[lj idol] week sixteen| "this dust is all that's left of us..."
[this is the end of the story]
*
It comes apart slowly at first.
Years and months and whole decades pass.
The days grow longer by split seconds and snow falls to sea level as stars burst, burn to blackened.
Time skips beats and then slows while markets bottom out, sending whole economies slip-sliding into the inevitable oblivion they’re all headed towards.
They’ve been counting it down for calendar pages. Red crosses through numbers marking the closing gap between now and the end.
March 3rd.
Jaded journos make bold predictions in smudged newsprint not hours before the sound of screaming echoes through the heat haze. Hits the deforested hills and bounces back.
And back, and back, and back, and…
They shut their eyes and lock their elbows together tightly in the airless dark. Outside, wind whips tangled hair into false haloes as metropolitan detritus cart-wheels the length of the horizon. Searchlights fade to weak streams of dappled yellow before blinking out completely, and fumbled matches fall from fingers long since numb.
But the darkness is a heavy cloak, and they come to wear it well.
The canteens run dry three days in but it doesn’t seem to matter, and they abandon their gas masks one day later as the ever-present smog starts to thin.
They walk, shoulder to shoulder. Drag their leather boots methodically through dust that rises, ankle deep.
Scarred street signs send them to the left at first, as far as the rolling Earth will let them go. They keep to the dancing shadows but their caution seems needless in the grand scheme of things.
The highways are clogged with lines of snaked traffic. The occasional open door betrays the fact that the vehicles are all long since abandoned. Laneways and narrow back alleys exist only to collect the faded remnants of the past as cracked asphalt turns to sodden pasture turns to shifting, shifting sand beneath their feet.
They are the first to arrive, of that they are certain.
Surf breaks hit the shoreline in time with the thunder that rolls overhead; a marching-band beat that seems alive with promise.
With new-found possibility.
They wake to drumming.
And the sky is a shifting, seething mass that has no end and no beginning.
Butterflies and hummingbirds. Blood-red ladybugs with ink-black spots.
The crowds begin to gather after that. In pairs at first, then groups of three and five and eight until the surrounding cliff edge is chained by a rope of hands, held.
Whispers build to a cacophony and the wind sings its triumph as the pledge is read.
To start over.
And to do it right.
*
previously on...
introduction | jayus | the missing stair | in another castle | nobody can ride your back if your back's not bent | build a better mouse-trap | step on a crack, break your mother's back | yes, and... | the recency effect | barrel of monkeys | open topic | confession from the chair | chekhov's gun
*
It comes apart slowly at first.
Years and months and whole decades pass.
The days grow longer by split seconds and snow falls to sea level as stars burst, burn to blackened.
Time skips beats and then slows while markets bottom out, sending whole economies slip-sliding into the inevitable oblivion they’re all headed towards.
They’ve been counting it down for calendar pages. Red crosses through numbers marking the closing gap between now and the end.
March 3rd.
Jaded journos make bold predictions in smudged newsprint not hours before the sound of screaming echoes through the heat haze. Hits the deforested hills and bounces back.
And back, and back, and back, and…
They shut their eyes and lock their elbows together tightly in the airless dark. Outside, wind whips tangled hair into false haloes as metropolitan detritus cart-wheels the length of the horizon. Searchlights fade to weak streams of dappled yellow before blinking out completely, and fumbled matches fall from fingers long since numb.
But the darkness is a heavy cloak, and they come to wear it well.
The canteens run dry three days in but it doesn’t seem to matter, and they abandon their gas masks one day later as the ever-present smog starts to thin.
They walk, shoulder to shoulder. Drag their leather boots methodically through dust that rises, ankle deep.
Scarred street signs send them to the left at first, as far as the rolling Earth will let them go. They keep to the dancing shadows but their caution seems needless in the grand scheme of things.
The highways are clogged with lines of snaked traffic. The occasional open door betrays the fact that the vehicles are all long since abandoned. Laneways and narrow back alleys exist only to collect the faded remnants of the past as cracked asphalt turns to sodden pasture turns to shifting, shifting sand beneath their feet.
They are the first to arrive, of that they are certain.
Surf breaks hit the shoreline in time with the thunder that rolls overhead; a marching-band beat that seems alive with promise.
With new-found possibility.
They wake to drumming.
And the sky is a shifting, seething mass that has no end and no beginning.
Butterflies and hummingbirds. Blood-red ladybugs with ink-black spots.
The crowds begin to gather after that. In pairs at first, then groups of three and five and eight until the surrounding cliff edge is chained by a rope of hands, held.
Whispers build to a cacophony and the wind sings its triumph as the pledge is read.
To start over.
And to do it right.
*
previously on...
introduction | jayus | the missing stair | in another castle | nobody can ride your back if your back's not bent | build a better mouse-trap | step on a crack, break your mother's back | yes, and... | the recency effect | barrel of monkeys | open topic | confession from the chair | chekhov's gun