Yesterday, when the world ended

The end of the world came, yesterday, one cool night in august. I was sitting at the top of Sandler's hill, watching the city spread out below me. It was a beautiful sight at night time, smoke colouring the sky red, the city a twinkling spiral of lights nestled between the hills, like a constellation of stars wrested from the heavens and dropped down on Earth. In the night, you could forget the ugliness - the roads, like ugly scars, that cut through the forests, the stumps of withered, dead trees that lined the sidewalk, the fat, obese, red-faced children who peddled their shiny plastic bicycles around yards lined with plastic bags filled with refuse.

In the night, there was wind too - a gentle breeze that caressed my cheek, like a woman's soft fingers. I think I cried that night. It's tragic, really, that in a city of millions, one can feel so alone, one can know nobody.

As the wind whipped the tears from my cheeks, I heard a scream. It came from the city below - and it seemed so strange, that it was so loud, that it pierced through the cacophony of the city, and rose to blast my ears, as I sat there, high above, on Sandler's hill. Almost immediately, the lights of the city began to flicker on and off. For a moment the city was plunged into darkness. I heard more screams then, moans that sounded eerily beautiful, echoing, rising, one after the other, clamouring towards the heavens.

What was happening? I think I made my first mistake then. In my surprise, I rushed towards my car, and headed down the hill, towards the city. I shouldn't have done that - I sometimes think if I hadn't ...if I hadn't...it might not have happened to me. But there are other times when I am glad that I have not escaped - and I feel it would have been impossible to escape this. If the world is ending, it is only human to want to end with it. There are many who have claimed that our basic instinct is to survive, but if you are the only one left - are you human when there are no other men around like you?

I do not have long to tell this tale. Even as I write, I feel my flesh erupting in boils, I feel my body change, shudders running up and down my skin, my muscles loosening, uncoiling, tentacles pushing through the skin of my arm. Pain, pain - so much of it! I scream, again and again, while the spasms rock my body. They come fast now. It is becoming harder to keep my grip on a pen, harder to keep my mind on the tale that I want to tell. All I want to do is eat.

Horror! What horror! The new things that stalk through the streets of the city, in their faces I see the women and men they once were, I see the remains of beautiful eyes, of noses and lips, now fringed with fronds of protruding flesh. Tentacles snake out from loose, rolling, limbs of flesh. These new men and women do not walk, they slither, like a worm, leaving a glistening trail of excretion behind them. What things they eat! With their tentacles they grab garbage pails and shake their contents into their mouths, large, moist orfices, lines with sharp, barbarous teeth. I see them pluck plastic bags, the rotted remains of dead trees, and eat these things. And yet they continue to move, eating constantly, oozing slime and feces. They do not think, they do not stop. In their eyes, there is madness. Sometimes you hear them speak, and they can say only one word - Eat...Eat...Eat.

When I came down to the city, last night, we were not so far gone. There were still men and women, scared, frightened, staring at the eruptions of flesh on hands, legs and faces. It seemed like a rash then, a terrible rash. But then some changed, and despair wracked the rest, as they saw in the changed ones, the change that would come to all.

In a park at the edge of the city, I met a woman. She had been running, I think, from fear. I first saw her shoes - a pair of delicate, high-heeled sandals, discarded on the grass. And then I heard her screams, punctuated by fits of sobbing. Cautiously, I ventured closer - and then I saw her. She had been wearing a purple cocktail dress and now the seams had split, as her changing flesh bulged out. It was ugly. I winced - she noticed, and started crying again.

"It's gonna get you too!" She shrieked, through her tears. I stared at my hands, as she spoke, and even then I saw the mottled red patches that would erupt in boils, heralding the change that would sweep over me. "I'm sorry," she said, a moment later. Her voice was soft, delicate. "I didn't mean that..."

"But, still," I sighed, replying, "it will happen."

I looked at her again, and noticed diamonds in her ears, a bracelet disappearing into the folds of flesh around her wrist. A wealthy and beautiful woman, I surmised, who had been on her way to a party.

"What's going to happen?" She asked, after a moment. "What do you think-...are we going to get better? Or is it going to get worse?"

I shrugged. There were no answers. "I wonder if the same thing is happening elsewhere," I said. "I suppose it must be."

"It is. It was on the news - just as it started with us....It must be everywhere."

"What is it? A virus?" She shook her head, she didn't know.

A moment went by, then another and another. She wiped her tears. "I was beautiful," she told me. "Before this happened. So beautiful." She gestures with one pudgy finger to a silken clutch bag, by her feet. "Open it."

I opened it - and a lipstick rolled out. There was a driving license, money and a carefully folded newspaper clipping. She told me to unfold it - it was the society page - and in the center was a woman, head to one side. She was smiling at the camera. Her eyes were large, almond-shaped and fringed with black lashes. Brown ringlets cascaded down to her shoulders. Her skin was smooth, dewy, white. She wore a scarlet, off-the shoulder dress that outlined a perfect figure. She was beautiful.

"That's me," the woman-thing in front of me wept. (She had changed, as I read, there were tentacles extending from the remains of her arms and legs, long, floppy things, that writhed on the grass.)

"It wasn't enough," she told me after a while. "That's the sad part. I wanted to be even more beautiful. I wanted surgeries and treatments and things that would make me perfect. Now..."

I never learnt her name. A few minutes later, she changed completely. There was a blind, half-mad look on her face. She was chanting. "Eat...Eat...Eat..." I fled. I couldn't bear to watch.

I sit in an abandoned house now, writing. The people who lived here have disappeared, have changed into those fiendish things that wander through the streets. But I see bits and peices of their lives - there is a picture of a family, husband, wife and two boys. I see Tolstoy on their bookshelf, next to Dr. Seuss.

Outside their window now, I see the remains of a man battle a woman. They push and prod each other with tentacles, with tails, walls of flesh smashing into each other. The air fills with their screams - their brutish screams - and after a few minutes the woman-thing triumphs. She rips of the man's head...I shut the window then. They are eating each other. It has come to this. I push the blinds up once again, and I see another couple. I see blood and gore. Perhaps - perhaps this is not eating - perhaps this is a mating rite. Like the praying mantis and spiders. We have become no better than insects.

What new race will be born? What is this change? Is this the last stage in evolution? Is it a virus that has infected us all? Or is it a divine punishment? How did this happen?

There are many questions. But I do not have the time. Already the change is almost complete, my hunger mounts, my belly is on fire.

It won't be long, now.