AW December Blog Chain - The End of the World

The End of the World

I'm running. I'm free. The world is below me - look, it's so weird, so fuzzy, so wobbly. Where shall I run? I can go anywhere. I'm in a pine forest. The smell is of earth and time and seeds. The ground is soft. Everything's so green - soft green - like a  ... like an I don't know what. The light is green, dripping down from the trees. I'm miles - years! - from anywhere, from anyone. It's so quiet. Oh, it's so quiet.

Bored now. I'm moving on. Look - where is this? Greece? Yes. Everything's blue and white. The air tastes like salt and lemon and crackling fish. The houses have rough white walls and rough white doors, blasted by wind and sea. Oh, the sea! Roaring, growling, foaming, brimey, rough, grey, blue, green, deep.

So deep. I could dive down there. 

I want to. I will. I will dive.

***

She looked at him and her face was too calm, too blank, to be anything real. Only people trying too hard looked like that. He'd seen it before, but not for this long. She always looked like this. She never let it out. It couldn't be healthy, could it?

'I'm sorry,' he said. He had to. He'd be a monster not to. He still hated doing it.

Anyway, the words hung limp in the air.

'There's ... not a lot more to do. He's retreating further in. He's not responding as we'd hoped. I want to be honest with you. I want to be. You may have to prepare yourself for this being –'

He stopped, because it was pointless to continue. 

Her face was blank and she nodded, once. A strand of her hair fell onto her shoulder and for a single moment, he wanted to reach for it, and brush it back. 

She probably wouldn't have noticed.

'I'm sorry,' he said, and he sighed, deep and long and oddly heartbroken.

***

I'm flying! I'm flying! The stars are like little chalk dots in the sky, which is deep blue really, and not black. Not black at all. I tumble and dance and laugh and shout. I whoop and scream. No. The air screams, as it rushed past - rush, rush, rush - and the sound deafens me, 'cause I'm flying so fast.

That gets dull, though. It gets dull, doesn't it? So now ... I'm in a desert. Oh, it's burning. Dry and cracked and full of tiny, tiny grains of sand. They're everywhere. They're eternal, infinite, hot and burning and dry, dry, dry. Yellow, orange, brown, white. I'm going blind from the heat and the sun that burns and scorches and screams down its hate. Time to get out of here. Back to the forest…

***

'I thought the new treatment would help?' she said.

'We had hoped, but it was never certain. He just retreats further into himself. He's ... he's gone, essentially.'

The sound of the clock was wrong, she thought; almost unbearably wrong, because it was clinical – so clinical! – which was something that time shouldn't be. She hated coming here. She hated it so much she thought she might burn for it.

‘So, you can’t suggest anything more to focus him?’

‘I said earlier that the medicine he’s on now, at such a high dosage, is already unusual. There’s little more medical intervention to be had.’

She clicked her tongue at that, was silent, and spoke.

‘And, I guess… it progresses, doesn't it. If he’s not paying attention to us now, we’re standing right here but he isn't, then later, later he just won’t know anyone is anywhere.’

‘These cases are always unique, each minds to itself. Days will be better, days will be … worse.’

‘He looks different.’

What was there to say to that? This boy was changing as they watched. His mind was imploding onto nothingness and coming out with vibrancy. Endless, at least.

‘Linda,' he said.

Her face twisted so subtly it seemed to suggest contempt for something. 

‘Linda, he can go home. He probably should. Home environments often trigger –’

‘Environments are where animals live. Triggers pull guns shoot bullets kill tigers.’

The clock has such a medical tick, she thought. It’s a clock, seconds are supposed to always be the same, but it’s clinical in here. Tick, tick, your life is slipping away, tock, tock, the end of another day is coming.  Tick, tock. My son. He’s leaving here, I can see it even if they’re determined to make me carry him back to home. He’s leaving all of this, he’s leaving everything. He’s going into himself. Is he running away? Tick tock. 

She would break soon, anyway, with grief and hunger and everything else, and hers wouldn't be the only world to end.

**********

Other writers in the chain:

orion_mk3: http://nonexistentbooks.wordpress.com (link to post)
dolores haze - http://dianedooley.wordpress.com/ (link to post)
randi.lee - http://emotionalnovel.blogspot.com/ (link to post)
writingismypassion - http://charityfaye.blogspot.com/ (link to post)
bmadsen - http://hospitaloflife.wordpress.com/ (link to post)
Ralph Pines - http://ralfast.wordpress.com/ (link to post)
AllieKat - http://roelke.livejournal.com/ (link to post)
MsLaylaCakes - http://www.taraquan.com/ (link to post)
katci13 - http://www.krystalsquared.net/ (link to post)
Angyl78 - http://jelyzabeth.wordpress.com/ (link to post)
pyrosama - http://matrix-hole.blogspot.com/ (link to post)
Araenvo - http://www.simonpclark.com/ (You are here)
CJ Michaels - http://www.christinajmichaels.blogspot.com/ (link to post)
SuzanneSeese - http://www.viewofsue.blogspot.com/ (link to post)
BBBurke - http://awritersprogression.blogspot.com/ (link to post)
gell214 - http://gelliswriting.blogspot.com/ (link to post)