At Monday morning assembly, after a few announcements of club meetings and a rambling plea to please return the lab’s frogs, I stood and pronounced: “This Friday the world will end.” I sat again. The student body murmured their agreement---there was a massive English paper due Friday, as probable a cause as any to cause an apocalypse, and exams were next week, so why shouldn’t the world end? It made perfect sense. Steven, who listens to too much rap and smokes too much pot, punched my arm. “Tell ‘em dude, right on.” The teachers panicked, not because of the implications of my announcement, but because they thought I was insane. The headmaster cleared his throat, smiled nervously and dismissed us. We walked to class.
Monday through Friday morning went ordinarily. We went to class, left class, hung out in our dorms, talked, ate, slept. There might’ve been a little less attention paid in class, and I was a little more popular, but nothing worth writing home about. (In fact, most people didn’t write home---about the coming end or anything else, figuring that their parent’s wouldn’t nag them about lack of contact when the earth was destroyed.)
Thursday night we stayed up until dawn. We decided to watch the sunrise, and went to the May Dell, which is modeled after a Greek amphitheater and is the location of our famously beautiful graduation ceremony. The May Dell echoed with the sound of the alarms we’d set off when we’d left the school. It was shiver-cold in the blue darkness, so we made a bonfire. We danced around and sang what we remembered of the disturbing Lord of the Flies songs. We went back inside and wrote our names on the dorm room walls with charred wood from the fire.
Philip, my roommate, was lying on his bed when I walked into the room. He wasn’t bothering with class. I grabbed my biology book, as if this final token gesture would get me into heaven. In Biology II I sat next to Maria, who is Latina, and totally “smoking”—to quote the bathroom wall. I asked her what she thought of the apocalypse. She flipped her hair and said she wasn’t fazed. As we turned to page 243 in the textbook the earth rumbled. Our teacher explained the tremors as “a common natural phenomenon”—but we knew better.
We headed to the basement of the school, which was used by the CIA during one of the world wars. It was designated an official bomb shelter. Besides, it had a ping-pong table, and the geeks had stashed their laptops and video games there. As the second floor melted into butter and vines grew from the doorknobs, we sat in a circle. I leaned over and kissed Maria, because there seemed nothing better to do during an apocalypse. When the teachers used the fire extinguishers they produced nothing but cotton balls.
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125,007 Literary Works • 672,815 Reviews
It was a good start, and a cool concept, but I think you could of done something a little more interesting. Your story had amazing potential, but by the end you lost my attention.
The beginning of this piece is quite brilliant. The first paragraph introduces us to some nice weirdness, dropping the oncoming apocalypse into an otherwise normal situation. The announcement is unexpected, and the total lack of response amusing. I like the style this is progressing with, and it definitely draws me in to read more.
The second paragraph, about the rest of the week, is ok (though you have written Monday to Friday, and then talk about Thursday evening in the next paragraph?), as is the bit about Thursday night. But then it's not clear that you've cut to Friday morning after that - the reader has to infer it from the later information about the class, and this breaks the immersion a little bit. It's also not entirely clear at what point we switch from the room with Phil to the classroom: the narrator walks in, sees Phil- and then is in class. A little more action in the first room, perhaps, would make the scene have a bit more purpose, and then a break to make clear the switch to class, would help.
Then, after all this buildup to the apocalypse, the last paragraph feels a bit rushed. Of course it's not a big deal to these characters, it seems, but it's still the point the story builds up to, so this short ending could make your reader feel a little... cheated. I would suggest extending this final scene, even if only a little bit, just to make it feel less suddenly-finished.
Finally, on the very end of the ending. Your last sentences make this scene end very abruptly, as though you were halfway through and just stopped. The very last sentence doesn't relate to anything - why are they using the fire extinguishers? What have the cotton balls got to do with anything? How is this relevant to kissing Maria? Did Maria even react to the kiss? I'd suggest, as well as expanding this scene a bit, making the last sentence tie it all off a bit better, so that the reader feels they have reached the end of the piece, and is satisfied.
Overall, I like this. It's a good idea in an entertaining style, and I think it could definitely be expanded into something wonderful, whether that something is still a short piece like this, or a longer work that builds on this.
The end... really wasn't much of an end. It felt more like the story was cut off midway by a fluke of spazzing technology. You had a pretty good start, too, but the ending ruins the entire piece, making it feel pointless and silly, in the not-good way.
I think, if you were to either cut the last sentence, or move it a bit earlier on, and give the teachers a reason to be using the fire extinguishers (like one of the consoles came to fiery life and was intent on devouring the students, or something), then the ending would feel a bit more like an ending, and not as silly.
It was a good story but it really in the end was kinda (not tryin to be discouraging or anything) but it was really just kind of dumb, though i guess when you write it the way you did people will read it but in the end it was probably not worth much of any thing, or the effort.