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Friday, August 1, 2014

It Could Be Worse

The day even started bright. White enameled stoves and cream-colored linoleum were painful to look at and eggs were cracked into frying pans with eyes half closed, squinting.

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It surprised her when she really finally left, although in retrospect it was obvious she'd been leaving for weeks. Somehow all the clues had completely escaped her notice, which was probably indicative of the state of their relationship.

Clothes had been disappearing from the closet. She'd bought her own tube of toothpaste. There had been intensive cleaning so that one could do one's makeup in the mirror bright appliances and formica countertops.

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As the day progressed toward noon more and more of the sky turned to red fire as the burning blazing sun grew and grew. The heat grew too, but ultraviolet radiation trickled to almost nothing as the Sun expanded. No one worried anymore about skin cancer.

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For example, the pillow she'd been sleeping on for the last few weeks and that she'd not taken with her- it had a little crusty patch that turned out to be salt. How could she have failed to notice her love crying that much?

She didn't even try to call or track her down. She had ruined the best thing she'd ever known with her indifference and didn't deserve another chance.

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Within a few days trees and tall buildings started smoking at noon while people huddled in underground warrens, having chosen to prolong the end a few weeks. All the extra energy caused intense windstorms but no rain as the clouds boiled off into space.

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So she took up drinking. Some people become passionate or maudlin when they drink, but that was another thing she couldn't do right. So she sat dizzy and brooding, counting ratios of consonants to vowels in the words printed on cereal boxes.

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It turned out expansion of red giants was less predictable than they thought, and it took another nine million years for the Sun's corona to engulf the dried out cinder that had been humanity's cradle. The event was watched with some interest.

1 comment:

  1. Alone at the end of the world, only . . . it's not quite the end, is it?

    Wow.

    And yet there's hope, because the event was watched with some interest. That means either aliens, or humanity--or both--were far enough away from the event to view it safely. I hope.

    Still, it makes me think:

    This is the way the world ends.
    This is the way the world ends.
    This is the way the world ends.
    Not with a bang, but a whimper.

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