Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

The End of Time

The outpost (tentative name for this place).

It is an extremely useful place. 'The End of Time and Space', as it were so called in some modern day fables. What is there, exactly? Nothing, actually. Just darkness and a lamp post. Yes, that's all there is there: darkness and a lamp post. What did you expect there to be - rainbows and butterflies?

I've only really been there once. It was in a dream that I had - a very vivid one, I might add. I opened my eyes and there it was: darkness, with a lamp post firmly planted in a cobblestone street. It was quite peaceful, quite serene. I wondered if I were dead, but somehow, someway, I knew that I wasn't. I was alive as the pigeons which would have hovered before me had I been awake in the real world, ready to start a new day of the daily 9-5 work.

I walked over to the lamp post, touched it with my hand, felt its stiff coldness. It felt like any other ordinary lamp of a bronze-like texture. Of course, I wasn't exactly able to discern what type of material it was made of, but it certainly felt as if it were made of bronze. When I looked up, all I could see was the bright white of the lamp shining down on me; nothing above it but pure darkness.

I am sure that other people would have felt a tinge of loneliness, but I was strangely comfortable there. It was as if I were meant to be there, to feel its very existence, to just absolutely know that it was real. Indeed, it certainly felt real. I didn't even realize that it was all a dream.

I leaned back toward the lamp post and cocked my head backward so that it hit the pole, making a dull metallic thud which hummed for a short bit after. I let the darkness seep in, let the coldness turn the hair of my bare arms into bristles. It was all so nice, to be at a place where I no longer had to deal with the everyday turmoil, and especially of having to deal with the rowdy people populating the world over.

I let the thoughts sweep over me. It was only when I let life take me by the hand that I would get good things out of it. When I tried to force things to turn into my way, I would only get shot down and turned into stone... not a good way to end the day. I would get angry, even, that things would not go my way. After all, I was someone special, someone who deserved more than what the world had to offer, right? Well, I was right back then, but now that I'm older, I realized that the world was but a cruel, harsh mistress who not only enjoyed dangling the carrot of happiness in front of our noses, but reveled in our futile attempts at possessing it. She sure must have had her fun in doing that, because she seemed to do it very often - at least to me.

Family, friends, acquaintances. Work, school, home. Everything seemed to jumble itself in my mind. I let them intermingle with each other, climbing upward and toppling over each other in one huge cloud of thundering storms.

More writing by this author

Blogs on This Site