Five More Minutes
They said the world was going to end like this:
From giant rings and metal tubes being built towards the sky, sticking straight out of the hollowed ground, titanic fumes would be released into the air—fumes that would bleed into the atmosphere, that would dissolve trees' leaves like paper in water. Among the fumes, all the oxygen in the world would amount to a needle in a haystack, eventually being reduced to nothing. The fumes aimed to kill and destroy, aimed to bleed into one's lungs and deprive them of precious air. The fumes were poison.
And they would be invisible.
No one knew when they would come. No one knew when the poison would start to be fed into the air, and no one would be able to see it begin. But the tubes were on full display; the workers of the law gradually built great hollow structures of metal and concrete, all over the world, and in Arthur's town, there were three.
Like football fields being stacked on top of one another, they rose higher and higher.
Arthur saw people protesting, saw them hurling stones and rallying, but metal fences kept them nearly a mile away from the construction sites, their screams meaning nothing.
It was the government, they said. And the government didn't stop all the news people and TV people to broadcast what they were doing all over the world. After all, every country was on board with the destruction. Not the people of course, but their governments. And they were all silent.
Any group of citizens that dare sabotage the work were killed without a second thought. That was the aim anyway—to kill them. All of them.
Sitting on his rooftop, Arthur watched one of the tubes being built over the horizon, its rim now above the old factory in the distance. Rooftops rimmed with the golden sunset glinted out of reach of its shadow, and the misty silhouette of city buildings clouded the orange sky beyond.
He looked to the boy sitting next to him, his sandy hair whipping all about his face and loose hoodie moving restlessly in the summer wind. In the golden light, his precious blue eyes were almost green.
"Alfred," Said Arthur, shifting his weight on his hands. "Would you have stopped this, if you could?" He swallowed, eyes flickering from the rooftops and to his friend, then back again.
Alfred smiled, bitterly, eyes focused on the horizon—or perhaps on the construction. "Of course. But if I tried, I'd die anyway." He laughed, short and sarcastic.
"Well," Arthur lowered his eyes. "Aren't we all going to die anyway? I would've thought you would, perhaps, run at full speed towards them with grenades in your hands with the justification that you 'at least tried'."
Alfred laughed again, a bit less sarcastic. "Like you said, we're all gonna die anyway. I just think it's a bit more heroic to stay here and live life, and help others live life, and give them a smile before we all go, you know?"
He was smiling now, and Arthur smiled too.
"Is that what's going to make you happy, then, before you go? Helping others?" The Brit asked.
Alfred shrugged. "Maybe. Well, it'll help, at least." He turned to Arthur now with a lopsided grin. "Beats uselessly running towards a bunch of loaded guns and making my mom feel horrible afterwards. She doesn't need two sons to mourn over. Heh." Arthur didn't smile. "And hey you'll finally be rid of the 'stupid bloody git' you're always complaining about."
Arthur frowned then. His fist curled towards the rusty metal beneath his palms. "You know I don't hate you…"
His voice was weak. Alfred had been like this for a while now. Sarcastic smiles and all accepting and cozying up to the notion of inevitable death. He was too melancholic, too… too sad. It wasn't like him, and Arthur knew his best friend, known him for seven years, for half their lives.
Alfred dropped the smile, worry edging into his eyes. He tried to be nonchalant, but that's not how Alfred worked. Arthur knew, Arthur saw.
"I know that," said the teen, placating. He looked at Arthur for a moment, concerned eyes searching his face, then he opened his arms with a small smile playing on his lips.
Arthur crawled forward without a second thought. He curled up into that familiar body and hooked his arms around the waist. He let Alfred hold him, and neither said a word.
They stayed there until the sky was black; and it was black without the sparkle of even a single star.
Arthur walked out the door to a grey and dusty morning. Living on the edge of a city, in the suburbs where people always had places to be, Arthur was used to the noise and yelling, to the honking cars and thrumming engines. But this morning, it was quiet.
Ever since the tubes, it had been very quiet indeed.
People walked now, or biked everywhere, with few people bothering to hop into their cars anymore. Around half of the people never even bothered to go to work, while the other half stuck to their nine-to-five schedules to keep up some semblance of a normal life. Arthur's mother was one of those people, and he watched her speeding down the driveway in their rusty van in the bleak light of day.
Arthur didn't go to school nowadays. He couldn't think of anyone who did anymore. And yet he was to be found hitching his backpack up his shoulders at 8 am on his front porch, dressed comfortably for the chilly autumn air.
He walked down the sidewalk, the rustling of leaves filling his ears. The houses and their gardens were all quiet, shrouded in a muddy yellow light that matched the dead feeling of the world. From windows and behind picket fences, muted faces gave him muted glances, brief flickers of interest, and then the people went back to whatever they were doing—gardening, conversing… it didn't matter, not to them, not to anyone.
A block later, Arthur was looking up towards the roof. On that one charming little house sat Alfred, staring off into the distance, wind ruffling his loose hoodie like a flag around his teenage frame.
It didn't take long for him to walk through the house, up the stairs and the ladder to the roof. He sat next to Alfred, and without any notice from the other boy, hefted his backpack onto his lap and started rifling through.
After perhaps a long minute of shuffling around, Alfred turned to him inquisitively.
"Uh, watcha got there, Artie?"
Arthur looked up, once, before sticking his nose back into his pack without responding.
Alfred waited, and waited, and then Arthur sat up with a triumphant smile, his hands now stilled in his backpack, obviously already holding onto whatever he'd been searching for.
Slowly, with a smug grin, Arthur pulled out a think book secured tightly in a somewhat dusty sheen of plastic. Alfred squinted, confused, and then his eyes widened suddenly and his face was frozen in that precious look of shock that had Arthur giggling as he recognized the identity of the brightly colored book cover.
"I meant to give this to you the other day," said the Brit, holding down a chuckle. "But boy, if I'd known this was to be your reaction I would've gotte—"
"H-how?" Alfred gasped, grabbing at the book. The comic book. A copy of the very first original edition of one of Alfred's most treasured comic book seriesin perfect mint condition. "Arthur—! This… this thing's like, an artifact! How…?"
Alfred stared, eyes tearing up. He read the dates and turned it over in his hand, verifying its authenticity.
Arthur gave him a warm smile. "Old Billy over at the shop down the block's been selling this thing for over a hundred dollars since last year. I've been eyeing it for you, actually, wondering if he'd settle for ten dollars one day. I supposed last week was the day because I'd seen him dumping out the contents of his shop, I suppose he was closing up, and agreed to let me have it for five bucks."
It's been a while since Arthur saw Alfred smile this wide. His friend was a huge nerd, and he knew this fact very well. He'd been rather down ever since the tubes, much like everyone else. He'd been sitting on the rooftop, he'd been shutting people out. He didn't read his books or play his video games, he simply… sat there. Much like his mother in her room, he supposed.
But now, when Alfred wrapped his arms around him tightly, burying that grinning face into Arthur's coat, he felt that he'd finally done something right for his friend. He couldn't do much when they had Matthew's funeral, he couldn't do much when they heard the media spread the recent news, but if he could do anything to make Alfred happy for whatever's left of their lives, then he would've done something right in the world.
But even in that serene moment of peace, in the quiet that draped over the city, the distant, constant, banging of metal was not lost on them. The tubes grew taller each and every day, and the sound was like the ticking of their time bomb.
a/n: Hello, Nish here! So yeah this is totally based on the song by Billie Eilish, End of the World, which yes I know is a cover off another artist, but the vibe I'm going for here is more on Billie's cover.
Not sure how long this is gonna be but it will go on for a few chapters. Leave me some feedback so I'll have motivation to update this! :D