Shortys 2024 Anthology

Lady Luck

I have spent every minute in this prison cell thinking about escape. I'm not even supposed to be here! So, why was I crossing out my fifth year behind bars while the woman who'd once claimed to be my one true love and the one supposed to be in here roamed free? The mantra of escape and revenge was now a five-year old earwig, and the only reason I woke up every morning.

None of my escape plans have ever panned out, but that doesn't surprise me. Prison breaks need a heavy dose of luck and, as demonstrated by every minute I've been alive, Lady Luck is allergic to me. So, imagine my surprise when luck finally came knocking one day as I was being transported to the hospital for a routine treatment because the prison clinic was too full thanks to a massive brawl.

After guiding me out of the van, the guard broke protocol by letting go of my arm and returning to the car's cabin to grab their charging phone.

I couldn't believe it.

This was it.

This was my chance!

I grabbed it tight and ran.

I only made it a few yards, not that I ever believed for a second that I'd get away with this. I was running on adrenaline, but I wasn't that fast. The guards caught up with me, screaming bloody murder at me for ruining their day!

A car suddenly swerved into the pedestrian walk and almost smeared me onto the pavement. That's when I noticed, traffic was becoming gnarly on every road I walked past. Suddenly, impatient drivers began shutting down their cars, grabbing whatever they could and just sprinting. Looking around didn't reveal any clear and present danger, but it wasn't long before I figured out the source of the panic. One of the drivers bumped into me while sprinting by and dropped their bag in the process, a phone sliding out of it. They didn't even turn to look back. Their phone's screen was on and flashing a government issued warning.

The world was ending.

They called it a coronal mass ejection.

It would all be over in thirty minutes.

As I watched the crowd of panicked people race past me, one of the guards tackled me. We hit the ground hard enough to hear a few crunches, but as they rolled me over and handcuffed me, all I could do was laugh.

Escaping on the day of the apocalypse.

So much for Lady Luck.

The day the world ended was the most beautiful day on Earth. The skies burst into the most gorgeous neon streaks humanity had ever laid its eyes on. Where it was day, a thousand rainbows graced the skies in never ending waves, while the time zones where night had fallen were draped in unceasing ripples of greens and purples.

Beauty to the beast of the world's end.

The solar flare triggered a massive electromagnetic pulse that destroyed every single one of Earth's unshielded electrical components. A lot of institutions and systems tried to fix what was broken to stay up and running, but recovering from this loss was an uphill battle for most. When the world is ending, not much thought is put into prisons. The panic was immediate and absolute. The guards left. The warden left. Everyone left. Everyone that could. The cells became tombs.

Or they would have, if the aliens didn't arrive.

When that gigantic mothership lowered its belly through the clouds, we were terrified. But it turned out that the aliens were here to save humanity. During the month that followed the solar flare that had plunged Earth into a new dark age, the aliens built gigantic towers all around the globe that turned out to be wireless electricity generators. The aliens disappeared a month later, just as suddenly as they had appeared. They had done better than just save the world. They had given everyone on Earth access to free electricity and completely flipped human history!