Yesterday, while going through some old files from 2007, I found this snippet I wrote. The file name is “End of the World.”
I’ll let you read it before I say anything more.
The man I love called today.
Thomas Brown is considerate if nothing else, I’ve always said. Even on bad hair days, when I didn’t have the money to take my nappy head to the salon, or the humidity wouldn’t let up, he’d look at me like I was Miss Galaxy or something. I suppose that’s why I stayed with him for so long, even after finding out about the wife and kids. Well, that, and the fact that he’s the only man who’s understood my hemophilia and helped me with it.
His aunt was a bad case. Tom used to bring her to the same support group meeting I attended in town, until she passed away last year. He’d noticed I had no family, and worked out some of his grief for her by helping me. I was astonished. Grateful. And… you know where astonished and grateful often lead when you’ve got a sick, lonely maiden and a shining knight.
Just where it shouldn’t.
Anyway, Tom called. But I didn’t pick up. Made no sense to, when the issue’s already been discussed. These are times when trial separations and divorces shouldn’t matter, when children struggling to understand the coming of their own deaths need both parents’ arms around them, not just their mother’s.
When the cloud of extinction finally makes it to our horizon and comes forward to blanket us, being alone will probably devastate me. Big time. But I refuse to have him here when he should be there.
Meteorologists and their ilk on TV said northern winds just might divert the cloud so that it misses us. “A slim chance. Extremely slim. But we must keep hoping. What is there without that?” anchorwoman Monica What’s-Her-Name breathed into her studio microphone. I don’t know, Monica. What I do know is Tom’s kids have maybe a month with their father before having to either waste away to nothing, or be fed suicide pills to avoid the pain and distress. And have him they will.
That’s all I got.
I’ve no idea what started this thing, or where I was going with it. I can’t recall the character or where she came from, at all. I don’t know what spawned this deadly cloud, or what it’s made of.
I wish I did, though. Sounds like a doozy!
*refile under Apocalypse*
Manuscript. Head. Drawer. 