Young Writers Society

“Listen up, folks! Maybe you shouldn’t fret over those gas prices after all. A man in Wyoming has predicted the apocalypse!” The newscaster’s bared fluorescent teeth could scarcely enclose his laugh. “When? One month from today. Bill, tell me we’ll have some nice weather before then!” The man shut off the TV. He turned to the window and the few solitary snowflakes, and glanced at the invitation on the top of the pile of bills and ads. If it’s still snowing in a few hours, he thought, the roads would be too bad to drive out there, probably. He sighed and made his way to the kitchen.

He contemplated the near-empty fridge, and squinted at a package of cheese, which he threw out. He wouldn’t have much of a chance post-Apocalypse, he thought, if the guy in Wyoming was right. He opened a beer.

He could remember hearing the same sort of thing on the radio when he was a kid. People had taken it more seriously then, or at least he did. He did this whole crazy thing with Charlie when it happened. They marked it in their calendars, “End of the World,” in red. He could remember feeling sicker and sicker as the day got closer. Charlie just seemed excited. When the night finally came – somehow they knew it would happen at midnight – Charlie, whose house was next to his, blinked his flashlight three times through his bedroom window. This meant “Come outside.” He had to check to see if his parents were asleep. The lamp was still on in the living room, but that didn’t mean his father was awake. He would usually be asleep in his armchair, a can of beer slipping from his hand and making a puddle on the floor. His mother would be asleep. With the coast clear, he groped for his clothes in the dark. He blinked his light twice – “I’m coming.” – and they both climbed out of their windows. Charlie was faster.

“Hurry up, Joey! You wouldn’t want to be climbing down a gutter when the world ends, would you?”

They snuck past the sleeping houses, avoiding pools of light. Joe’s stomach twisted and there was a pounding in his chest; he had always hated sneaking out, but this night, the last night, was even worse. They went to the highest place they knew, the hill at the end of the street. There they would wait to see the world go out.

Charlie had brought a couple of candy bars, to add to the festivity. “Eat up, Joey. This just might be the last chocolate you’ll ever have.” His teeth and eyes glinted in the moonlight.

Charlie would check his watch periodically with his flashlight and report how much longer they had. Joe didn’t have a watch then. As they waited, they talked about what it would look like. At first he said maybe Jesus would come out of the sky, like he learned in Sunday school, but Charlie laughed at that. Charlie’s father was a scientist.

“My dad’s always said the world’ll end some day. It’s in-ev-it-uh-bul. He says the sun’ll blow up.”

“Does he think it’ll happen tonight?”

“He says the guy on the radio doesn’t have any proof. That guy’s not a scientist or anything. Just some religious weirdo. But he says it could happen anytime. So it could happen tonight.”

Charlie said there would probably be a big flash and then they would burn to death. “Like marshmallows in a campfire,” he grinned. Joe said maybe the sun just burn out like a light bulb and everything would go dark.

“And cold,” Charlie corrected him. “Then we would freeze to death.”

Charlie counted down the last few seconds. It was a little like New Years Eve, but with some of the terror of Halloween. When Charlie got to two and one, Joe squeezed his eyes shut. There in the waiting darkness the world was only magnolias and crickets and prickling summer grass, and his breath and his heartbeat. He wasn’t sure, but he guessed Charlie had kept his eyes open. Charlie was the kind of person to want to see it, to take in everything, wonders and horrors alike. If he had closed them, he opened them first, because he said, “Well Joey, looks like it’s not over after all.” Joe opened his eyes painfully and saw the world as it had always been: sleeping houses nestled between the warm streetlamps. Silently, they got up and returned to their beds.

If only they had kept in touch. Charlie had taken off right after high school, hitchhiked out west. Joe never knew how to reach him, not that he really tried.

They had some great times, though. Joe remembered when they were sixteen, how they had filched a few of his dad’s beers and got drunk on that same hill. They laughed so hard that night, but he couldn’t remember what was so funny. That was the night Charlie broke his ankle when he tried to climb back to his window. Charlie’s parents woke up and were really mad, after they knew he was okay of course. Joe had just climbed back to his bedroom. Charlie never told them where he got the beer.

Outside, the snow was falling fast now, erasing the city to white. No, he really couldn’t make the funeral. The roads have taken their share already. Joe closed his eyes. That guy in Wyoming is wrong, he thought. The world’s already ended, three days ago. Did you get to see it, Charlie, before you went out with it?