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It’s the end of the world and I am stuck in a corner in my bedroom, cowering, shivering beneath a blanket as the plaster falls by the door and the timbers begin to split. Soon it will all be down upon me and the isolation of this corner will not protect me from the inevitable collapse.

Through the window I can see the trees blowing outside and the twigs falling. Soon the limbs will crack and slump and then the trunks will tower over and blow away into the dust already swirling into devils that whip apart the well-tended gardens and heaps of dirt alike, all of it will be swept up and blasted to a fine dust that no mask can filter.

    Death is not the question. The question I ask is, will my body survive? If I take the full brunt of the collapse of the house, if I am at the bottom of the rubble, will my body survive intact long enough to say that my body was one that survived, one that did not disintegrate before its very own eyes?

It is odd that in these last moments I should think about physical survival at all. And that I should be willing to endure certain pain for this brief eclipse of everlasting, thoughtless bodiness. And everlasting it will be on the scale soon to follow, for I will last infinite moments longer. For moments uncountable I will be when there will be no one to count, when books, films, factories and all the memories of a species will be dust,  erased recollections of an instant, that instant between the beginning and the end.

It is odd that I should think of anything when now it is so clear that thought itself has been in vain, even for the dolphins and the chimpanzees. Or will our thoughts survive, encapsulated somewhere in the dust?

Earlier today Mrs. Wiggins sipped tea in my kitchen and said she really didn’t know what to make of it. I said no, I don’t either, but really I wanted to laugh, stand up and laugh at her feeble attempts to make anything of it, as if something could be made of nothing.

I do hope my grandchildren are safe, she said, and I said I’m sure they’re well protected.

And now two hours later I wonder why I bothered, why I offered the comfort that was all lie, all made up babble about protection that could not be found. I should have said, I am safe, Mrs. Wiggins, I am safe, and for me it will be slow and painful and in the end all the same. I should have said this when she left to walk back home, rather than tell her cheerfully that she should hope for the best.

As if saying this, as if truth or falsehood mattered any more than Mrs. Wiggins’ peace of mind. As if anything should have been said that would have been right when there is no right, no wrong, just what has been and what will soon no longer be.

I should have killed her on the spot. I should have shot her in the head or clubbed her and thrown her body out the front door.

The ceiling is cracking. A tree just vanished into the swirling mayhem outside. Now the bedroom window has broken, the roof is blowing off and the room is filling with debris.  I can not see my feet and now the soot is tearing at my skin and the walls are shaking, the cement foundation is whining and the floor is cracking beneath me. Soon the floor boards will buckle and rip up through me from bottom to top, splitting me down the middle. And soon after that I too shall be dust, like the floorboards and the wheat crackers in the pantry.

As if I should move, as if somehow movement would accomplish some end when there are no more ends, only unfulfilled means that soon also will be forgotten like whatever it was, God bless it, that made me smile, sip the tea and thank Mrs. Wiggins for the sugar and tell her yes, I think she should go home and take the pills and make it nice like it will be for her two little granddaughters. I told her it will be a peaceful sleep, with gentle dreams.