apocalypse

Katie’s Secret

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Little Katie Morgan has a secret and she’s not telling. Not her father, not her mother, not her brothers or her sisters. There are many things Katie’s not good at, but keeping secrets isn’t one of them.

How would the world react if it learned the truth that was revealed to her? She imagines the rioting in the streets, the talking heads on the news, and sometimes, when she’s afraid, she hums the tune of the song the witch across the street taught her when she was four years old.

“An ancient song,” the witch said while Katie lounged in her garden, basking in the sun and watching the woman pick a handful of long-stemmed roses.

Katie didn’t know what ancient meant, but judging by the witch’s expression, it must have been important.

“You remember those words,” the woman said, and Katie, eager to please her elderly friend, repeated words whose meaning she would never understand until the witch was confident she wouldn’t forget.

“That song will save you,” said the witch, “when the time for the world to change comes again.”

Katie asked what she meant, and the witch, after making her promise not to reveal her secret, recounted the story of a great cataclysm yet to unfold.

There are nights when Katie dreams of what she was told, nights when visions of the dark and the macabre process before her sleeping eyes like float’s in Hell’s parade.

Sometimes she screams, and sometimes her mother checks to see if she’s all right. Katie just nods her head, white as a ghost, and her mother, frightened by what she sees in her daughter’s too large eyes, pads off to bed and entertains nightmares of her own.

The world is changing, so says the witch. But that’s a secret and Katie’s not telling.

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One Last Time

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This post was originally published through Patreon on December 4, 2018.

Daniel wanders into the park he once frequented as a child. The time is exactly 5:45 p.m. He sits on the oak bench where, as a boy, he used to watch the other kids play and, huddling into himself against the cold, he stares into the sky.

Tomorrow, everything will change. Tomorrow, the life he once knew will be stripped away. It is a time of mourning, a time of sadness, a time of profound and sorrowful reflection.

By now, his fellows have positioned themselves at strategic locations around the world, and at 12:00 a.m. tomorrow, they’ll break the world and remake it in their own image. The change will not be gradual, and the people of the Earth will have no time to consider how their lives might have turned out differently. Daniel’s kind will peer into the sky—much as Daniel does now—and when the appointed time arrives, they’ll raise their hands, close their eyes, utter the sacred words, and when they open their eyes again, the world will be different.

Daniel doesn’t think the change will be for the better, but his companions have already made their decision and there’s no way he can stop them. Sometimes, he wonders how things could have played out if humanity had taken them in instead of casting them off to the outer fringes of society.

Daniel, for his part, believes that there are other solutions. But his personal convictions are futile without the agreement of his companions. So he savors the harsh chill of the evening air, basks in the explosive colors of the sunsetting sky, and treasures the old world one last time.

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