the end of the world.
Barry didn't ask questions. Nobody would have answered them anyway - but he couldn't help but feel it was typical that this sort of thing always seemed to happen on his birthday.
Elise Harris copyright 2011 All rights reserved.