This is the End
Stupid humans, we thought the Big Bang had already occurred. How much more wrong could we be? We had survived that, yet then came The Rapture. I’m not supposed to be here, I’m a believer, so how could this have happened? Now for us, the five billion souls left here on the Earth, we get this news. The biggest asteroid of all time is headed straight for us, we have seven days left, we will not survive this one.
I’m at a loss for words as I stare at my husband of thirty-five years. We just heard the news on our local station and after checking all of them, realized the news was worldwide. I can’t think. I can’t process this. There will be no fallout shelter, no miracle cure. What is there to do? Prayers are a foregone thing now, we weren’t taken in the Rapture, so we figure why bother? All I can do is look at my loving mate, grab him tightly and squeeze for all I’m worth, while this news swirls around in my brain like a merry-go-round on steroids.
If there was ever a time for a bucket list, this is it. My mind has not gone there yet, however, I’m still in shock. Slowly, like he’s in a trance, my husband Danny gets up from the couch and walks back to our bathroom, grabs my one-hitter off the window ledge, brings it back into the den and proceeds to light up. “What the hell are you doing?” I say, attempting to grab it out of his hand. “Who cares now, I’m not going back to work. Did you not hear, we are dead in seven days! Why shouldn’t we get stoned and sit here for a minute, try to get our heads around this?”
I stare at Danny like he has two heads. He’s right though. It doesn’t make a shit now what we do. I let it all sink in and then jump up from the couch and go grab us a drink. “You’re right,” I say, bringing him a beer and myself a hard cider. I’m shaking and I need to calm down so I can think.
We light up, each take a toke and a sip, then lean back on the couch and stare into each other’s eyes. “It’s been a fabulous life with you,” Danny starts to say. I sit there dumbfounded as the finality of it all starts to penetrate my addled brain. Danny has always been a realist, while I was the hopeful dreamer. I just can’t process that there is no way out of this until he says that, and then he adds, “We might as well make a final plan, do what we’ve always wanted to do for the last seven days here.”
I burst into tears. This cannot be it. All the years spent working our asses off, all the time raising our kids, planning for the future. Now that the future is gone, we have seven days. Nothing we could have done would have prevented this, nothing can save us, it is just...the end. Of the 2.7 billion people that were taken in The Rapture or passed away from something else in the last few months, most were innocents. Children, infants, saints, and true believers. One day millions of people were just gone. Obliterated. No explanation. It was decided then that the Rapture had happened and we were the ones left. We thought we were in that group, yet we were wrong. Just being good people and attending church was evidently not enough. We’d fooled ourselves all along. What was heading for us now must be the Apocolypse the Bible talks about after the Rapture. Only way more final. No Hell on Earth to endure...complete annihilation.
Danny knew what I was thinking and grabbed my hand. “No need to dwell on that, there’s no reason, no time to waste. What do you want to do?” I looked at him and from somewhere deep in my chest, a giggle was bubbling to the surface. I couldn’t stop myself, the thought of so little time left and the absurdity of this situation combined into some sort of hysterical cackle that threatened to erupt and all of a sudden I went from bawling to laughing, no guffawing out loud. Danny stared back at me and giggled a little himself. “What’s funny, Honey?” “If you think I’m staying stoned and in the sack for seven days, you are sorely mistaken!” I said, laughing the whole time. He looked at me like a chastised child. “Would that really be so bad?” he asked innocently.
I grabbed my drink and took a long pull, “Well, we can start out that way if you like, but then I’ve got places to go and peeps to see...things I’ve always wanted to do, and I want to do it all with you. You’re right, we have no time to waste, we need to call the kids, make a plan...” It was Danny’s turn to stare now. “What does all that matter now? I say we go to our happy place and stay drunk until it’s over. Waves crashing on the beach, drinks in our hands, toes in the sand, all that. We can fish all we want, money is no object now, we can stay in the big fancy...” “Oh no,” I cut him off. “That may work for the last day but...”
Danny grabbed both of my hands in his and gazed into my eyes. “Listen, let’s call the kids, see where their heads are at with all of this. We should all be together, whatever we do. If they want to be with us, that is.”
That was something to consider, would they? They were grown now with families of their own. Our parents were all gone, and it had just been Danny and me, working at building enough for that someday retirement plan. We’d been remodeling the house to get it ready for sale someday in the near future, Danny could never seem to work enough or make enough to feel comfortable with retiring, he had yet to reach his “sweet spot” money-wise. I just sat back and contemplated all of this. If someone would have asked me yesterday what I would do if the world was to end tomorrow, I would not have known what to say. Now here we were with the choice taken right out of our hands. As I sat there pondering all this Danny spoke again. “I wonder why neither of the kids has called us yet?” “Exactly,” I said, squeezing his hand again. “Surely they have heard the news by now.”
Before the words were out of my mouth my cell phone rang. “Mom! Did you hear? I’m in shock, I don’t know what to do!” It was our youngest, Camden. He and his wife Liz had just come back from a trip and now he must be reeling from the news, same as us. “I know, son. I was just talking to Daddy about it and how final it all is. I was telling him we should all be together for the end, no matter what. Do y’all want to pack a bag and come over, stay with us while we figure out what to do?” Silence on the other end for a moment then, “I don’t know, let me call Jeremy and ask him what he thinks, I’ll call you back.” Jeremy was our oldest, he had never married but was living with his girlfriend and her two kids. He never kept a job very long or had a real “life plan” he just kind of floated along by the seat of his pants and the grace of God.
Not that he believed in God, no wonder he hadn’t been taken. We all sin, we’ve all committed sins and yet, we had been lulled into thinking if we lived our lives right and were generally good people, we would definitely enter the Kingdom. Jeremy had never been under that delusion. He swore he was an Atheist, however, I always thought he secretly believed in God, he was always trying to figure out where he fits in the world. He struggled with addiction, relationships, maintaining a job, yet he was a good boy, he had a good heart. I had truly believed he would have been taken, you know how they say God protects drunks and fools. Maybe just keeping him alive was as far as it went. At any rate, he was our kid and we all just needed to be together for the end.
By that evening, we were all sitting on our patio, the kids were in bed, we had grabbed more alcohol and the boys had brought their stashes (we were under no delusions either), and we were having a family discussion that had turned into reminiscing. No longer worried about work, the boys were sharing stories of their childhood and keeping Danny and me in stitches. The girls were trying to be cool, but I could tell they were shell-shocked as any young person would be. Oh, it was ok for us older folks to have to face the end of days, but how unfair for them to be cut down before they’d had a chance to really live. My thought was we all should have lived our lives that way, or we wouldn’t be staring at each other now, at a loss as to how to spend the next seven days. Camden looked over at me, his eyes tearing up, and he said, “What do you want to do Mama?” I guess it was finally sinking in that there was no way out of this for any of us. He was so considerate to ask me what I wanted to do.
“There are so many places I want to go to, so many things I’ve never seen. I appreciate you asking me, but we should all think about this very hard. I’m not the only one with wants and needs here. Y’all are the young folks, what are your thoughts?” I looked from one to the other and at both girls. It was so unfair. Now I felt like crying again, but I couldn’t fall apart now. If the truth is known, Danny was the one who should choose. He worked like a slave all his life to provide us with a roof and food, his ultimate goal had been to retire on the coast somewhere, which we all loved as a family. Silence had fallen again and Camden seemed to have read my mind. “Daddy?” he asked him now. I was uncanny really, not one of us was looking at our stupid phones except for Danny, who was using his to control the music like he always did. He looked at each one of the ladies, and then at the boys before settling on me. “Your mama and I don’t want you boys to feel obligated to spend your final days with us. If you guys want to, say spend the next couple of days doing whatever you want, I say we can meet up at the coast on or before the last day and go out in style.”
Whatever they would have said after that was unknown because as we all sat there with bated breath, the asteroid crashed into the earth and again, the choice was taken completely out of our hands. An enormous boom and the brightest white light ever seen to mankind completely obliterated the scene, vaporizing everything and we never even got the chance to regret our final choice.