Dealing with the End of the World

We all had our ways of dealing with the end of the world. Some denied it, others fought it, but my family took it as an invitation to create art. I think that might be the reason why our house kept existing long after everything else was gone.

On that morning, I woke up just just like everyone else, which is not knowing what was about to happen. And, like a lot of people, I experienced a sighting. For me, it was a grey moth the size of a car, flapping its wings in the last black rays of night, before the flaming disk of the sun reared over the horizon. The moth hovered above the porch and I stepped into the yard to look at it. The eyes were amazing. My eyes, that is.

Anyway, as I was saying, the family started creating. My brother started digging up those bone-like things from the well and making sculptures out of them. My sister painted on walls with the black and red goo that was coming out of her mouth all the time. Ma made food sing. And pa grew body parts that he chopped off with a sharp cleaver and taught tricks. You have not lived until you see an arm-thing do flips for sugar cubes.

The world went to hell, with electricity becoming poison and music making children into monsters. Soon after, all the stars began to fade and the universe collapsed into just our farm.

”Where is everybody?” I asked my brother.

”Everybody’s gone, Karl,” he said, not even looking up, “And they ain’t coming back.”

Posted by: Paweł Kowaluk