The Deadly Disease of Love

Prolog: The Apathy of The End of The World

It was a typical horror book kind of night, dark, stormy. Adrian should've expected it but they had decided running errands was a better plan of action. In the long run none of their actions that night would matter.

Adrian's mind was often bombarded with worry and stress, they never seemed to simply have the time. Between work and school, they could never just exist. This bothered them to the point they'd rather be walking down the flooded streets of the city, the rain pouring down, ruining their clothes, then sitting in their studio apartment alone.

Adrian was always in a state of existential wonder, and sometimes even dread. They were always told to just enjoy what life threw at them, no matter what the point was, but they didn't care about what happened when life threw a fastball at them. The point was that they didn't flinch.

Adrian knew humans did not simply exist to die, for what is a book if not a story itself, do we listen to the harmonies of a song just to hear it fade out in the last few seconds? No, it's for the experience throughout. Adrian loathed these metaphors, the song of their life had been one sung by a tone deaf choir of fifty. And the experience to be enjoyed was not that of which Adrian had known, Adrian had only truly known the pain and suffering that life offered to them as a seven course meal. Alas, they had to persist, they had to move on.

Adrian stopped for a moment and let their train of thought slowly dissipate into the distance as they took in their surroundings. They had been so lost in the maze of their own mind to realize how much rain they were actually getting. The rushing water of the streets was now up to their ankles, they started to regret not wearing rain boots. Their vintage trench coat was soaked, it weighed them down beyond belief. They rolled their eyes at the thought of even trying to dry their dreadlocks. But after a moment, they stopped caring. They could die tomorrow for all they knew, of course they weren't planning for it to be at their own hands, but it could still happen.

They let out a sigh so long they had to stop to take another breath. There was a bench just a few feet away, so they sat down on the wood seemingly dry as it was under an awning. They pulled their phone out from their pocket and checked to see if it was wet or not. After a few moments of inspection, they found no sign of damage and turned it on.

It didn't take long for them to see the news app notifications flooding the upper screen of their phone.

They'd soon regret clicking on them.

The screen was full of the word; no matter what they did they couldn't escape it. War. Adrian felt the panic set it, they clicked on the linked video, a news anchor spoke trying to hide her distress.

"Like an apocalypse-" She said. "The leaders of the world have raged war against each other."

"What?" Adrian thought out loud.

"With no regard for their citizens, all countries' armies have entered each other's territory." The other anchor added, "it's like blood lust out there."

The video transitioned to the meteorologist leading the weather. Behind him was a radar showing the rain radar for the u.s. It was almost all yellow and red.

"As you can see, war is not our only concern as huge rain storms flow through all of America, as well as its neighboring countries." He gave a look to someone clearly behind the camera, "Steve roll the predictions for the radar." he asked looking back at the display behind him.

There were a few mumbled off camera presumably Steve.

"It's already rolling?" the meteorologist looked stunned, "well folks, i've never seen this in my entire career." He exclaimed, "it seems that the storm will be staying stagnant."