The light of a dying sun silhouetted two lonely figures, hands clasped, on a hill as they looked out over the world. A dry wind rustled through the dead grass beneath their bare feet. Far away in the horizon, mountains began to crumble, falling into dust that blew away in the wind that brought nothingness.
This is the way the world ends.
Somewhere far away, a rusted old swing set creaked its last, falling silent along with the rest of the world. Slowly, ever so slowly, like mountain of sand blowing in the wind, it dissolved into dust. The trees rustled their dead branches, bowing their once-proud heads. Once crowned with a brilliant green, they mourned for the world's passing.
A single solitary tear made its way down his dust-streaked face, carving a path through the grime of a thousand years of suffering and sadness. He remembered the world as it once was. Dogs barked in joy, a soft breeze blowing its way merrily through the mountains and valleys. Distant small figures laughed and shouted, caught up in merriment. Color suffused the world, brilliant, vibrant color. But now, there was only gray. That vision of the world as it was, it was no more.
She was dry-eyed but also mourned. This world, once a shining marble in the cosmos, was now nothing more than a shell of its old self. She mourned the loss of life. The loss of love. The loss of joy, of happiness. She mourned the loss of death, pain, and suffering, for without one, what was the other?
This is the way the world ends.
Their intertwined hands tightened as they watched the encroachment of nothingness. It made its way through what once were majestic peaks of mountains. The valley below, once bustling with life but now gray and dead, was consumed, crumbling away, the fragments of that which once was swallowed by the void.
A lonely farmhouse, once a proud monument to life, soundlessly collapsed on itself as it dissolved. Wood, metal, cloth, materials that once meant something, all was the same in the face of the end.
Slowly, ever so slowly, the light of the dying sun winked out. A choking, suffocating darkness fell over the world as overhead each star, themselves at one time massive balls of gas, brightly burning in the heavens, vanished into the cosmos.
This is the way the world ends.
The single tear dripped onto the crumbling dead grass, soaking into the dry ground as nothingness approached. Amber eyes looked into violet, the only splashes of color left in a dead, gray world. Silent reassurance passed between them as they looked back to the world.
At last, the grass beneath their feet crumbled, leaving them surrounded by nothingness. There was no color. No black, no white. Just nothing. They simply stood, existing, together in the face of eternity. The only proof that there was once a world. That there was once life. But they were together.
Not with a bang, but a whimper.
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I don't really know where I got the idea for this from, but I simply was inspired after reading once again the poem The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot. My attempt at a one-shot.