It was the end of times A.D. and the world was made anew. Carpetbaggers came to town then, all offering things we needed in the wake of inevitable, quiet disaster. The whole town had been in shock for about a week and a half, but then we realized we had seen it coming, had been expecting this for quite some time now. I thought we would all miss the television but no one did, there was one old man in the village who still knew how to tell stories and he was now the town’s most popular resident. There were no more “foodies”, no crème fraiche or dried goji berries for 8.99 a pound, we were happy when we pulled up a root vegetable and it didn’t break in half.
Winter came early that year though, and the frost nearly killed us. Like pilgrims we considered cannibalism, but didn’t want to go back to the way it had been before the draught. Half of us survived and the other half tried to make the journey to other countries, but on foot and without electronic map devices, we forgot where they were, and none of us could speak any foreign languages anyway.
But we built, slept, and waited, and before long, the engineers returned and the buildings popped up again. Supermarkets and Walmarts came back and we played video games long into the night once more. Three generations passed and we forgot about the draught. We bought up everything we could for 8.99 a pound and we ate cheesecake topped with organic crème fraiche. It would be a thousand long years before the end of times, when we would learn how to make fire, how to dance, and the world would be made anew.
Corin Reyburn 