Dec. 21st 2012

         December 21st 2012 came and went and the world did end. The apocalypse didn’t come in the form of an asteroid colliding into the Earth or the living dead rising from their graves screaming “Brains! Brains!” But by the governments and economies of the world collapsing upon themselves throwing the world into slow but terrible chaos. Most of the world’s population survived, this didn’t bode well of humanity’s sanity.

2 Months

         I walked out of my apartment on one chilly February morning. The air was a smoky grey and the day felt bitterly depressing. With measured steps I walked to get coffee. Two months since the “ world ended”: the electricity still works; coffee shops are still open for business; and the ever present news still buzzes with excitement telling us almost gleefully that the world is crumbling around us, were all going to die, and reminding us of the dangers. There are riots at night. I hear them from my window and when I open my eyes because I can’t sleep I see the orange and red glows of fire in the distance, May worries about them constantly and told me she wanted us to take the kids and go, but as I asked her: Where on Earth can we go? Nowhere, that’s the answer.

4 Months

         The riots have gotten louder and the electricity flickers on and off most of the time. Last week I tried to take Annie and Dennis to school but when we got there the principal stood at the door sorrowfully tuning everyone away, with tears in her old and wise eyes she told us that the school system just didn’t have enough money left to keep going. We had to just turn around and go home. The moment their friends and teachers were out of sight Annie burrowed her head into my side and wept, she later told me she didn’t want to lose one of the last things that felt safe and normal in her life. I assured her that we would enroll them in a private school, I didn’t know it at the time but I had lied. This was not an age for the young. Before going home we stopped at the local grocery store the kids were too woeful in their own immediate problems to notice the almost alien sparseness of the fruits, meats, and vegetables that once filled the store. The large, colorful, delicious smelling food we were all used too had left us; it was replaced instead by colorless dejected morsels of food that I without even tasting I knew I’d despise. But, we can’t let ourselves just starve. I bought the food anyway.