Well tomorrow is 12/12/12. What will it bring? I'm not a dooms-dayer, but I have to admit that part of me is intrigued by the chronological significance of this date. We won't experience another date such as this for another eighty-nine years.
I started toying around with a story idea that marks the end of the World as we know it, and this is what I came up with. Just silliness, but hey, if the World's going to end tomorrow, I want to go out with a bang! ;) Enjoy.
Nothing
By Shirley Bourget
They said that this couldn’t happen, this kind of silence that surrounds us now. I say silence is deafening. It’s the kind of thing that swallows you up, well at least it does me.
All that’s left after the initial sound of the blast is this constant ringing in my ears. I wonder if it will ever go away. I guess they were right. The world can’t really go silent.
It’s not like any of us saw it coming. I mean, who would have thought that the last chronological date for our civilization to have for the next eighty-nine years would have held such significance in the survival of our race?
I know there was a lot of hype about the Mayan Calendar predicting the end of the world, but seriously? It was just hype. Wasn’t it? Surely if it really held some kind of importance, a real warning, our world leaders would have taken some kind of evasive action. Wouldn’t they? Maybe we’ll never know. It’s too late anyway. What’s done is done, and there’s no going back.
There’s just a small pocket of people left here. There’s no way of knowing how many others like us are out there. There are no news broadcasts, no radio contacts, no cell phones, no internet, nothing…because there are no satellites. That much we do know. They’re gone from the sky with just about everything else that used to be out there floating in space. How are we still here? I don’t know, but we are, surrounded by deafening silence.
At first I thought that maybe it was just me. I thought that the tremendous blast that literally rock our world had left me without hearing. But that’s not true. At least I don’t think so. What I mean is I hear ringing, just nothing else. I know that the others hear it too, and that they too have been robbed of all other sound.
We don’t even seem to be able to verbally communicate. Our mouths move but no sound comes out. There are no noises of any kind. No wind blowing, no birds or insects chirping, nothing. There isn’t even sound when we move about. The once familiar footfall down a hallway, or the thump of a heavy object being laid down on a table, they’re all gone.
That’s why I had thought it was me, you know, like I had gone deaf, but it’s not. I could tell by the eyes of the others that they were experiencing this strange phenomenon too. Then, when I was finally able to get a hold of some paper and pen to write, I started asking. I had to know. Sure enough, the loss of sound is epidemic, some kind of paramount reaction to the explosion.
Sometimes I can’t even hear the ringing anymore, although I’m not sure if it really is disappearing, or if I am somehow tuning it out…becoming used to it. It frightens me to let go of it. It’s annoying ,but at least it’s there.
Our small pocket of people is learning to cope without it, but I can tell that the others are frightened too. You’d think we’d be more concerned with finding food, shelter, and water. We know these are important and we are not ignoring their necessity. It’s just that without the ability to hear things, we seem to wander in a daze most of the time. Personally, I’m not worried about eating or drinking. I’m worried about surviving this crushing madness of nothing. It pushes on me like a weight, and it seems to be flattening me in some way.
I’m not sure if that makes any sense, it doesn’t even make sense to me, but it’s consuming. It’s oppressive, and it takes everything in me not to scream, laugh, or cry. Then I just feel empty, for I couldn’t hear myself do any of those things. That’s what I mean about it being oppressive. We’ve suddenly found ourselves left with only our own thoughts as company and companionship in communication.
I sort of hear my own voice in my head. The funny thing is I’m starting to forget what I sound like. How do I know that it’s my own voice at all? Maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s the startling existence of another being, an alien life form that has come to inhabit my body?
Somehow I don’t think that this in itself is true, because I know this voice. I mean, not audibly but consciously. It has spoken to me before. Could it be that we’ve had an alien race living amongst and within us all along? Just waiting for the day that we would eventually destroy ourselves so that it could take over? I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore, only this horrible silence.
Now there’s a weapon of mass destruction for you - Nothing! How ironic to say that an entire civilization of people was wiped out by nothing! If you once thought that nothing could kill you, you were absolutely right! It’s a slow, painful, and terribly frightening death! “Silence, I kill you!” I wonder if Jeff Dunham knew just what a powerful weapon of mass destruction he possessed in his comedy routine.
It’s like a cancer, this nothing. It eats away at your body until there is…nothing left. Yes, nothing. I never knew that silence and nothingness had such weight and volume until now. Maybe that’s why this has happened. To show us what a noise riddle society we had become. Before the explosion, it was next to impossible to find a space that was completely quiet, and void of all sound. Now…what I wouldn’t give for a little white noise! …Some music, people chattering, the sound of machinery… I’d even settle for the sounds of the freeway or a train depot! Yes, nothing can kill you…
I started toying around with a story idea that marks the end of the World as we know it, and this is what I came up with. Just silliness, but hey, if the World's going to end tomorrow, I want to go out with a bang! ;) Enjoy.
Nothing
By Shirley Bourget
They said that this couldn’t happen, this kind of silence that surrounds us now. I say silence is deafening. It’s the kind of thing that swallows you up, well at least it does me.
All that’s left after the initial sound of the blast is this constant ringing in my ears. I wonder if it will ever go away. I guess they were right. The world can’t really go silent.
It’s not like any of us saw it coming. I mean, who would have thought that the last chronological date for our civilization to have for the next eighty-nine years would have held such significance in the survival of our race?
I know there was a lot of hype about the Mayan Calendar predicting the end of the world, but seriously? It was just hype. Wasn’t it? Surely if it really held some kind of importance, a real warning, our world leaders would have taken some kind of evasive action. Wouldn’t they? Maybe we’ll never know. It’s too late anyway. What’s done is done, and there’s no going back.
There’s just a small pocket of people left here. There’s no way of knowing how many others like us are out there. There are no news broadcasts, no radio contacts, no cell phones, no internet, nothing…because there are no satellites. That much we do know. They’re gone from the sky with just about everything else that used to be out there floating in space. How are we still here? I don’t know, but we are, surrounded by deafening silence.
At first I thought that maybe it was just me. I thought that the tremendous blast that literally rock our world had left me without hearing. But that’s not true. At least I don’t think so. What I mean is I hear ringing, just nothing else. I know that the others hear it too, and that they too have been robbed of all other sound.
We don’t even seem to be able to verbally communicate. Our mouths move but no sound comes out. There are no noises of any kind. No wind blowing, no birds or insects chirping, nothing. There isn’t even sound when we move about. The once familiar footfall down a hallway, or the thump of a heavy object being laid down on a table, they’re all gone.
That’s why I had thought it was me, you know, like I had gone deaf, but it’s not. I could tell by the eyes of the others that they were experiencing this strange phenomenon too. Then, when I was finally able to get a hold of some paper and pen to write, I started asking. I had to know. Sure enough, the loss of sound is epidemic, some kind of paramount reaction to the explosion.
Sometimes I can’t even hear the ringing anymore, although I’m not sure if it really is disappearing, or if I am somehow tuning it out…becoming used to it. It frightens me to let go of it. It’s annoying ,but at least it’s there.
Our small pocket of people is learning to cope without it, but I can tell that the others are frightened too. You’d think we’d be more concerned with finding food, shelter, and water. We know these are important and we are not ignoring their necessity. It’s just that without the ability to hear things, we seem to wander in a daze most of the time. Personally, I’m not worried about eating or drinking. I’m worried about surviving this crushing madness of nothing. It pushes on me like a weight, and it seems to be flattening me in some way.
I’m not sure if that makes any sense, it doesn’t even make sense to me, but it’s consuming. It’s oppressive, and it takes everything in me not to scream, laugh, or cry. Then I just feel empty, for I couldn’t hear myself do any of those things. That’s what I mean about it being oppressive. We’ve suddenly found ourselves left with only our own thoughts as company and companionship in communication.
I sort of hear my own voice in my head. The funny thing is I’m starting to forget what I sound like. How do I know that it’s my own voice at all? Maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s the startling existence of another being, an alien life form that has come to inhabit my body?
Somehow I don’t think that this in itself is true, because I know this voice. I mean, not audibly but consciously. It has spoken to me before. Could it be that we’ve had an alien race living amongst and within us all along? Just waiting for the day that we would eventually destroy ourselves so that it could take over? I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore, only this horrible silence.
Now there’s a weapon of mass destruction for you - Nothing! How ironic to say that an entire civilization of people was wiped out by nothing! If you once thought that nothing could kill you, you were absolutely right! It’s a slow, painful, and terribly frightening death! “Silence, I kill you!” I wonder if Jeff Dunham knew just what a powerful weapon of mass destruction he possessed in his comedy routine.
It’s like a cancer, this nothing. It eats away at your body until there is…nothing left. Yes, nothing. I never knew that silence and nothingness had such weight and volume until now. Maybe that’s why this has happened. To show us what a noise riddle society we had become. Before the explosion, it was next to impossible to find a space that was completely quiet, and void of all sound. Now…what I wouldn’t give for a little white noise! …Some music, people chattering, the sound of machinery… I’d even settle for the sounds of the freeway or a train depot! Yes, nothing can kill you…
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