Escape from Paradise

Chapter 5: After The World Ended

The next day, Larry checked his mail but there was no message from Jessie. What he found was a creepy letter from Diana:

'Honey, I wanted to remind you to wear something appropriate this evening. If I see you in the damn straps I will cut them to pieces with a knife. It's no joke. I just checked the knives in my kitchen and one of them fits in my new purse perfectly. Oh, and make sure you approach me with a smile or you'll get hurt.'

Upon reading the letter, Larry decided to clean the single suit from his wardrobe. Diana had punched him in the face a few times unexpectedly for simple reasons. There was a great chance that she might bring the knife to complete the creepy joke. It was best to keep her happy. She had a strange power to turn their dates into heaven or hell. Teasing her would be a fatality.

To prepare for the upcoming movie Larry entered the name 'After the World Ended' into the home computer screen. It returned a trailer and a short spoiler-free synopsis. Upon reading it, he learned that it is a heavy psychological story filled with action and special effects. It included an almost never used term called 'Death,' a word describing a process when a person ceases to exist.

He spent the day in a library on the opposite side of the street of his apartment building. There he attempted to wrap the story of the man who failed to make use of the building with narrow corridors. For Larry, the last chapters of a book had always been the most difficult. He knew that the stories were always remembered by their climaxes and endings. Building up the tension and interest was easy but ending everything successfully required a tremendous effort. He usually rewrote the last chapters five to ten times before being satisfied with the result.

This was his third attempt: the man ended up turning the building into a flyboard park. He installed accelerators and decelerators all over the place. Then he attempted to use flyboard for test rides during which he broke many bones and in the end gave up and asked permission to destroy the building. After typing in the last word, Larry deleted his day's work which he deemed as a total failure.

The long waited evening finally came. Larry put on the suit and reminded himself to smile. He marched to the train station and headed for The Palace, the largest and most advanced movie theater in Paradise. The train filled up in a few first stations -- a rare spectacle during the early evening. As the sun sank in the horizon, city lights ignited one after another until the Paradise turned into a disco show filled with floodlights of neon, crimson an azure. Far in the central district, the smooth and narrowing surface of the highest city building -- the Icicle, glittered in cherry red as the last rays of the falling sun crawled along it.

The train emptied at the Palace station. A minute of walk away from the station stretched a hill of wide stairs leading to the Palace. All neighboring buildings and objects were dwarfed by the giant structure. People were like bugs walking around a sand castle that had dozens of towers with golden zephyrs on their tops. It had arc entrances and columns decorated in symbols of an unknown language. Today its walls were painted in crimson. A holographic image with letters 'After the World Ended' floated just above the stairway it was surrounded by digital broken palm trees and people sized dolls lying on the beach in most uncomfortable positions, their limbs twisted.

Standing in the middle of the stairway, Diana waved to Larry. Her bright red painted wet lips showed no expression. Her eyes scanned him from feet to hair. A snow white sparkling dress with cutouts on the front and back exposed her soft tanned skin. When the wind blew from behind her, her straight hair fluttered hugging her neck, cheeks, and forehead. She held a white purse in the left hand by her belly while the right was stuck inside it.

She greeted Larry, "Well well well, who do we have here? Ain't that Larry Smith all suited up, hair combed, and a fake smile on his washed face."

"I got the memo and the smile isn't fake." He calmly replied stopping a few steps away from her.