Young Writers Society

This is a lil' apocalyptic piece based on the idea of your life flashing before your eyes when you die and I feel like the tone doesn't carry through from paragraph to paragraph properly. Any help/suggestions/criticisms in that area (or just generally) would be very welcome. Also any grammar/spelling discrepancies you notice.

It’s all falling down. Maybe it’s the anxiety clawing at your chest, or the concrete shards slamming down around you like God’s angriest, dustiest hailstorm, but you know in your heart of hearts that this isn’t the kind of thing you come back from. There’s something undeniably apocalyptic about the dust and rubble that swirls around the jagged concrete island you are inadvertently inhabiting. Protruding from the reinforced concrete that surrounds you - while it simultaneously fills your lungs with tiny, rasping particles - recently serrated metal bars grate the tips of your fingers as you jolt and falter in a desperate, pathetic attempt to drag yourself from your quickly disintegrating living room. You swear you’re still going but the world directly around you has moved into slow motion, people outside still screaming and running while your body sags, trapped inside a sphere of silence - your Idiot Orb, your Dumbass Domain. The tiny realm of hell reserved for halfwit morons who don’t evacuate when they’re told to. A voice inside your head that isn’t yours laughs. Asshole.

You want to remember the good times now but for some reason all your mind is filled with is images of Trevor, the goldfish you had when you were 9. He was a birthday present - you can still vividly remember the day you and your dad went to pick him out from the selection of 7 identical fish at your local pet shop. You loved Trevor. he was your best friend for all of three weeks before you accidentally poured soap granules into his tank instead of food and your brother had to flush him down the toilet because you were too busy sobbing to How to Save a Life by The Fray. Good fuckin’ song, that, but you doubt having someone stay up with you all night is really what you need to save your own life, right now.

The world around you begins to tilt as the foundations of the building you have been living if for a full eleven days give way. Your apartment has three rooms and a cupboard, one of four small dwellings that occupy the seventh floor. You remember distantly, somewhere in the back of your mind, that this is the floor you are supposed to throw a cat out of if you want it to hit terminal velocity. You don’t know why you know that, or in what situation it would ever be relevant to anything but there you go. Cats. Your brain kind of buffers as you struggle to recall what terminal velocity even means, but you were never the best at maths. Or physics? They’re basically the same thing, you suppose. Science is just more wordy.

You were the only person in your building (as far as you know) who chose not to evacuate when the warnings went out. It doesn’t matter, you thought. It’s not like anything ever really comes of it, in the end. Idiot. Your landlord stayed, actually, now you think about it. As if he was going to try and protect the building or something. Your toothbrush falls through the door to the bathroom as the building begins to become more horizontal than vertical. You lose your grip completely now and your back hits the wall, your neck cracking back painfully. Realisation hits you and you’re so glad Mr. McCuddy stayed. He still hasn’t agreed to fix the tap that was already broken when you moved in - he insisted it was your fault, that you broke it with your ‘negative energy.’ At least if this is how you go out, you’re taking him with you.

The voice is back now and you can tell from the tone that its owner is smiling. It’s not malicious - more sentimental and lightly amused. You’re starting to slide backwards now. Backwards? Downwards? It doesn’t really matter and in the delirious amazement surrounding the moment you manage to hit the ceiling without totally snapping your neck, you finally recognise the voice. MacKenzie Porter, your second kiss. Also your first kiss, but the second one was approximately four years later and significantly more enjoyable. It’s her laugh that whispers down your spine as blood begins to drip into your open eyes, clouding your vision with a dingy orange mist. She’s probably in a bunker now, somewhere underground. you wonder what she’s thinking about. It seems narcissistic to assume it might be you but when you really consider it, it might be. Definitely not the only thing she’s thinking of (she probably has kids now - something responsible and adult like that) but she’s the sort of person to think about everyone in times of trouble, even if it’s only a little bit. Her voice is getting quieter.

Something snags and now you’re falling. There’s a tremendous crashing sound - the battering concrete pops your bubble.

Oh.

You hit the ground.