The end of the world happened on February 13, 2021 just before lunch. Perhaps you read about it? No, of course not, you don’t exist. No one’s ever going to read this, but I need to write this out even if it’s just for me. I was at home talking to my wife on the phone when it happened. The line went dead, and I mean dead – there wasn’t even the echo of my own voice, but the phone was still on. At the same time, I noticed, or rather felt, that the sky outside had become a milky dead grey. Stepping outside a silence surrounding me. I live out in the country so there are always the outside sounds of life: woodpeckers chiseling out bugs, blue jays chasing off sparrows, squirrels dashing through the leaves on the ground and jumping tree to tree, cows calling out to the wind, and those annoying hounds a couple miles away. No pecking, flitting, dashing, jumping, rustling, mooing, or braying. No forest murmuring. No echo of the air between the trees. No echo. No reminders of sounds that had been. Nothing but stunning silence. Nothing calling my attention. My senses emptying out of me. It felt like the whole world just kinda’ shut off. Everything was still there, but nothing seemed real. Had the universe shifted a tiny bit, and nothing worked anymore? Just click, and that was it.

Of course, I spent the first few months trying to reach out, but it was useless. They were gone. You were gone. There’s not even any wind! How could there be people? But denial had a hold of me. It took time to accept my new reality. I handled it pretty well, I think. I mourned, about what specifically I’m unsure. I drank, it tasted stagnant. I obviously stopped going to the dentist. But I didn’t want to die so I spent every day figuring out how to live. I made lists, several lists. I had a master list of lists which added a whiff of accomplishment to the stale air. I checked items off as I moved them to other lists. What is there to live for though? For the struggle of life itself? So I made a list, but I won’t share it here. I focused on the present. Nothing else exists. I worked up from the present to days. Working through each day one at a time as if that were all there were. Then, when I had mastered the day I could look forward to a week if such things still existed. I had seen enough survivalist “reality” shows to know I needed clean water, food, and shelter. Finding my raison d’etre could wait.

First things first, managing a day-to-day routine when there are no alarm clocks or people waiting for breakfast or important work meetings or whatever. I’ll admit, I spent a good chunk of time naked. I focused on the things that hadn’t changed. I put food on the table. I slept in comfort. I kept my surroundings reasonably clean. I kept up the maintenance on the house, inside and out. I kept very busy. I learned to play new songs on the guitar. I read books that had been sitting untouched for years. I sat outside, closed my eyes, and listened.

One day, I can’t say when, I started a little fire in my backyard pit. I felt the flood of warmth and sound like it was some new thing there were no words for yet. I smelled the fire. I felt the warmth. I heard the sound. A large branch fell off a tall tree far away. With a realization of time came a realization of distance, clues to my Second Great Awareness; the first being the Apocalypse itself, hard to miss that one. Sitting quiet and open as the firewood protested it’s transformation into heat, char, and smoke, this second nucleation point arrived. With the thwack of that branch hitting the ground and the arrival of space and time I realized that after months of being alone - that I was alone. There is no one. I is all there is. I did not cry, I cascaded into a weeping relief. What the hell had I been thinking? This was the gift of self-pity that comes from learning our denied nature. I wept for me because I fucking deserved it. There are many natures that make me whole. I denied having a self. I chose others’ well-being as a placeholder for my own and now there were no others. Trauma releases caged animals within. These animals are vicious and untamed until they are free. They are big magic wild and can only be seen as they run free.

I screamed. No one heard. I kicked at the flames. I felt stupid, but there was no one to judge. The last person an earth to do this sort of thing, M_ P_____, no longer even judged himself. [That’s right, sooner or later I had to start referring to myself in the third person. It was a phase.] I didn’t care. I dropped the act. I let the house get messy. I stopped drinking, not to be a better person I just didn’t think of it anymore. I lit fires just to let them burn. I let my demons, my vicious and untamed animals go, but of course they didn’t want to leave. They were quite comfortable digging their home into my liver, my adrenals, my viscera. I had to drag these cowards into the light, the buffet is closed. They told me I was the demons. No, I was nothing and therefore can have no demons. You are evicted, but don’t go too far. I’ll need you again someday.

There is no such thing as nothing, of course. But I couldn’t let them know that. Forget everything I said at the beginning about the nothing, that was the beginning when there is nothing. There was work to be done, there is always work to be done. I listened to my own breath. I listened to my still beating heart. I listened to the echo of the air between the trees. I did not ask myself questions any more than I would ask the trees. I stopped making up stories about the echoes and listened. I accepted the gift and listened.

It was Thursday. I heard a neighbor rolling their trash bin out to the street, so I rolled mine out too. We talked about the weather, about their garden. And such is how the apocalypse ends, as all things end, not as a being filled with joy and purpose but as a hollowman to begin again.