When The World Finally Caved In

The Beginning of the End

"So, talk me through how it all began, or should I say, how the end began"

"Well, I suppose it began like any other day really, I don't know what you want me to say?"

"I want to know exactly how it felt to know that you may never feel again"

"Well then, I suppose I should start from when the illness spread, or at least how I remember it"

The rain felt heavier that day than it had in a while. The raindrops had stopped gently dancing on the window and had begun to violently pound against the glass as though the antidote to their melancholy was housed behind the pane. It was actually what had first awoken me if I remember correctly. I stared at the ceiling, the boring creme colour assuring me that today would be the start of another meaningless week, another week I felt I could have done without.

By that point the cold had already washed over me enough that I could feel the coolness leaking into my bones; I actually used to enjoy that feeling, ironically to me it felt sort of like a warm hug, a nostalgic feeling that I wanted to bury myself deep in. wallowing in the feeling for too long, I'd come to realise, caused an unnecessary delay as by now I was well and truly fucked.....I should have been out of the house a good 20 minutes ago. Time seemed to move strangely that day, almost as if my perception had been just slightly off, I could have sworn my clock had jumped from five to ten in the space of a second, as though something were chasing the hands.

I got out of my bed and scrambled around my room, trying to pull clothes in one hand and use the other to put them on, now looking back it seems my lateness was such a trivial thing but, in that moment, it felt like the end of the world. Once I was fully clothed and completely out of breath, I grabbed my keys viciously and started out of the house. 

With my phone in my hand, I walked fairly fast down the bumpy pavement, praying that my boss wouldn't give me a hard time when I arrived. As I was walking i began to browse my social media, hoping the world wasn't too lonely while I had been asleep, and as I browsed, I realised nothing had changed, not that I had really expected it to have. 

Around maybe halfway down the street I felt something in the air change, like a subtle undertone of malevolence had very quickly hidden itself in plain sight. I remember actually looking up because it had felt strange, and I felt uneasy. Now I suppose with hindsight I can use that as the marking of when it all began to end.

"So, you actually felt the world shift?"

"I think so maybe, I've always had good intuition so I suppose It must have kicked in"

"You weren't supposed to feel that there weren't supposed to be any warnings. It should have been indetectable"

"Like I said, I have good intuition"

"Okay so you were heading down a pavement or something?"

"Oh yea..."

Walking further down that pavement felt like I was walking into a trap. I knew something was wrong, but I just couldn't figure out what until I saw them. 

A crowd of people which Hadn't been there a minute ago. I saw shocked faces and tears, lots of tears but I couldn't hear any sound or commotion, as though someone had muted a television program. I thought that maybe the tension i was feeling had been an extension of whatever was going on over there. I wanted to go and look, to see what everyone was so worried about but something deep and far inside my core was telling me not to, I felt like there was someone whispering in my ear, whispering about how bad of an idea it was to go over, but eventually my curiosity got the better of me.

I began to cautiously edge closer to the crowd and the closer i got, the worse i felt. It was as though there was a cloud of anxiety hanging over that crowd, but then again that would make sense considering the slight that had been laid before them.

Once I was finally close enough to see between shoulders I froze. It's not as though the sight before me was intensely grotesque or gory, it was just...strange

There was a man on the ground, he was lying down and looked as though he were peacefully resting, but there was a single, red tear running down his cheek. It's actually funny to think that that was the start of the illness, and when more people began dying, we all thought it was just going to be like that, peaceful sleep and red tears but no... he was one of the lucky ones.

" You still haven't answered my question"

" Which was?"

"How did it feel to know you may never feel again?"

" It felt like the end of the world."