Little Apocalypse
You’d look outside and think it was the end of the world.
The sky was a dark shade of gray and the air was damp. The ground was moist as well, seeing that it had just rained. At a glance, it was solemn and dull, but at the same time, oh so hectic.
She sat at home as everything outside seemed to go on without her. She was minding her own business and living her own life for once in her teenage years. Then the phones started ringing; the words started pouring in like the water on the streets outside. Something was happening, someone was saying something, and someone had their own theory about it. Her mother was on the phone with her friend, a neighbor, possibly millions of others, and then finally was speaking to her husband.
The words from the second floor resonated through the still house and into the basement where the girl sat, and the phrases “firetruck” and “evacuation” flew into her ears. She didn’t even think before she ran upstairs and confronted her parents.
“What’s going on?”
They didn’t answer, they just kept talking. She thought of when she was a little girl and she’d say something in the childish language only to have it go over their heads and out the window.
“Mom, dad, I heard evacuation.”
Still no reply.
“What the hell is going on?!”
“Apparently there’s a firetruck at the end of the street. Go down and check what’s happening.”
The girl peeked out the window and saw the gray outside. The first word that popped into her head: apocalypse. At least, the scene looked like it. Nevertheless, she still put on her old flip flops and flip flopped outside.
The first thing she heard was a steady beep beep beep beep beep...and she hated beeping noises. That repetitive beeping or sounding or alarm or ticking was just a trigger her own paranoia.
So what if a bomb’s about to go off or something?
She tried to walk away from it, but her own curiosity kept her standing aimlessly in front of her house, staring across the street at another that was beeping, or seemed to be.
The tone of the beeping slowly got softer and slower paced.
Beep beep beeep beeeeep beeeeeeeep...
And she expected a bomb to go off, or the house to explode or combust. But all that happened was the stilling of the world around her, as everything was calm again, including her mind.
She walked--no, ran--to the end of the street, only to see that cars everywhere were piling into her normally quiet suburban neighborhood. The entire city was driving by her house, her friend’s houses, her little CVS down the street, and that big medical building parking lot where her and her friends would run around inside when no one was parked there.
She had remembered hearing on the phone “road blocked off by firetruck,” and she knew that the main road that her street branched off of was shut down or blocked in some way. With cars everywhere, it was like playing Frogger to try to get there to see what was going on. She’d dart in here but nearly get run over, run across there and nearly cause a pile-up.
And all of a sudden, her paranoid fear of whatever was going on turned into whimsical curiosity. Maybe some meteor had crashed and made a dent in the road and some cool alien species was attached to it. She had watched a movie the other day about that in Biology. Maybe there was a crack in the Earth and now hell is going to pour into the streets and the living will meet the dead. Or a zombie attack, can’t forget about that.
The list went on.
She soon got to the main road and looked at it apprehensively. She walked slowly, and seeing that a female police officer was walking in her direction, tried to look as innocent as possible. But the officer just walked into a store nearby, leaving the girl to keep walking and keep looking for what had caused such a strange change in her environment.
And the culprit was soon found. There was no meteor crash, no eruption of hell, no undead ruling the land. A couple of workers were moving something big out of the road. And it wasn’t a dead body, or a totaled car. It was a street lamp.
She rolled her eyes, having come all this way to think it was the apocalypse, when all that had happened was the brief tumble of a lighting fixture. She turned around and walked back to her house, once again nearly getting killed by the cars that were struggling to find their way in the maze of the neighborhood that she knew by heart.
But she thought again, maybe it was an apocalypse for someone. Since everyone’s affected differently by these things.
It was a little apocalypse. She pictured a mother nursing a baby in her arms, not knowing that her child was danger, horror, catastrophe. Baby apocalypse.
And everyone reacting to this badly was just a misunderstanding. Evacuation? Not in a little apocalypse. She laughed to herself, and the fact that everyone had overreacted to such a little thing.
Then again, she had, too.
But it’s not like it was the total end of the world. She thought to herself for a moment.
Well, final exams start tomorrow. I guess it is the end of the world!
The echoing sarcasm of a teenage girl shone through the gray clouds as she turned onto her street. The suspicious beeping had stopped, the clouds were clearing up, most of the water had drained into the gutters, and birds were chirping again. Little kids down the street were running around and playing and yelling. Their tone almost sounded more scared than exhilarated, though.
Don’t they know there’s an apocalypse going on?
The sky was a dark shade of gray and the air was damp. The ground was moist as well, seeing that it had just rained. At a glance, it was solemn and dull, but at the same time, oh so hectic.
She sat at home as everything outside seemed to go on without her. She was minding her own business and living her own life for once in her teenage years. Then the phones started ringing; the words started pouring in like the water on the streets outside. Something was happening, someone was saying something, and someone had their own theory about it. Her mother was on the phone with her friend, a neighbor, possibly millions of others, and then finally was speaking to her husband.
The words from the second floor resonated through the still house and into the basement where the girl sat, and the phrases “firetruck” and “evacuation” flew into her ears. She didn’t even think before she ran upstairs and confronted her parents.
“What’s going on?”
They didn’t answer, they just kept talking. She thought of when she was a little girl and she’d say something in the childish language only to have it go over their heads and out the window.
“Mom, dad, I heard evacuation.”
Still no reply.
“What the hell is going on?!”
“Apparently there’s a firetruck at the end of the street. Go down and check what’s happening.”
The girl peeked out the window and saw the gray outside. The first word that popped into her head: apocalypse. At least, the scene looked like it. Nevertheless, she still put on her old flip flops and flip flopped outside.
The first thing she heard was a steady beep beep beep beep beep...and she hated beeping noises. That repetitive beeping or sounding or alarm or ticking was just a trigger her own paranoia.
So what if a bomb’s about to go off or something?
She tried to walk away from it, but her own curiosity kept her standing aimlessly in front of her house, staring across the street at another that was beeping, or seemed to be.
The tone of the beeping slowly got softer and slower paced.
Beep beep beeep beeeeep beeeeeeeep...
And she expected a bomb to go off, or the house to explode or combust. But all that happened was the stilling of the world around her, as everything was calm again, including her mind.
She walked--no, ran--to the end of the street, only to see that cars everywhere were piling into her normally quiet suburban neighborhood. The entire city was driving by her house, her friend’s houses, her little CVS down the street, and that big medical building parking lot where her and her friends would run around inside when no one was parked there.
She had remembered hearing on the phone “road blocked off by firetruck,” and she knew that the main road that her street branched off of was shut down or blocked in some way. With cars everywhere, it was like playing Frogger to try to get there to see what was going on. She’d dart in here but nearly get run over, run across there and nearly cause a pile-up.
And all of a sudden, her paranoid fear of whatever was going on turned into whimsical curiosity. Maybe some meteor had crashed and made a dent in the road and some cool alien species was attached to it. She had watched a movie the other day about that in Biology. Maybe there was a crack in the Earth and now hell is going to pour into the streets and the living will meet the dead. Or a zombie attack, can’t forget about that.
The list went on.
She soon got to the main road and looked at it apprehensively. She walked slowly, and seeing that a female police officer was walking in her direction, tried to look as innocent as possible. But the officer just walked into a store nearby, leaving the girl to keep walking and keep looking for what had caused such a strange change in her environment.
And the culprit was soon found. There was no meteor crash, no eruption of hell, no undead ruling the land. A couple of workers were moving something big out of the road. And it wasn’t a dead body, or a totaled car. It was a street lamp.
She rolled her eyes, having come all this way to think it was the apocalypse, when all that had happened was the brief tumble of a lighting fixture. She turned around and walked back to her house, once again nearly getting killed by the cars that were struggling to find their way in the maze of the neighborhood that she knew by heart.
But she thought again, maybe it was an apocalypse for someone. Since everyone’s affected differently by these things.
It was a little apocalypse. She pictured a mother nursing a baby in her arms, not knowing that her child was danger, horror, catastrophe. Baby apocalypse.
And everyone reacting to this badly was just a misunderstanding. Evacuation? Not in a little apocalypse. She laughed to herself, and the fact that everyone had overreacted to such a little thing.
Then again, she had, too.
But it’s not like it was the total end of the world. She thought to herself for a moment.
Well, final exams start tomorrow. I guess it is the end of the world!
The echoing sarcasm of a teenage girl shone through the gray clouds as she turned onto her street. The suspicious beeping had stopped, the clouds were clearing up, most of the water had drained into the gutters, and birds were chirping again. Little kids down the street were running around and playing and yelling. Their tone almost sounded more scared than exhilarated, though.
Don’t they know there’s an apocalypse going on?