End of the World Love

It's goddamn funny, you know, the shit we used to worry about. Politics, social media drama, your nine-to-five grind. The type of things that seem dire until the sky cracks open and God himself—or whatever you call that cosmic force—decides we're not worth the screen time anymore. No warning, no flash of lights, just one day the ozone's gone. Poof. And then you realize, life as you know it is sorta on an expiration date.

Sun's a real bitch without that ozone shield. You could almost hear the skin sizzle when you stepped outside. Even the strongest SPF wasn’t gonna save you. People started going mad, and not the usual kind of mad where you're pissed off in traffic. I mean really fucking unglued, like their souls were cooking in the UV rays, boiling up their sanity till there wasn't anything left but raw, naked id.

You’d think we’d all come together, like in those cheesy apocalypse movies, everyone singing "Kumbaya" while the world burns. Nah. People hoarded, people killed, people did what they've always done when staring into the abyss. They looked out for number one. But don't get me wrong, there was love too. Desperate, clinging love. The kind that’s too intense, like staring into the sun.

Relationships, man. They got complex. You ever tried to balance the scales between impending doom and intimacy? Tricky as shit. My partner, Emily, and I were holed up in our apartment, curtains duct-taped to the windows, A/C working overtime. We weren't speaking much by then. What the hell do you say when the world's got maybe a few months left? 'How was your day, babe?' seemed a little trite. So we fucked. We fought. Two primal acts, same coin. We were trying to feel something, anything other than the horror-show outside. It was love, in a carnal, end-of-days kind of way.

Governments collapsed under the weight of their own impotence, but not before some of 'em tried a few hare-brained schemes. Like, 'let's put a giant mirror in space' or some shit. Even sent up rockets filled with, get this, cans of fucking hairspray. Like extra ozone in a can was gonna patch up the sky. No one was in charge, but everyone had a theory.

Conspiracy nuts had a field day. 'It’s God punishing us.' 'It’s the aliens.' 'It's because we didn't listen to Greta Thunberg.' Take your pick. We were past the point of blame; we were in the thick of consequences now, baby.

Even as society broke down, it was odd the stuff you found yourself missing. The smell of fresh-cut grass, a cold beer with friends, a stupid meme—yeah, a fucking meme—floating across the screen, making you snort laugh when you were supposed to be working. But all that was dust and echoes.

Months went by, and the world turned into a desert. Forests withered away; oceans started boiling under the heat. Animals, well, let's just say extinction became a trending topic.

I remember the last time I saw Emily. She was standing by the window, staring out at the wasteland. “It’s beautiful, in a terrifying way, isn’t it?” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. She turned to me, her eyes like two burnt-out stars. “Do you think there’s anything after this?”

I walked over, my heart pounding in ways I can't describe. I touched her face; it was clammy, the life slowly sapping out of her. “I don’t know, Em. But if there is, I hope we’re both there, drinking cold beers and laughing about how fucked up all this was.”

She smiled, and for a second, it felt like the old days, when doom was just a word, not a countdown. “I’d like that,” she said, her voice catching.

And so we waited, together yet apart, our eyes locked not on each other but on the searing, beautiful, terrible sky—waiting for the end, hoping for a beginning.