Doom is Different

Towering clouds peak on the horizon, while all eyes on the screen flickering red, yellow, green. The air sucked out of the room, mouths mute, agape. The red ticker tape flashing warnings, and oh what a morning, the mourning begun for those already passed, the world aghast, and we’re waiting in the path of calamity, the beast to come.

“What fun!” The silent thought so morbid. My affair with doom so torrid, I’m reluctant to proceed. Please note, I wish no harm upon another, and how it wrecks my fragile mother the very whisper of disaster. But after years of stale and boring — the rhythms and the snoring, the gallery ignoring the beckoning of the sun — I gladly welcome natures bell. 

What hell on the scene! Frantic preparation in anticipation of the onslaught. Desperation caught on camera: lines at counters, vicious encounters, in a frenzy, out of stock and gridlock on the highway with half a population in evacuation. Such a twisted sensation, some macabre glee as the sleepers awake, forced to flee — foaming mouths and crimson cheeks — stealing memories away from tragedy in cardboard boxes stacked on seats.

What hell will be unleashed! For now the calm, the beast not far as we count it’s teeth in millibars. Activities ceased, empty streets except for foolish me, watching milky sky wax gray and oak sway and a murder of crows flies away to distant safety. Meanwhile, harbinger leaves gather ‘round my feet, harvested by easterly winds which bare the harrowing scent of destiny.  And there’s nowhere I’d rather be, (foolish me), I’ll say it once more, even as the beast raps at my door with briny breath. No lust for death, but “doom” is “different”: demands awe, drops jaws, bucks the status quo, reverses the flow of energy — temporarily — stemming the tide of over/underwhelming time and hits the pause.

What hell! The beast has claws. The gales howl and I cower in a corner like a child as the wild thing rends and frays. How I’m afraid! Forked tongue lightning frightening, windows rattle, I shudder; heart flutters with the quivering of the walls. Darkness falls with no sign of abating, I the fool for hating tranquility and stability. How dour must I truly be to yearn for such a fate? The beast devours and I pass hours counting seconds between purple flash and violent crash. Tail lashing, fangs gnashing, and at long last passing — downpours turning to nothing more than showers. The beast turns north and west and leaves the rest of us for dead as far as it knew. A cerulean hew returns to the dome, as I, emerging from my home, espy the tail of my assailant trail off behind the tree line.

What relief divine! I and mine are spared — a couple bumps — no worse for the wear. But in the sun’s glare I blink, and can’t help but think back on my trials and define them as mild, all things considered. Mere minutes since fear’s paralyzing choke was broken and I’m already loath to return to the yoke of tiresome humdrum. The waters retreat and the sleepers go back to sleep. Responsibility and normalcy, an excruciating gravity, evokes my depravity — the sadistic thirst for catastrophe. I wonder what’s next. Turn on the news and check.