Portrait of a Post-Apocalyptic World

by vertige 7/3/2010, 11:49 pm

The world is crumpled, blackened, a lifeless plaster cast of itself. it has nothing and maybe now it is nothing. there is a sorrow in the way that color and soul have been leeched from it, a sort of mourning, despair. but, ironically, there is no one to do or feel anything about it and the empty world is left with its loneliness.

it put a siege on humanity - not long ago, either - drove them from their houses and shopping centers and offices and watched them, starved and gaunt, claw at the earth, sobs thick and eyes bleary. it felt nothing then, no sense of loss or regret. but it is different now. alone with itself, the atmosphere churns with a tired monotony.

everything is so fragile, so easy to break and yet it hangs in the universe like a spider from a web, its own center and core. without the chaos and noise humanity made, it is still; too still, eerily still. there are no screams, no cries, nothing near so much as a sound. but the earth hears the screams in its ears, ringing, shrieking with a tormented sharpness. it is like it is being haunted by guilt because it refuses to relent, to own up.

the naivety and innocence have been washed out of the now dirty world, but it retains the desperate hope of its youth. the years were nothing to it, nor were any idea of either wisening or yellowing with age, even being tormented by itself, the world regards those years with an easy carelessness. they were merely the wobbling first steps of a young child, the uneven walk of someone who's body is not their own yet. they mean weakness and shame to the powerful earth. but still, it cannot deny the repressed desire it has now to return to them. to have them again.

alone in the galaxy, on its accidental pedestal, the earth watches stars flicker and die with an inorganic attachment to them, an easy companionship. for they are the only things left for it to cling to, so far and yet still apparently there through the chalky black of the sky and the soft fatalities of the empty air. the earth cannot say anything to them, cannot so much as pretend it really even tries to understand them, but is understanding needed in this hollow universe? alone is worse than isolated. it is enough to be a spectator, enough to watch and wistfully imagine that existence is still worth having.

the earth flinches at the explosive light of a dying star, stunned by the sickening beauty of its abrupt suicide. that is an ending that the world yearns for. a star has such freedom, even the moon, with its pale and watery face, has its freedoms. but the world is trapped with itself. it cannot escape this weary fall into darkness and it cannot even make sense of its own being. it has no identity, not anymore.. no one takes note of it, suspended idly in the galaxy. and why, why is it possible that such agony could befall a planet that once had everything; a planet of water and life, of oxygen, of those terribly frantic bundles of cells. their life, their meaning, infused it with meaning of its own. without them it is an incomprehensible element.

the earth sighs, pauses. why has this feeling done so much to reshape it? it had expelled them from itself and made itself devoid of their energy, their activity, their life. the life was something the earth could never have. there was nothing it could do. and it would now, forever, be a cavity in the painfully vivid solar system, a blemish on the face of a universe teeming with light and color. forever empty, forever ugly.

was this the freedom it had wanted? was this the solitude it had chased after? this wasn't peace. this was powerlessness and there was no cure for it. the earth was to be eternally infected - and affected. its ending might never emerge, so fragile and timid, from those stars. this could go on forever. couldn't it?

no, the earth thinks in protest. forever is too abstract and too unreal. the earth does not want to imagine a forever alone, or even one with the humans. it is afraid to wonder how long the humans might have lasted if their lives had not been taken. they were, maybe, it thinks, not such a blessing. maybe they had meant nothing but desecration and detriment the entire time. if they had never been there, it would not feel this desolation now, this desperate devastation.

the world shudders with a thundering scorn. the humans had been a plague. nothing more. they had been engineered to destroy it, to weaken it. earth had been safer without them and would be safer now. it was dying, in utter agony because of them. those small, broken machines, who had never known what they wanted until it was being torn from them. the irony of their petty existence was paralyzing. almost tragic in a way, wasted on them. earth could feel a sense of calm knowing that its own past life had not been such a waste. even if it had thought things would last forever.

and how suddenly, jarringly, things had changed. a shift in the riffs of time and space, a rip in the fabric of reality, and earth was spinning, reeling, losing everything it had once been. losing the humans. the world could barely remember before them. it did not even entirely know if there had been a before them. maybe they were, literally, its source of life. perhaps it was nothing more than a parasite, feeding off hosts who had leeched their ways through existence, in a grotesque mirroring of the whole thing. should it have known this, taken some sort of dirty pleasure in it?

earth panics, suddenly. if it had needed them and now they were gone, it would be rendered obsolete soon. dead soon. much as it had yearned for an ending like that of the stars - one that was explosive, hyperbolic, bold, without relent or regret, now it was too afraid. it did not really wanted to be fractured, splintered and corroded into those delicate pieces of broken life, tiny and soulless fragments. destruction was worse than this aloneness, it seemed. it would not let its ending come. the world knew death was inevitable, inescapable, even, but it would not let go without protest.

Its protests would have meaning in them, too, nothing like the desperate cries of the humans who had not even pretended they dared to imagine they would live past their ending. The world feels itself tense at the vast number of parallels, the forebodingness of it all. it could not be broken because it would not be broken. It can't. There is no reason why it cannot fight the universe for that inconsequential fate of existence and win. There is no other mass of liquid and gas and chemical with such desperation, such need.

Or perhaps not. Perhaps, the earth thinks, watching another star metaphosphate into a skeleton of itself, it was not worth it.

When its ending came, the world was not awake.

I realize that some (um, most) capital letters are missing... hope you don't mind the error; it's only that way because of the place I'd previously posted it. Let me know what you think. (: