I hate this world and everyone in it.
I harbor these thoughts frequently, but I have never felt them more than I do now.
Staring at Mom’s body dangling from the ceiling, I know I should feel devastated, yet I find myself unable to stop this animosity from swelling up like the throat of a toad, creeping in through every sunken pore.
Et tu, mother?
Dad left because the responsibility of a child was too much for him. And no, I didn’t learn this through keen intuition and sleuthwork. I’m quite stupid, you see. Mom told me flat out. As bluntly as her eyes told me she didn’t love me.
She wasn’t all bad, though. At least she waited until my eighteen birthday, the day I became an “adult,” before jumping off this forsaken sinking ship. I’m so glad that the one and only gift she ever got me was her disgusting, bloated corpse hanging like a chandelier of bubbling flesh in the middle of the kitchen.
I feel a cold drop fall from my chin to my collarbone.
Of course I’m crying.
I’m not a monster. I have feelings, though no one seems to understand that. That’s probably because for the past 18 years of my life, I’ve been the odd one out. Bullying and all that yada yada.
It’s like a trope out of a movie, except instead of a bunch of mean girls gossiping about me and jocks pushing me around, it’s complete isolation for the weird girl. No one talks to me because there’s no reason to. Frankly, I’m glad because every time I tune into their incessant babbling, it’s about the most worthless drivel in all of non-existent god’s green earth.
Yeah, yeah, I know. How condescending of me. I only look down on them because I think I’m better than them, right? I really don’t.
My grades are average, my looks are average (put generously), the only hobbies I have are listening to mashcore and raving about DDLC on the internet, I have zero friends, zero ambition, and a patronizing, nihilistic view of the world. I’m quite the fucking joy to be around, you see.
That, of course, is sarcasm.
Does being self-aware of my terribleness make it okay? Probably not. But that’s the situation I’m in, and I don’t have the wherewithal to change it. Not a damn thing. Not the tears streaming down my face, and definitely not the body hanging in front of me.
I can’t save anything, not even myself.
I could kick and scream and cry, but I’ve got no one to turn to. I’m alone, as I’ve always been.
I begin to wonder: why? Why did I have to be born in this forsaken world? With all of my heart, I with they had aborted me. Better to pluck some half-developed egg out of the womb than let it grow for two decades into a homunculus trying to act like it's a human. Some priest might splash me with holy water and tell me I’m wrong for saying that, but frankly I don’t care.
I hate the world and everything in it.
My insignificant despair-pondering doesn’t last long, because the ground begins to shake. I’m thrown off balance, landing flat on my ass. Mom’s body sways back and forth violently, but stays attached to the rope. It seems she had gotten better at tying the knot than when she was with Dad.
Fuck. This is quite literally the worst time for an earthquake to happen. Do earthquakes even happen around here? I guess they do, because I’m sitting flat on my ass, vibrating as violently as an overloaded washing machine.
The rumbling doesn’t stop, and I begin to wonder if I should run outside. Do I even care enough about my life to preserve it? Who’s to say it wouldn’t be better if some debris fell atop my head and ended it all?
Explosive toppling begins to ring outside. Boom. Boom. Boom. Everything is crashing down. There’s a knock on my door, but I don’t care. Quickly, it gets drowned out by the glorious trumpets of continental drift melding with a thunderclap of god’s wrath.
Must be the end of the world. Good. At least one thing’s going well for me today.
I don’t have the chance to relish in my good fortune because my front door is promptly kicked down. A distraught policeman rushes in, yelling something I can’t quite understand through all the noise. He parades through the house as if it’s his, glancing all around in his panic. Then, his eyes dart to me on the ground straight ahead, and he runs up.
That’s when he sees it too. The body. He’s shocked at first, but composes himself much quicker than I could’ve. He grabs me and throws me over his shoulder, then begins carrying me out. It surely wasn’t very hard considering I’m only about a hundred pounds. Tall, lanky, and awkward.
“Does anyone else live here?” he asks.
“No,” I mutter. I don’t even bother to ask what’s happening because I’m so dissociated from the world that I’m convinced it’s all a dream. I know it’s not. You can’t tell if it's a dream when you’re asleep, but you can definitely tell if you’re awake. I am awake right now.
It feels like an eternity before we get to the front door, even though it’s only several feet from the body. The policeman runs out the door, which had been kicked off its hinges, and brings me into the world in a blinding flash of light. I close my eyes, which had been adjusted to the darkness of my house, listening to crashes and sirens all around.
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When I open them back up, I see massive silver above. It’s just as Chicken Little brilliantly anticipated– the sky is falling.
Hulking metal beasts hovering above the clouds, eclipsing the sprawling suburbs beneath. They look like caterpillars, almost. Flying, silver caterpillars the size of cities, with millions of little needles raining down from unseen pores. The needles smash into the ground in the distance, though I can’t see exactly what they are. I only hear them oblitering asphalt.
I don’t quite understand what’s going on. Is it an attack? On US ground? What foreign power could hold such might and keep it hidden until now? It can’t be any anti-American terrorist group; that’s for sure. Russia’s busy fighting its own war, and China doesn’t have a valid reason to declare war on the US outright.
Also, while I’m no expert on global power index scores or military technology, I’m pretty sure what I’m seeing as of this moment is functionally, practically, and indubitably impossible. It’s something straight out of a superhero flick or a sci-fi novel.
“What’s going on?” I finally ask the officer as he brings me toward a transport truck. It’s not just the police force; it’s the army too. I wonder how they got here so fast, but then I remember there’s a military base nearby. How convenient.
“Civilian evacuation, that’s all I know,” the officer says. “You okay to stand?”
“Yeah,” I say. He places me down and points toward the truck.
“Go there and take a seat,” he says. “They’ll get you to safety as soon as possible.”
I nod, and we both run in different directions. As always, I’m just following someone else’s orders. I was ready to finally take my life into my own hands and die, and I don’t even have the resolve to do that anymore.
I’m herded into the truck like a sheep, taking the last seat at the end. The soldier in full gear slams the back door closed, and the vehicle immediately speeds off. I can’t exactly see where it’s taking us since it’s completely closed off, but I can tell it’s going well past the 25mph residential speed limit. They’d definitely get a ticket if the circumstances were different. Actually, can a military vehicle even get a ticket?
I look around and see everyone is just as scared and confused as I am. Then I see a pretty-looking girl with short blond hair sitting next to me. She looks familiar. I dig through my own thoughts, trying to pinpoint where I’d seen her before. I’m not the most observant when it comes to remembering faces, but I know I’ve seen her somewhere. It hits me when she brushes the strands of hair from her eyes.
School. Of course. It’s school. I know exactly who she is, too. Her name is Sako, and she’s one of the “popular” girls, as they call them. Or do they? I’m not quite sure, because I’m so far out of the times that I might as well live on North Sentinel Island.
The real question is: why would someone like me remember someone like her? There are a lot of girls like her, and I already made it clear that I’m not concerned with any of them. I’d be remiss to contradict this literally several thoughts later, but she’s a little different from the rest. I’m talking about her looks.
She’s a blonde Asian girl. It’s not dye, either. She’s gone to the same elementary, middle, and high school as me, and never once have the roots of her hair been anything but blonde. Unless she’s been meticulously dyeing her hair every day or wearing a wig, it’s the genuine article.
That’s certainly a unique trait combination, and it's why I always found my gaze falling on her from afar.
She’s also extraordinarily pretty. I don’t mean that in a sapphic way; at least I don’t think so. It’s just the type of eye-catching and captivating beauty that has even other girls drooling. I mean, I think. I’m not speaking from personal experience or anything; that’s just speculation. I can’t actually tell what those simian-brained sapians are thinking.
The girl abruptly turns her head to me and catches me staring. She stares back, and I can’t quite break my gaze. Finally, a lightbulb appears above her head, and she smiles my way.
“You’re Lily!” she says.
When she said that, I swear she looked just like a goddess.
“Y-yeah, I am,” I manage to get out, my eyes trying desperately to wander away.
“You probably don’t actually know who I am, but I’ve seen you around a lot,” she says. “We’ve gone to the same school since elementary. My name’s-”
“Sako,” I interrupt without even thinking.
“So you do know who I am?” she asks with a sly grin. “You know, I’ve always wanted to talk to you, but never got the chance. Crazy how fate finally brought us together, huh?”
If this is fate, then fate’s quite the conniving freak.
“Are you alone?” she asks.
I nod my head.
“Well then, Lily,” she says. “I’m not sure what’s going on, but we should stick together. You can have my back, and I’ll have yours!”
“S-sure…” I say.
“Bang! And now, we’re friends!” she says as she winks and throws me the corniest finger-bang I’d ever seen in my life. A calamitous crash happens outside, but she doesn’t break her pose. If I didn’t know any better, which I don’t, I’d say she planned all of this just for that moment.
Also, how the hell can she say such cringeworthy things with a straight face? If it were me, I'd die of embarrassment.
“Do you have any idea what’s happening?” I ask.
“Nope!” she says happily. “But whatever it is, it’s just like a movie!”
I’m glad one of us seems to be enjoying this. At least, that’s what I think before I see her quivering hands. She’s smiling, but she’s faking it. She’s probably the most afraid, yet she’s acting braver than anyone else.
I’m not sure why, but I instinctively place my hand on top of hers. It’s soft. Smaller than mine. Somehow, I made the right move, because her shaking begins to subside. I don’t say anything, of course, because I don’t have anything I can say that doesn’t make me sound like a complete loser.
“Thank you,” she says. “I never knew you were so brave, Lily. I wish I could be strong like you.”
When she talks, she doesn’t care about sounding like a loser. She says what she wants to, and leaves nothing unexpressed.
No, Sako. I kinda wish I could be like you.
After an incomprehensibly long thirty-minute trip, the truck finally stops at an underground bunker. This, I’m actually not surprised by because I know a bunch of them were built near my town in the 50s during the Cold War’s nuclear scare. While I’m sure many around the country were decommissioned, I know these ones were not and were repurposed by the local military personnel for who knows what.
Sako and I are hurried through along with many others, walking into the dimly lit, unsettling underground.
Looking back on it, I’m not quite sure I reacted how a normal human being should in those circumstances. Then again, it’s not every day the human race gets decimated by extraterrestrial beings.
Now, in the dark of the world’s end, I await whatever comes next.
I really do hate it here.