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Friday, October 06, 2006

The boy who saw the end.

It started out with silly yet vivid dreams, but soon after the dreams would haunt him even in his waking hours. He tried telling his parents, but his parents were just like all the other parents of little boys; too busy to really listen. They patted him on the head and told him not to worry about it.

Then he decided to skip the middle man, i.e. his parents, and started writing letters to everyone he could think of that had anything to do with defending the country: the police, the army, even the president, but all to no avail - none responded.

Then the worms came.

Three of them. They just popped up, out of the ground, the size of 18-wheelers, and started eating everything in their path: cars, trees, people, even the ground itself. They were literally eating the Earth, like a chipmunk that nibbles at an oversized apple. And they were doing it rapidly, too.

Within weeks, entire holes had been eaten in the world. Thousands, perhaps millions had already perished, and the rest huddled in the places the worms hadn't reached yet, but everyone knew that it was unavoidable, the worms would reach even those corners of the Earth.

Then word came out that there was a boy who had predicted this, and people en masse went to him, hoping that he would have an answer. He didn't, of course, but that didn't stop people from all over the world from seeking him out. Millions and millions of people came to him as the worms slowly but determindely ate the world around them.

Despite the boy not having an answer, they started seeing him as their leader. They looked up to him, hoping he would turn out to be their hero. Over time they even revered him, made him their king, the king over an ever decreasing world. And in the end, when humanity was being eaten like that last piece of wood surrendering to the relentless flames of a fire, they deified him, and made him their God.

But only for several days, because that's how long it took the worms to eat what was left of our world, and themselves, and leave not a trace of humanity, just empty space.

3 Comments:

Blogger Pep said...

That's the ultimate end for Stephen King's The Langoliers.

The concept there is that 'current' is just a window in time, so what happens to here and there, and everywhere in the past? They're still there, only stale, lifless. Until the Langoliers come. And it's all eaten up.

:)

6:04 pm  
Blogger Martin said...

Yup, now that you mention it, I've seen the shoddy mini series.

Not entirely the same thing, though.

Cheers

9:51 pm  
Blogger Pep said...

True.
Yours is *much* scarier as everyone is there to be devoured.
Cool!

:)

12:10 am  

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