The three of them sat on that rock, the lapping of water occasionally licking at their pants. It was night, but it wasn’t dark, the explosions of colors from the stars and the campfire illuminating their faces. There were two men, one woman. They sat cross legged around the burning flames, each with a empty roasting stick in their hands.
The ocean was calm, a watery field without flowers, the rock a tiny disturbance in the large stance of water. The surface of the water reflected the bright sky, as though the three were floating in space.
“Is this how you pictured the end of the world?” The first man asked, not quite asking one or another.
There was a brief silence.
The woman shifted her weight, making sure not to make the wrong move and slip any of them to the near approaching water.
“I thought the sun would explode” The first man answered his own question.
The second man sighed, “Or an atomic bomb that would end it all”
Perhaps it would have been better if it had been an atomic bomb. It at least would have been faster.
None of them were hungry. For the longest time they had learned to survive with the stale meat and the couple bottles of fresh water. The food was gone now, though. And either way, they could live with hunger.
But not with their thoughts.
As their death approached, they wished they had more time to think. Thoughts would come and diminish, but they clung to each one they had.
The water was beginning to rise to their waists. The campfire was long gone, now just a bunch of soggy logs that they tossed to the side.
They had been sitting on the slowly shrinking rock for what seemed like ages now. Before the water started rising, it was a mountain, but now it was no more but a speck in the empty world for the three to sit on.
There was no reason for the water to rise. There was no scientific reason. It just started, rising and rising, drowning person after person.
The three were on a lonely island, without anyone else. Thank goodness for that. On their mountain, they could almost hear the fear, the fights. They saw the boats scouring for land, circling, circling, circling, until they sank, an epic gurgling of water followed by a series of bubbles.
It was only luck that they were the last survivors.
Or maybe it was a curse.
The water rose to their chests.
“I’m standing up” The woman’s wispy voice sounded.
They arose together, heads tilted to the sky.
“I never saw the stars in the city” The second man said wistfully.
“I’m not going to miss this planet” the woman stared at the distant planets.
“Too many regrets?”
“Too many regrets.”
The water was yet again at their chests.
“Why do you think that God decided to do this?” The first man wondered.
“Flood the world? Why, I don’t know.” The woman replied.
They weren’t panicked. There was no trace of fear in their voices.
They knew this was supposed to happen. They just knew. There was no reason to fight it.
As the water reached their necks, they sighed, a little wind on the large expanse of water.
The men went first. They fell of their own will. There was a brief thrashing, their bodies trying to fight the fate, until they disappeared.
The woman stared up at the sky for one last second, until she sat back into the stars of the water.
The bright colors of the sky dashed across her vision, until everything was
Gone.
CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=167814
Short Fiction