Dark Days

They asked me to write about an apocalypse once and I ignored them. I never thought this would happen.

I asked my roommate about this contest where I had to write about the aftermath, or the life after a great apocalypse. I was ready to start the story but that was when everything went downhill. I know it’s late but I need to submit this to the group, even though the contest closed years ago.

At first I didn’t believe what was happening. I remember the blinding light in the middle of the night. I ignored it as it only lasted a moment and I eventually found sleep next to my fiancée. He slept on his three pillows including the special Star Wars one I had bought for him. I laid stomach down with my knee up and my face stuffed into my special pillow. Eventually we fell asleep again. However, when we woke up our lives would never be the same.

We woke up moments before 8 o’clock, or so we thought at the time. We didn’t check our electronics and our clock hadn’t been plugged in for weeks. At 8 am the turtle lamp usually went on and because it wasn’t- we figured it was still very early. Our world and life as we knew it hadn’t come to a halt yet. We got up groggily to get our breakfast of Jell-O and juice and then to use the bathroom (not specifically in that order). We expected the lamp to be on when we got back to the room but it remained dead. It never would come on again. I picked up my charging iPod to find that it had been completely fried. My fiancée’s blackberry and laptop also would not work. Other than the still sleepy roommate we were alone, disconnected from the outside world. We held onto one another for quite a while.

At first there was chaos. We were a world completely depended upon technology and against our will we were forced to quit cold turkey. The world was dark, save for the light of the rising sun on the ice covered ground. We could hear the wind blowing through the leafless trees and the world was pleasantly still. I couldn’t listen to the music I would normally through the large headphones that covered my ears on cold winter mornings. I could hear the world for the first time.

It was quiet.

Panic ensued.

We did what we could. We took refuge in our house. Canned food became like gold as well as fresh fruits and vegetables. We couldn’t use the oven in our house because it was powered by electricity. Our microwave and our common necessities were stripped away.  Those with unsatisfied addictions were amongst the first to lose their minds. I do not know what happened to them. The hospitals filled up quickly. They tried to help out as many people as they could but acquiring medicine wasn’t as easy a task anymore. So they were unable to help the way they had spent half of their lives learning.  We all had to learn to change with the time that was presented to us.

Eventually the calm overcame the world. It seemed, for my part, that we as a collective whole finally let out the breath we’d been holding onto for so long. We were finally accepting our situation.

However, I am not one of them. I lost my fiancé in the chaos. We couldn’t get the medicine he needed to survive and we lost him. So I cannot accept our situation but it is where I am, right?

We have slight use of technology again and I am paying fifty dollars for ten minutes of use. In case anybody wants to –or can read it. Maybe by some miracle it will find its way into the past and somehow will save us before this happens so that I will not lose my love and the life we built together. But if that isn’t possible, and I doubt that is, this is the only life I know now.