The end of the world is here. I can’t remember whether it is a comet or the sun finally exploding, but everyone else has left on spaceships and the one I was supposed to get on broke down. So, I’m stranded with all the other leftover humans waiting for the end. Counting down. Impact should be any day now.
Oddly enough, the more I write about the dream I had last night, the more it does sound just like On the Edge of Gone, by Corrine Duyvis. Except I’m not autistic (I think) and there really isn’t any way for the ship to get repaired. However, I do really like cats, so that’s something.
No, in my dream, my family left me behind while they were on the last ship to leave. I can’t remember exactly why they left me behind, but I do remember our hands reaching for each other and just not being able to reach far enough as the ship took off. Either way, I was left to hide out and wait in demolished buildings that apparently also had all my stuff in a room just down the hall.
I’m sleeping on this couch in a living room on the 7th floor of some building, with some sense of hope. I’ve got two computers in the room, one seemingly connected to space communications…either to sense the coming doom or reach my family who may be trying to rescue me. At some point this guy shows up and our shared loneliness and fear of the coming death convinces me to let him crash on the couch.
But like, he decides to use my cat blanket that my friend made for me when I was a kid. One of my sentimental things. Like, “No? You can’t touch my childhood memory stuff. It’s all I have left of my loved ones. You gross hobo.” So I get all upset about this and I don’t remember what happened after that, but eventually I woke up (into another dream where I’m trying to tell my mom all about this dream).
However, I woke up with the feeling of shared anticipation. Like it was a really good dream that I didn’t want to forget. I also woke up with a sense of clarity that dream me was being really reckless in letting a random stranger sleep on my couch during the apocalypse. He could have done a lot of far worse stuff to me than using a sentimental blanket of mine!
But it made me think about a movie I watched yesterday. My parents and I love to watch things together, so we went and saw Jurassic World Park Dominion Rebirth of the Search for More Money, er, whichever the newest sequel to Jurassic Park is out now. XD The writing was as bad as I expected, but I had good company to enjoy it with.
In the movie there were a few scenes where in the character’s eyes, death seemed imminent. One scene that stood out was when a daughter is separated from her father and younger sister, falling into the treacherous, dinosaur-infested ocean. The younger sister is terrified and going in and almost out of shock from the situation as a whole, clinging to her father. The father is moving to jump into the ocean after the the older sister.
The boat is being attacked by waterborne ~dinosaurs~ and I’m thinking, “Why would you jump into the dinosaur-infested water? You can’t save the elder daughter. Why not preserve your own lives at least?”
But then the father says to the squirming younger sister something like, “Your sister’s in there. We have to go,” and jumps in while clinging in return to the younger sister.
It occurred to me that perhaps the father saw death equally likely in both situations, staying on the boat vs jumping in the water. In that case, he chose the death that let him die with his family together.
If we must die, let it be together.
I think that was what my subconscious was playing with in the dream. Both me and the stranger were going to die, but I found it was better to have someone there than to die alone. That…doesn’t negate the obvious dangers of trusting a random stranger into your apocalypse hideout, plus the fact that he got his germs all over my special blankie (that I don’t even use for myself IRL. It is my cat’s blanket, one of many. XD). It also doesn’t address the question that one can feel lonely in a crowd and sometimes that may be worse than feeling lonely alone.
Still, the human desire stands. When nothing else matters and your life is going to end anyway, what priorities remain? What needs call to you? To be together or to protect your memories? Your identity? If you think you have an answer, consider that you may be wrong unless you’ve actually been in that situation. There are many truths about us that we don’t know exist until life pulls them forward. All I know for certain is that I would punch Mothman if he were messing with my younger brother in his sleep and I am determined to be with my cat if a disaster is in the area. Also, I would die if Godzilla were chasing me, because my adrenaline will not override my bad cardio. D:
Anyway, I am currently editing chapter 6/24 of draft 12. 🙂 Have a lovely rest of July! You deserve to hold all the special blankies (except mine. XD :P). ❤
N. K. Valek: Author 