All of Us Are Going to Hell

TEN

6 and a Half Minutes into the End of the World

June, 2023
 
Madness is like gravity—all it takes is a little push.
THE JOKER, THE JOKER MOVIE
 
The end is here.

    I can almost hear the harbinger's voice again; screaming that sentence in my head, in my ears. That's what he was. A harbinger. He literally told us this was going to happen.

    And we laughed.

    “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!” Mark screams, launching a bowl of mints to the floor. The mints scatter across the room like a colony of insects; some slide so far across, they reach my feet.

    Iris drops the floor and scoops up a handful. All of us look at her. She pops a few in her mouth. “What?” she asks. “Five second rule doesn't apply at the end of the world?”

    “Stop fucking saying that!” Mark screams again. “That's not what this is!”

    Jabari finds his voice, unhinging himself from the window. “What is it, then? Take a look around you, McCannon. A fucking long look! There's lava coming out of your driveway and you still think, what, that this is some simulation from NASA and we're the test monkeys? Wake up.” He faces me with a scowl. “Even she knows that.”

    I do know that. He's right. There's no way out of here.

    “Tell us, then, dear Lilith,” Mark starts, turning towards me, a precise attack, “since you're now currently a purveyor and prodigy of end-time events, why six of us are still alive and breathing and in this room!”

    I freeze.

    “Leave her alone, man.” Elijah stepped into his line of sight. “What's your problem? Why'd you keep trying to make stuff worse?”

    “I'm making things worse?” Mark sprang up at him and got into his face, snarling and growling like a rabid animal. “Say that again, motherfucker! Say that again, you drug peddling motherfucker!”

    Before I can stop myself, I scream: “Stop it!”

    To my bewilderment, they stop, like they're being snapped back to reality by my voice. “Don't you guys see what this situation's doing to us? We're out here fighting each other rather than looking for a way out of this!”

    “A way out of what?” Iris asks with a bite of a mint and a small scoff I want to wring out of her. “Unless you can lava-bend, and I'm definitely sure you can't,  there's no way out of here.”

    “And even if you could get out,” Jabari follows, sitting on the pool table, “where would you even go? If people vanished here, what's to say they haven't vanished everywhere?”

    He's right.

    They're all right.

    We're trapped here. Why?

    Like she can read my mind, Hadassah asks: “If everyone's gone, why are we the only ones still here?”

    “The Armageddon question,” hisses Mark, calmer now. “Perhaps they forgot to check the list with the admission clerk.”

    I glare at him. “Not funny.”

    He doesn't hear me and if he does, he doesn't acknowledge it. I look through the windows. It still doesn't feel real, but I know it is.

    Lava has covered everything. I can't see anything beyond where the gates were supposed to be that isn't burning or melting. The magma sprays into the air every five minutes, like random, scattered geysers that don't seem to have an end.

    Regrets begin to hit me in a number of different ways, like blows chucking me in the gut.

    Capri.

    Those babies.

    Dad. There's so much I could have done better. I wanted to be better. I could've helped Capri and given the babies out for adoption or stopped Dad from leaving. But I didn't. And it disgusts me that if the world wasn't ending right now, I still wouldn't.

    “So, what now?” Iris asks the room, no one in particular. “We just wait until the lava gets into the house and boils us alive?”

    “Funny thing: it's not,” Jabari informs the room. “That earthquake should have torn this house to shreds. It didn't.”

    The lava should have melted through the walls by now. It hasn't. I don't get it. Why keep us here, with no way out, in a house that isn't being harmed? Why us?

    Something jars me out of my thoughts. It's distant, but it's loud and it sounds like—

    “The doorbell,” Hadassah says with a horrified look. Six of seem to become frozen as ice sculptures as we strain our ears to hear it and make sure it's not just our imagination.

    The ding-dong sound comes again and I gasp. My heart falls into my heels that I'm surprised I'm still wearing.

    There's someone at the door.