Prologue

What could I do, what could I ask God that would change anything at all? What could I see, what could I smell that would make this demoralizing reality back into a terrifying nightmare? I’ll tell you myself, from the direct source of the catastrophe, from the only witness out of millions left standing. Jack shit. I never expected my life, that once had everything, to fall apart like this. With bloodshed and death hanging fresh in the air like a raw hide on a African Baobab tree. Or the excruciating loss of yourself, where all you were was easily ripped away from your fingertips as if you held no grip at all.

But then again, people always said the end of the world would be one of two things.

Enlightenment of humanity or straight up Hell.

At first, I was nervous, the tremors of fear washing over my body like the sea to the shore. What if it did happened? What if it really did come to an end? What if I didn’t have till college to figure out what I wanted to make myself? What if the only time I had left was right now? It scared me, unnerved me even, to think of such a thing. To think that one day, I would wake up, walk out onto my porch and see death reigning the minds of hundreds, taking over my fellow neighbors like puppets to a runaway Carnival. Only if such a thing stayed a thought…

But how could the Mayans, who had perished themselves, been so sure, so positive of the new Era starting? How could they have known? This was what I lived for now, that one question. How? The how’s and when’s of the tomorrow are always on my mind, a new game of Q&A always rebooting and starting over when I went to meditate. I no longer needed sleep nor did I want it. Everything just came back into my nightmares. That perfect morning, the Rolling Stones booming in the living room, life being born and dying as it always did. That same old cycle playing the same old tune. Baby birth, people die, Baby birth, people die. Same shit, different day. As it always had been.

The questions that preoccupied me, though, never seemed to stop. They always kept coming from an unknown source. What will I eat tomorrow? Will there be another blizzard? What about savage animals? Will I cross one again? They plagued at me, ate at me until I was nothing more but skin and a brain, thinking but never dreaming, seeing but never believing. I had shot myself with my own weapon, the very thing that people once considered most beautiful but lethal. My imagination.

I functioned on instinct, attacked with ferocity, strategize with perfect stimulation. I never tired nor did I ever really eat. It was as if I -the only human standing on the Western Hemisphere- was the only one to evolve while the rest of the world slumbered in a tragic coma, it’s shadowed breathing never evident before my eyes.

The first thing that would’ve come to your mind if you saw Hell meet you at your doorstep would be nothing. You’d be totally shocked, -immobilized per say- but in your self-conscience, in the very back of your head that people hardly used, you would be saying Holy hell, we were right. Besides, when has humanity ever been right about something? Before, in a time where there was no such thing as rape or murder, -and if there was, it was silent and went by unnoticed- we would prove everything by fact and reason. The Scientific Method to put it simply.

But as time progressed, we were so used to being right that whatever said we assumed was the truth and eventually stopped proving it. Like if you suck on a spoon for more than an hour that means you’re gay or if you drink chocolate milk while standing on your head it’ll leak out from your scalp. We never bothered to prove anything anymore because we were so used to being correct, so used to never being wrong. That was when our fate was sealed, the destruction of mankind. How I wish we could rewind time and fix are mistakes.

Unfortunately, time stops for no one, not even the human race itself. Time doesn’t care if you’re rich, poor, if your life sucked, or your just altogether the most beautiful, kind person in the universe. Time is selfish, never content with how fast or slow it goes, never willing to stop by for someone who is in desperate need. Time is cruel.

And even now, it won’t stop for anyone….Not even me.

So now here I am, on the south side of Georgia, with my pet rat and iPod, trying, screaming for somebody…anybody…to come and save me. To take me back to civilization, to shelter me from this obscure, volatile world that I am forced to call home.

So whoever you are, wherever you are…if you’re reading this, then come and save me. Protect me in any way you can and if not that…then at least stay along side me as my companion as I travel through the ends of the Earth for that one thing all we humans need. That feeling within you that gets so powerful and savage that you must find some way to unleash it or satisfy it. And yes…I’m talking about love.

This is my story and please, whoever you are, wherever you…don’t turn away. I’ll be waiting for you, humanity.

Sincerely,

Irony M. Woods