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creative writing
Why You Should Always Listen To Your Partner In The Morning By Seb Lloyd
I dreamt that I saw the end of the world. There wasn’t a particular moment, I knew the world was ending. Dumb and asking myself how scared I am. Not out of lucidity, in a fastest-way-out-for-fear-of-painfuldeath kind of way. Then I’m in a bunker, and I have a really nice car with white leather seats and a green bonnet. But I know I won’t see it for 5 years. I think I own the bunker but I’m not sure. ‘You guys want a cup of tea or something?’ but we can’t, obviously. I feel stupid now. “It’s going to torrentially rain.” I say. As people pour into my FLOOD bunker. Social embarrassment is still a thing during Armageddon and is possibly worse for fear of bathos. Being A Twat Hoping Opportunity to Save dignity will come. But obviously it may not, as the end is nigh, judgement will come, lake of fire, pain etc. And some people look at me but most just carry on carrying their mothers’ pearls or their rations or their children or something because obviously. I know I’m hosting but it’s a bunker not a cocktail party. I prepare myself for ranting about prophecies, but most people just get comfy and chat. Someone I’m sitting with starts ranting, but it’s about people defining themselves by their race. I feel uncomfortable because he’s talking about condescension and ‘uncontacted tribes’, but also because I didn’t expect that to be the first big debate, but I guess he has a lot on his mind. Then I think about Elephants in rooms and how some government initiative is probably cryogenically freezing an Elephant right now, For the Ark. I doubt what’s was worth talking about, so I find some oatcakes and expect people
to be really needy about food, but everyone seems to have loads in their bags. Some people across the room from me get out some big pickles and I feel envious. The rooms are concrete and rectangular with a central area covered by a wide lattice rug. I pinch the plastic of a second oatcake packet and feel a twinge of embarrassment for having such a big bunker and no chess boards or crayons. I draw a floor plan and take a seat while some time passes. Then we speak about the end of the world while it rains, finally. We think it’s ‘the final rain’ because we knew there was going to be a flood. When you know there’s going to be a flood, rain feels immeasurably important, but it just rains for a long while, and it’s relieving to be inside, out of the cold. We had to join the Noah’s-Ark-but-for-cars and I’ve never had anything biblical in my dreams before, or a car. I’d forgotten I wouldn’t see it for 5 years. I’m imagining this was announced over a tannoy that we could hear from all the different districts. Over rain the size of puppies and kittens like we’d never seen. I’m thinking this up now, that wasn’t in there. By the time we leave my eyes are square because everything’s square in bunkers, especially the light. I’m all dazed and can’t put faces to names. So many people are deep in conversation, talking about how loud the birds are. I think about doves and olives and if migrants exist when everyone’s a refugee. If the only land we’ll find will be former mountains. If we’ll make visible lines to remember where our borders were. How long until we make an Interstellar-style mega wave and the last people left alive are Point Break anachronisms on the final and ultimate ride. Whooping into the water thinking they’re right over LA, when really the lines were guesswork and they’re out in the unnamed ocean, dying happily. That wasn’t in there either. I didn’t mean to wake you up. Good morning.
