The Eighth Day

The world was created in six days, and on the seventh day there was rest.

Now once again six days will pass, and on the seventh day all of humanity will rest. Forever.

The worst part is the false normalcy. Unlike some strange dystopia, there is no scramble for plane tickets to Disney World, no tear-filled apologies to those long separated from. No declarations of undying love before dying. Every single damned human on the planet is going to go on with their lives as if nothing was different, for six excruciatingly long days.

Because nothing truly is different.

Since the beginning of time the human affliction has been living every single day with the nagging voice in the back of the mind whispering that this. This. Was the last moment alive.

The innocence of not knowing the when makes all the difference.

For six days I wrote not a word. Not a goodbye to humanity. Not even a story of my time. My lips uttered not a single apology, nor sweet nothings of adoration.

I was silently trancelike for six days.

I would not even say I was that far away from death while still being very much alive.

I knew everything.

I knew nothing.

On the end of the seventh night, the last night, I allowed myself a single tear.

For what? For my life about to be lost? For the lives of the rest of the planet so near to slipping away without ever having made that last reach for a life well lived? For the knowing? For the waiting? For fear?

No.

I wept because of how foolish I had been. Believing that this was it, the final moments until humankind was erased from memory. I wept for thinking that this week was any different from the hundreds of weeks that came before it.

On the eighth day I, and the rest of the human population, woke up.

And began again.