Stories From A Dead World, No. 1

FROM EMERY’s BIG BOOK ABOUT THE END [AUTHOR: EMERY]

In the end, there wasn’t fire and brimstone and ceremony like we thought there’d be. No flash and glitter, no frills and fuss, just a stagger and then silence. It’s not entirely clear why the world ended - not that the world did end - but it was really the same difference to everyone who died, and everyone died at some point. It didn’t quite matter whether it had been volcanoes, nuclear meltdown, or the wrath of god (or some other such person) because the result was the same. There was a desert with nobody in it. The only people who knew what happened were dead, and the only people who cared were dead, and everyone else was dead as well. 

But for a while, someone was alive -  by someone, I mean there were a few of them - by them I mean the last ones - by the last ones…oh never mind -  for a while someone was breathing even though the sun seemed slightly closer and the air tasted significantly more like arsenic than anyone cared to mention. There were only a few cities left, and so far as each one thought, they were all the last. There was one last city in particular though - the one where I lived - that was of particular interest to the few survivors. People didn’t call themselves survivors back then, they called themselves the Forsaken, which I think sounds more dramatic, even if it isn’t very accurate. As this is intended to be the most authoritative and accurate accounting of the Final Extinction - which everyone but me refers to as the End Times or the End of the World, again more dramatic and less accurate - I’ve chosen to use the most accurate branding possible, and you ought to thank me for it, because I lost a number of fingers getting a dictionary old and dreary enough to act as my companion and reference through the tedious process of writing a story about the way I and everyone else met their accurately narrated, and in no way colloquial, end.

Cheers,

Emery (I have no idea what my surname is, so don’t bother asking)