7 Elements of Horror

So Slow

They said there would be fire and brimstone. They said that the heavens would quake and the earth would shake. They said there would be flooding and storms. They said that the entire world would be consumed in a spectacle even the gods would tremble at. But that wasn't how it happened at all. Instead, we were dead long before we even knew it.

We were like a corpse left alone in the sun to rot, we decayed away slowly. Time wore us down to the bone and beyond. But the thing is, even though Time is a natural apocalypse with the highest and most-effective kill-rate of all, it is so slow and quiet that mere mortals simply do not even notice. We cannot comprehend such a thing. Instead, while we were all holding our breath in wait of a dramatic and agonizing death, something was already bleeding us dry while our backs were turned and our eyes were pointed up.

All around us, the world crumbled and rotted away, just like the prophecies foretold, but because it did not happen in the way we expected it to, we didn't even notice. Instead, like that corpse left alone in the sun to rot, we dried up and became brittle. We cracked away piece by piece, caking and flaking into oblivion. Blood dried up, skin thinned away, bones crumbled to dust. We died. We lost the inevitable war against time.

The apocalypse came and went, even softer than a whisper. And here we all were, thinking there would be horns and dragons and deities and thunder. There wasn't even a whimper. It was a slow descent down a slope that looked nearly flat, but ultimately dropped us right off into a grave. Day by day we inched closer to it until we were buried deep within, but because it was so gradual, we still did not notice.

Even now, as the soil is being shoveled over our heads to seal us in, so many of us still don't see it. Each piece of dirt is added in one bit at a time, so it is easy not to see, but the soil is at our chest now. Not much longer and we will no longer be able to breathe. Then we will lose our vision as well and all will go dark. But because it is so slow, we don't even realize. Instead, it is all we have ever known. That's how slow, gentle and unnoticeable the fatal change is. It was not a bang or a Great War, it is not even a whimper. It is just life.

That was the inevitable apocalypse we were all waiting for has always been with us, from the second we first came alive. It's been an ongoing process ever since. Now we are near the end, but because we have been dying from the start, we still don't even notice. We grew up in this dying world. How are we supposed to recognize the dirt being dropped upon us bit by bit by bit by bit by bit by bit by bit by bit by bit...? We were over before we even began. Even now, death is all around us, and inside of us, but we don't even notice. It's too quiet, too slow.

AN: Just an AU on the "Great End of Days", combined with the joke that we start dying the second we're born.