Welcome, my dear readers, to the third and final story in the Whiteverse! Your dutiful storyteller asks you to provide your grain of sand, please.
Prologue: As the world was ending.
The end of their world came quietly. Despite predictions made of hell on Earth and wanton destruction the end of the world came surprisingly orderly.
There were rumors of course, for even madmen gossip at the best of times. Because there was brilliance in plans carried to fruition; jagged and biting brilliance though it might be, and before it was over many would bleed because of it.
The end of the world came at the beginning of summer, the green leaves marking the first hint of change upon the wind.
The end of the world wasn't announced with a bang and clamor. Rather the end of the world was contained in the span of a second, the time it took for the ground to shake once again.
The MEGTAF agent walked once more and knew the end of the world was walking near his door; politely arrogant, knowing it could not be denied and all the same sweeping his land, taking with it a world that would soon be forgotten.
And finally when he first saw the horrible shadows of crooked smiles and burning eyes, when he saw the specter of a creature never to be forgotten in the horizon he knew the end of the world had come.
And they say the lucky ones died on that field though none that lost their life would ever quite see it that way.
It was largely a secret in some rather large circles that the world could end so horribly orderly. For a vast majority in the town of Bellview the world ending wasn't in the realm of possibility. They were of course rightly concerned when horrible stories drifted from neighbor to neighbor, unnatural tales never before made real.
It couldn't be true, you see. It wasn't possible because children tales weren't supposed to be corporeal, weren't supposed to tear your house down, weren't supposed to make you hurt and bleed and cry and pray to useless deities. Because it wasn't supposed to be like this; life wasn't supposed to hit you and kick you and curse you and torture you. And as the world ended all you would really ask was, "Why?"
And in a fleeing car, a man and a woman watched their remaining son closely and wondered what the new world would offer.
Because after all, it was a new world.
This is it for now. Please review, I'll give you a cookie!
Your dutiful storyteller,
H. E. B.