End of the World Stories! Get your End of The Wolrd Stories Here!!

[Anita Blake]

so, i saw this nifty forum for prose and fiction and said to myself, self, you've got to get first post on something! So, without further adieu, a depressing tale of love and death amongst the apocalypse. yay.



Blood and Ashes



"You’ll die if you go in," she told him wearily. He simply nodded and left. What the hell, she thought, he probably knew what lay ahead better than she did. She watched as he entered a building not far away. She would have followed him , but the wound in her leg prevented her from walking. It was killing her, she knew. There wasn’t a lot of chance that she would get the kind of medical attention she needed to survive out here.

To her left, a fire burned brightly in the distance. Had she done that? She hadn’t realized the kind of vigor the explosion would burn with. Of course, she had never blown up a building before.

She had never been stabbed in the leg before, either. It hurt like a bitch. And now she was lying in a pool of her own blood, dying, while the only person in the world she cared about went off to do the same. She hoped he would do some damage to their mutual enemy before he died.

Life hadn’t always been this insane, she mused as her mind began to wander. It was the lack of blood. Bastard had severed and artery, which was why she was dying. Ice cold air, fire, blood, and smoke. If she wasn’t in the middle of it all, bleeding to death, she might have found it beautiful in a macabre and sociopathic way. As it was, her mind wandered, and she began to forget where she was, as she slipped into the past, into the memories.

Once upon a time, there had been a sun, and the days were bright and cheery. It seemed like an eternity since she had walked in the sun. A day, a lifetime, did it matter? She had friends in those days, many friends. One friend in particular whom she loved above all others. Not that he knew that she would have died for him, of course. But they were close, and that was enough for her. She was content to watch him from the pretense of friendship, and be sure that he was happy.

In those days, they had all been happy, she was quite sure of it. The sun shone, they went to movies, they drank coffee, and talked of life, god, evolution, man, and spirit. They drank alcohol and talked of sports, and movies, and the meaning of life. They put arms round one another and pledged eternal friendship.

Those were days of softness, and peace. There were no worries, no real worries. They had thought they knew worries then. Rent, bills, cars, insurance, jobs. But really, there had been no real fear then.

Then came the Monsters. She didn’t know what else to call them. They came during the dark, they ripped soft human bodies to shreds. They never ate those they killed, just shredded. Slowly, they began to take the sun away. Maybe it just seemed that way. Maybe the nights seemed longer for the fear. They just never knew when the Monsters would come back. They never knew if they would see the sun rise again. Dark meant fear. Fear meant death.

The Monsters were hideous creatures, twice the size of most men, three times as heavy. Their strength was immense. They moved about on two legs, and had long muscular arms that ended not in hands, or even paws, but in three cruelly curved and barbed claws. Their eyes were set deep into the heads, almost invisible. Their mouths were small, smaller than most humans, but oddly shaped. They spoke a harsh, screeching language that she had never been able to make sense of. Maybe there was no sense.

There certainly didn’t seem to be much sense about them. The appeared to delight in the killing of humans, but they never ate the flesh. She had watched them for a while, and they didn’t seem to eat at all.

A loud noise broke her out of her memories. The blood around her was cooler now, and she could not feel her injured leg. That meant it would be soon, she figured. She wished she could see him again, look at him one more time before she went permanently blind.

The building he had entered had caused the noise. Something had exploded inside it. Her heart leapt at the thought of him being injured, and she could suddenly feel her leg again as the pain all came back in a rush. She screamed, unable to hold it in, and tightened the bandage on her leg. She realized suddenly that she didn’t want to die. She didn’t want him to die either. She wanted to kiss him, and hold him, and marry him, and grow old with him.

The pain subsided gradually, and her mind slipped back into the past.

Together, her friends had hidden, huddled against each other for warmth and protection. The Monsters seemed to like very small groups of people, or individuals. One of her friends had gone to relieve his bladder one night, and was caught alone, and they had all heard his screams. They had lasted so long, and been so loud. She was certain that she had not truly known fear until that night.

During the daylight, they slept. They had to be awake to fight the Monsters if they came. When there were no Monsters nearby, they learned to fight. They learned to kill. Occasionally, they would find a person who had been left alive. Sometimes they could pretend that there was a chance. Usually, they just gave the unfortunate person a quick-acting poison. There was nothing else to be done.

Life became a battle. Every night, they arose to fight for the right to live. Society dissolved. All they had left was each other, that was all they could cling to.

It was him that had taught her to fight using anything she could find. Together they had fought many Monsters. They had proved to each other that the Monsters could be killed, that there was a chance for the people to survive after all.

One day, they were the only two left. All their friends had been taken, ripped up like paper and spilled like ink. Just him, and her. Oh, there were other people, of course, there was always more people, but even more Monsters. But their friends, those wonderful souls whom they had shared coffee and booze and life with, they had vanished from the face of the earth, their essence was gone.

She had never realized what death had truly meant until it had happened so close to her. There was nothing romantic about it. Nothing even interesting about it. She had seen no final flash of insight in the eyes of the dead. They were simply here, now gone. No one had ever magically revived to tell of a warm fuzzy light they should have gone into.

Death was simply final.

It was merely the end of life. The cessation of life. It was frightening and unavoidable.

With all they knew and loved gone and dead, he and she fought together, back to back. They defended one another. For a time, that was all there was, the battle, the blood rushing through her veins, and she could forget momentarily that she loved him. If he felt the same way, he hid it as well as she did. Both knew that strong emotions in a fight with one of the Monsters could kill them both. Against the Monsters, they had to be cool and in control.

He had held her once, and she had felt so safe. It was the darkest part of night, when the Monsters began to actively hunt, when the fear was the strongest. To her, it seemed that the line between life and death was thinner at that time, and the world always seemed emptier, no matter how many people were running around her.

They had been in an empty building. The last of their friends had just been taken. She was finally alone with him, and the only thing she wanted was for there to be hundreds of happy smiling people around them, keeping them apart. She wouldn’t have minded at all. He looked as though he felt the same way.

[Anita Blake]

part 2.....





They had fought for most of the night, and were exhausted. They had been sure that the Monsters would go away soon. Then they had heard the clumsy, but devastatingly quick feet of one of them, just outside their building. She had almost screamed then, to get it’s attention, to make it kill her. She was so tired of fighting them, and rarely killing them, and often having to run to save her life. She was so tired.

That was when he had put his arms around her and led her deeper into the building. He found a small closet-space, and they hid there, huddled together for warmth, arms around one another. They slept that way, and when they awoke, she thought it should have been wondrous, but it wasn’t. But she had felt safe for the first time in a long time.

At that point, if she had counted the days back to when the fear began, the number would have been far less than she had thought. A month, maybe less. That was all. It had felt like years.

Every night, certain things were sure to happen. Screams, come in the distance, some close, were one. Blood was another. Fire and ashes. Fear. It was unavoidable. Every time she woke up it seemed that she had beaten unbelievable odds. Every night she spent with him seemed unreal. Life seemed unreal.

It wasn’t long before she began to contemplate killing him and then herself. It seemed to be the only way to ensure that they weren’t killed by the Monsters. She would have done it, but she looked at him once, and he seemed to know what she was thinking, and rejecting it. He wasn’t going to go quietly. She wasn’t sure if she admired that or loathed it. She wasn’t sure she wanted to die on the end of Monster talons.

She wasn’t sure she wanted to die by her own hand, either.

It was a grand paradox for a time. She didn’t want to live, and she sure as hell didn’t want to die. Of course, thoughts like this only lasted a brief time. When she ran, when she fought, she couldn’t afford to think. When she stopped, she was often too tired to think. Once, briefly, as she ran, she realized that she had become little more than an animal. She fought when cornered, and ran when she could. There was nothing else.

Having him at her side was her only comfort. She kissed him only once, it seemed like years ago, but maybe it was less than that. Maybe it was only hours ago. Perhaps minutes. Time moved so strangely these days.

There had been a Monster in front of them, only one. A fire had burned brightly in the distance, illuminating it’s strange face eerily. It’s deep set eyes were blanketed in shadow, seemingly mocking her from their vacant space. She had made that fire, blown up the building. It was filled with the Monsters, like a church almost. He and she had seen them congregating there before, and had rigged it to blow. They had done the same to many buildings in the area.

The Monster before her was injured. It had come out of the building just before it had gone up in flames, and seen him and her running. It had run after them. The Monsters were incredibly fast, even wounded. It had caught up to her shortly.

She had stopped running, and turned to face it. She would have liked to have seen some sign of anger, or hurt, or anything in the face of her enemy, but it looked simply like all the others. Did it even realize that it had narrowly escaped certain death? Did it know that she had killed it’s brethren? Did it care? If it did, it’s face showed no sign. It had seen humans running, and had chased. Now it would kill.

It might have been this realization that had killed her. She was more afraid in the face of such indifference than she had been in the face of monstrosity, and it had caught her off guard. It’s long gangly arm reached out at her, striking with viper-like speed. She didn’t even have time to scream.

He saved her, though.

He came out of nowhere to ram the Monster in the side. Off balance, the talon punched into her thigh, instead of shredding through her torso. On the ground, he finished the Monster with a slash to the throat.

She was already on the ground, barbed talon embedded in her thigh. It couldn’t be pulled out, she knew, or it would saw at her leg, causing even more bleeding. He knew this also.

He cut the talon off of the dead Monster, even that small motion causing her increased pain. He rolled her onto her back, and used his shirt as a compress. He had looked so upset, so sad. He would be alone now, she knew, alone if she died. Even if she lived, she would be too hurt to fight, she would need to be cared for, and they would probably both die.

They both knew that she was as good as dead.

That was when she kissed him. It had hurt so much to sit up enough to reach his mouth, hurt so much to hold on to him. He helped her, held her tightly enough that she thought he would maybe crush her to death.

"You need a hospital," he had said, smiling faintly. She smiled. They had just blown up the hospital. He looked around. The city was in darkness, illuminated only by the fires they had set. There were very few people left in this city. Even fewer would be left tomorrow. She would not be among them, she knew.

"There’s a clinic over there. Maybe they have some supplies." The ground under her body was wet. With a shock, she realized it was her blood. She hadn’t realized it would go so fast, just draining away like flood water.

She looked in the direction of the clinic. It was close to the hospital, ,which had been meeting place for the Monsters. By now, it might be a Monster congregation. They changed so quickly.

"You’ll die if you go in there," she said quietly. He nodded and went off.









A soft voice brought her back to consciousness. Everything was foggy somehow. And her eyelids were so heavy. But the pain was gone. Mostly.

It was him. He looked hurt, badly hurt, and she wanted to reach out to him, but her arms wouldn’t move. He touched her face.

"I set them all to blow up. It’s all I could do. But I found this. Drink it, please, and I will, and they will never hurt you again. It’s the only way we can win. You wanted to do this a long time ago, I know. I could tell. I thought it would be giving in, I thought it would be the worst thing we could do, but I was wrong. It’s the only thing we can do. We’re dying anyway. We are already dead. Just drink it."

She wanted to tell him that it was all right, she would drink, she knew, she agreed, but she could barely nod her head. But she could speak, she knew she could.

"Afraid… I would …never see… you… again," she said hoarsely, broken. He put his hand on her forehead. He was about to speak, but she started again. "I love you." He seemed to fade out of her vision, waver and dissolve. She forced him back into it. He gave her the poison. He took the drink, and put his arms around her, one last time.

The last thing she heard was his voice in her ear. It sounded so far away. "Me, too," was all he said before the world slipped into oblivion.

[dark fuschia]

Anita I really liked this story. It seemed to me to be more about peoples fear to reveal their true feelings than an apocaylpes. Its almost as if she was more afraid of this than the end of the world and could only do it when she knew the world was ending! That'd be right that they only tell eachother in a moment of ultimate jeaopardy :rolleyes:

[Anita Blake]

... no really, that's what I named this particular little ditty.

alright kiddies, sit yourselves down and prepare for.... um... this!


Another Post Apocalyptic tale of Doom

It was really weird.

Actually, it was so far beyond ‘weird’ that my vocabulary was somewhat shrunk by it.

I woke up, and everyone was gone.

I don’t mean like gone to get the groceries, either. That thought never even occurred to me. My house was simply empty.

Oh, all the furniture was there, and the electricity still worked, and there was a half-eaten bowl of cereal on the table, but it was… empty. When I woke up, my house felt like does when you go away for a vacation and you return three weeks later.

It felt unlived in, hollow.

Which I must describe as weird because five people live in my house, not counting the cat. Or rather, five people lived in my house until that morning when I woke up.

I do not know what happened. All I know is that when I woke up, there were no people in my house, that the air felt dead.

I walked outside, barely even caring that I was in my skimpy pajamas. I went to my next door neighbors house, and it was empty. So I went home again, ate some breakfast, got dressed, and explored my neighborhood.

All the houses were empty. Dogs greeted me cheerfully, locked in their yards. I set them free. Cats rubbed against my leg, ignoring that my own cat had already marked me as his.

I stole a nice car from the end of my block. I drove further into the city, even though I knew what I would find.

The city seemed to be entirely empty. Everywhere I went dogs yelped to be let out, cats cried to be fed.

Of humans, there was not a sign. It was as though they had all gotten up and left mid-meal, or mid-nap. They left traces of their inhabitation, but nothing more. Things already seemed cold and empty.

The city echoed at me when I shouted. I could hear the hum of electricity, but nothing more. At 10:37 AM, I stopped hearing the hum of electricity as it shut down permanently.

I took a small car, filled the trunk with jerry-cans of gasoline siphoned from other cars, packed my cat into it, and drove away.

Everywhere I went was the same. The longer it took me to get there, the staler the remains of breakfast became. That was the only difference.

My cat didn’t like driving. He didn’t mind at first, but as the day wore on, he began to claw at my feet. This inspired me to set him free, even though I loved him dearly. When I stopped to let him out of the car, I stayed where I was for a few hours. He did not return to me after his initial mad dash away. After a few hours, I left, hoping he enjoyed his newfound freedom, hoping that a lone coyote wouldn’t enjoy my dear sweet feline companion.

Truly alone now, I kept driving. I never found any change, not for a week. Then I started noticing mould on food. I started eating only canned goods, and spending more nights in libraries where I could read up on wilderness survival.

I began to wonder why I kept searching. I knew that no matter where I went, it would be the same. I suppose that I wanted to be sure that I was alone.

I never hoped to find some other survivor. I think I was looking just to make sure I was alone, the way an adolescent boy might do when he has secured a porno mag. Or at least the way such a boy might have done if he hadn’t disappeared off the face of the earth.

I searched not for survivors, but for reassurance that there were no other survivors.

It doesn’t make any sense, you see, that all the people in the world would simply vanish, leaving me to eat their leftovers. Why me? This is what I wonder most frequently. But it is not a sad wonderment. I merely want to know if this privilege was given to me for a reason, and if so, what that reason is.

It has, of course, occurred to me that I am insane, or in a coma, or dreaming. I accept this possibility quite readily. I would be a fool not to accept such a rational excuse. It doesn’t feel like a dream, though. It feels very real. I get bored, I go to the bathroom, I masturbate for entertainment. Not every moment of my new life is filled with a vast new discovery that there are no more people. I’m trying to build my own house, and discovering that I might just be better off with the leftovers of my civilization.

Weeds have started growing everywhere. They’re kind of pretty, actually. Some of them grow inside of buildings now, where the conditions are right. Some of the stores I go to look like they are crumbling, they are so filled with dust and the earth. Already, only a few weeks, and cement has started cracking and crumbling.

I drove south, which was hard at times, because roads would be blocked with vehicles stopped in the middle of the road, some of them crashed and tangled.

I drove south because I kept thinking about how much the winter would suck without electricity. In the south, it’s warm, a bit buggy, but not bad otherwise. For a while, I stayed in the expensive hotels that I couldn’t have afforded before, but that novelty wore off. Nowadays, as often as not, I sleep wherever I get tired.

My new life isn’t perfect, I know, and it does get lonely quite often, but I’ve found that a great many animals are willing to make friends with me now that my human brethren have gone away. So I am not completely alone. I have an army of dogs and cats that seem to love me. Sometimes I wonder if it wasn’t the animals who did away with all the people. They seem to have benefited from the change.

I keep looking, though, for more people. Truth be known, I think if I ever see anyone else, I will kill them. I like my new world, literally my world. I piss where I choose, I am wild and free. Another human, even one, would destroy my freedom, bring back too many memories. Maybe it’s easier for me to forget without anyone here to remind me.

If this is all just a dream, I hope to God (who I never believed in before) that I don’t wake up.

April 6, 2000

[Malcor Sylverwood]

Another Post Apocalyptic tale of Doom
April 6, 2000
Wow. Very nice and chilling. Mostly because I've dreamt this before, I think. The anti-social part is a bit disturbing, if oddly understandable.

-Malcor "Hushed" Sylverwood

[Anita Blake]

well, i started thinking, if you were the last person left in the world, and you got used to it, wouldn't it be disturbing and bizarre to suddenly find someone else? woulnd't it be kind of bizarre to have to readjust yourself from being the last person alive to just another person? to have to relearn how to act around people? so, that's kind of where this whole thing came from, that and i'm always thinking about the end of the world. :rolleyes: I think a lot of the imagery of crumbling building being taken over by nature really came from watching 12 Monkeys, one of my totally favorite movie, that and seeing The Stand too many times. :)

i'm glad it creeped you out. ;)

[sir archely]

it's eerie how similar that story is to one i wrote about 6 months ago.

well, i need to edit this. it's eerie, except for the major difference that my character was a typical character who was tormented by being alone. i like your version much better i think.

[Amos]

I think a lot of the imagery of crumbling building being taken over by nature really came from watching 12 Monkeys, one of my totally favorite movies,brilliant movie that.

Your character has bit of a richard laymon-ness feel to her. I went through a stage of reading all his books and there's a lot of people who've become estranged from society and they tend to react rather badly when they meet other people (killing and eating them etc.) Actually your character's a lot more lonely than his normally are, because his tend to hang out in little groups, but the rejection mentality is similar and your character did get the army of animals. Very cool stuff Anita :)

[dark fuschia]

oooh I liked your most recent one Anita.