The Apocalypse that Wasn't

I don't remember why the world should have ended, but the whole group of us knew it wouldn't be worth living in. There were at least eight of us, and we were all huddled together in this small room. In the center sat a collection of black boxes, the largest of which had a red segmented display counting down from ten minutes. I looked at those numbers and I knew this was it. The world was ending...my world was ending, at least.

My husband hadn't noticed the countdown yet. For the first half of the timer, he stood against a wall talking to one of the guys about something in a book or magazine. The timer was already nearing the four-minute mark when he pushed away from the wall and came to wrap his arms around me. When he did finally notice the bomb, he said it very casually, as if he had instantly accepted that we would die there, two minutes from that moment. Or maybe he only accepted it because I seemed to have already.

He held me tighter and I pressed my cheek into his chest, tears streaming down my face. I began babbling, clearly not ready to die. I remember saying, "There's still so much I haven't done yet." I looked up into his eyes, the timer ticking away beside us, and told him, "I'd rather spend a lifetime of uncertainty fighting to be by your side than only two minutes of surety, knowing we'll die together."

In the last thirty seconds, we ran. We couldn't take it, we needed to try. We locked hnds, the two of us, and we ran. We made it into the next room and dove down to the floor beside a bed just as the bomb went off. Miraculously, the explosion had stayed contained to the room. Horrifyingly, on the other hand, all it had done was mangle our friends. They were nothing but piles of limbs and bloodied torsos. We crawled around to the other side of the mattress and covered ourselves in pillows and sat there for a while, just in case something else would happen or there would be another explosion. We were happy though, because whatever came next, we would be together to figure it out. And we would be alive.