A short story in construction, working on editing and adjusting. This one is a swirling melody of ideas. Originally meant to be a world without language I will come back to that idea, and here I will embrace the desire to live within the apocalypse.

If you enjoy it please visit my Short Stories Page to find more.

1264 words

My Hero the Apocalypse

There are apocalypses and apocalypses do you understand where we are and where we will one day never be no matter how much you wish to be in the burning end of time that begins the future you deserve.

To be honest, I really could care less if you understand; you should know this, the apocalypse has freed me, finally freed me to be me, to not look at others in that painfully polite way that makes me hide any part of my dreams that shape this creature I call myself.

I just exist here on this crumbling monument to what was, watching what is in this hellscape I call heaven because it has provided me with a present I could have never hoped to have for my future when I lived once so long ago as a creature that hides what it thought would be a forever unseen truth.

It doesn’t matter how we got here, or where ‘here’ is, the end came and it was never the end, just a much-needed awakening, from what I had been dreaming, the horrid nightmare of reality, and the alarm went off and society faded away like the bad dream it was.

I hoist my spear and lean out over the edge of the building with a smile appreciating the crumbling remains of the cityscape, once burning bright and shiny, now broken and decaying around me with a mossy stench and water-stained facade I never dreamed would be the happiness that I desired when the world still shone and mobile phones still pinged in my ear with little messages from strangers that called me friend.

To call it a spear was about as fancy as it could be called seeing as it was a hard metal shaft I found in an army surplus store with a fishing head attached, that had all fit perfectly in my hand and tap tap tapped along with me as I walked through the forests of this new wilderness that was once a city and is now my very own broken-down paradise that I shall dance within for the rest of time with the freedom that only comes when one no longer cares.

There is a dance I do here in the ashes of humanity, a dance of liberation as the flowers blossom through the concrete streets and the cracks that have formed from disuse and poor management, for those of us that have survived care not about their management, preferring the flowers that have sprung up through the breaks and jagged lines of evolution that brought us from the primitive past of factory farms to the beautiful future of hunting to survive.

There was an end to the broken world of the sharp-lined aisles of the grocery stores and tasteless lies of packaged foods and advancement into the world of freshly hunted meat and handpicked herbs and berries laid beside roasted roots and fish caught from the same river where I bathed.

The air was clean and fresh as I turned to the shadow that stood behind me in silent rebuke and noded with my best mumbled, “what is it you want Solomen because the time I cared enough to wait while others loomed over me is over, and I got long sigh-worthy staring out over a broken fucking city to get done today.”

The shadow sighed and I could feel its judgmental breath fill the air with the rotten stink of expectations left over from before the world changed their eyes begged me without sound even as their husky voice demanded, “you know what we need, you know why I am here, they need us.”

I stared back willing them to understand my response with a shake of my head, “respect my fucking whirlwind, I know you need me, I know they need me, the problem for you is I do not want to help, don’t care, haven’t even thought about any of you since I got on this rooftop.”

The shadow grunted out, “we need you.”

I looked back out over the crumbling skyline and down into my broken paradise, the hint of poisonous spores and the tracks of demon dogs entwined along the webs of giant spiders and nests of flesh-hungry birds pittering about in a myriad of beautiful colors and sweet songs as I  waved them away with my response, “you fail to understand how much I love this world.”

“This isn’t some game, it’s not some portal novel, this is our reality, this is our lives,” the huffed as their glaring expression tried to chew through my back.

I stared down into the world that twisted in and turned out to become a place I could stop surviving and start thriving, I laughed wordlessly before adding words, “what you don’t realize is this is a game, it is a portal fantasy, it is our reality, and it is our lives, and what I never understood in those stories is why the fuck the protagonist would ever want to go back to the reality that was not this beautiful painful experience, here I can live even if I may not survive, there I survive without ever really living.”

“What is wrong with you?” they whispered back.

I laughed, “I am free, you should try it, Sol.”

“I will never understand you.”

“You won’t, but speak your peace, I have a world to explore.”

I hefted my spear, honestly, I do not even like my spear as much as my blades, but don’t tell other people that, cause like, they just see the big pointy object thing I hold in my hand and assume it is important, but I can take my curved karambit and half-moon ulu and fuck the party up, but everyone just sees the spear, like it is somehow special, fuck special, cause I am not special, but yet, here I fucking am being bothered, because I am special.

And they bother me because they still want me to do something about all of this, and I am not doing that like I will save their asses, cause that is a thing I can like do, but pushing a button to make the world bull shit again, is just not a fucking thing I am willing to do, I mean have you seen this world, there are giant spiders that fight demon fucking dogs, it is a fucking wet dream.

I know the shadow needs an answer as much as they need my spear, they want their friend saved and assume I love them as much as they love me, and so I nod my head, in that “let’s go get this done” kind of way that ensures I will be on the rescue mission even as I ensure the aspect of the mission designed to “save the world” and take it back to what it was never fucking happens like I am here to ensure they do not die or get tortured, tortured more, but honestly, the whole, save the world fucking thing, is not my cup of tea when saving the world means I go back to what was, my world was saved when the old world ended.

So I nodded my head and turned back to my view of crumbling concrete with a sigh, I will go, I will guide them through the new world with a skip and a laugh and gain them back their friend, who made the mistake of calling me friend once, but first I want to gaze out at my paradise for just a bit longer.

 

End

 

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