Apocalyptically Yours

It was the end of the American Century, and as if at a secret signal, the streets suddenly filled up with dancing grannies. I looked in their doll-like painted faces for an explanation. What I saw instead were suicide nets, abortions by wire coat hanger, piles of broken bricks. Life in our little town was becoming more and more like life elsewhere – a movie trailer for the Apocalypse. I would shake my head in an attempt to get rid of the eerie images, but every morning children would once again be walking past the slaughterhouse on their way to school. From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author of Failed Haiku, a poetry collection that is the co-winner of the 2021 Grey Book Press Chapbook Contest and scheduled for publication in summer 2022.

A Ravenous Canvas

Walking forever through corridors of art, that's the fate I sought. If I were doomed to resurrect, as everyone was, why not wander eternally around beauty?

But when I tried to reach The Metropolitan Museum, the apocalypse stopped me. Manhattan's zombies swarmed my car, buried it in dead flesh. I'm trapped.

Now they're a ravenous canvas, pressed against my windshield. Their faces are yellow papyrus; their spoiling blood and bile are rancid inks and pigments, their viscera are rotting oils. This is their dead aesthetic; their moans exhort me to join it.

I'll starve.

I'll rise.

I'll create art too.

From Guest Contributor Eric Robert Nolan

Mr. Death

The security guard at the door had asked you to open your backpack, please. All the contents had crumbled as soon as they’d been exposed to light. Now a bride and groom were standing on a raised platform with blindfolds in place. “I feel like we’re in the apocalypse,” I whispered. “We kinda are,” you answered. And yet most of the attendees maintained the blank expression usually reserved for looking at glowing screens. An officiant in a hooded garment joined the couple up on stage. We should’ve left then, before the dancers sprang out from somewhere and scattered your ashes.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is on the pavement, thinking about the government.

The Best In The World

"I can make you the best in the world at one thing," said the leprechaun.

David mulled his choice over carefully before eventually answering, "I want to be the best in the world at not dying."

The leprechaun sighed, and David smiled smugly. "I outwitted you, didn't I? You weren't expecting that."

"It's not too late to change your mind."

"Nope, that's what I want."

"Very well," the leprechaun responded sadly.

A few moments later, a giant asteroid collided with the Earth. Over the next several months, humanity died off in the apocalyptic conditions. David was the last human alive.

The Final Accounting

Last night, the sky broke asunder, as if someone had taken a knife and cleaved the horizon in two. The ruptured atmosphere peeled back to reveal a gateway into another realm.

I was driving to work when it happened. The immediate assumption was that the end times were at hand and everyone started clamoring to get home or escape the city as quickly as possible. Of course, if it was the apocalypse, I'm not sure why people were running. You can't run from your final judgement.

I kept driving to work. I figured the world needed accountants more than ever.

Evil Hides In A Darling Disguise

As with most children's songs, this one possessed a sinister undertone that was shockingly obvious in hindsight.

"Evil hides in a darling disguise."

We all learned that mantra to be true. The Japanese had flooded our airwaves and toy stores with the cloyingly cute Kuchiwon, fluffy characters we thought to be mostly harmless. We’d already lived through the Pokemon, Hello Kitty, and Dijimon phenomena after all.

The Kuchiwon were different. One night, they suddenly came to life and started killing everyone in a most brutal manner.

Perhaps we should have taken heed when the theme song was translated into English.

Fabrication

Everything is desolation.

The more involved the enterprise, the more bustling and productive society becomes, the greater the emptiness.

Activity creates a void.

There is an inherent meaninglessness in fabrication. The greater the heights of the accomplishments--both metaphorically and literally, if one was talking about the mammoth skyscraping towers--the more devoid of meaning they become.

Even religion has become transparent in its vacancy. Enforced attendance and ritualistic devotion do not make for fulfillment. It just seems something fundamental is missing. It's like memorizing a list of vocabulary without understanding what the words mean.

Everything was different before the robot apocalypse

Dopamine For Breakfast, Armageddon For Lunch

I needed more dopamine. Desperately.

I knew the effects of my last dose, taken by syringe early that morning, had begun to wear off. The implications of what we were about to do had begun weighing on me again.

F-ward housed the dopamine embeds, the featureless slugs of DNA and tissue that were supposed to output enough golden eggs to inhibit the entire district. I scrambled through the remains, but there was not a single usable drop remaining. Security had ransacked the place.

The last thing I needed as I was about to abort the human race was a hangover.