A lot of things can happen in the blink of an eye.
A split second.
A picture can record the present for viewing once it becomes the past.
A snapshot of an old girlfriend.
A life can be forever changed by a car crash.
A gunshot.
A planet’s tiny existence can be erased.
Everyone pays for the ambition of a few.

I am the last man on earth by about a tenth of a second. I don’t know how I got such a position. Just lucky, I guess. I’m just the last one in the path. I don’t know what it was, maybe a bomb or a scientific experiment gone bad. I’m sure someone knows… Knew. But that person isn’t me. I just get to witness it.
It’s weird to see something like that coming toward you like this. Eating everything in its path. Time is moving so slowly. I wonder if that’s because I’m about to die or if it’s a symptom of being near this… thing.
Whatever it is.
My opinion has never mattered before. I didn’t get to decide to call a giraffe a giraffe. Someone else did that for me, but I suppose the importance of your opinion greatly increases when there’s nobody else in the world.
My eyes feel dry. The swirling blackness in front of me keeps moving steadily forward and for a second I forget about impending doom and wonder if blackness can really swirl.

I think of all we have accomplished. Man, I mean, not you and me. My biggest accomplishment was paying my Visa bill on time. Once. Man as a whole, however has accomplished quite a lot for what little time we had. The wheel, sky scrapers, scratch and win lottery tickets. I look back at the thing. I wonder if maybe it is another one of our accomplishments.

Another scientific success. I think . Congratulations, you killed everything.

If it’s a black hole then its hasn’t lived up to the expectations I had.
My preconceived notions.
If it’s a bomb then it’s by far the quietest bomb I have ever seen.
Or heard.
What if it’s God?
Bringing judgement.
So this thing, this blackness, is enveloping everything, Just sort of moving over it, and I’m standing on my porch in a bath robe. The robe’s cloth belt hanging lifeless in the perfectly still air. Flecks of dust hit my eye. I start to blink.

It begins with tiny twitches in my eyes.
Shivers.
They move so slowly, like an astronaut in space.
Like a sports replay.
The blackness is getting closer.
Relentless.

This is the end of the world and I’m blinking. I’m missing it all because of dust.

I can see my lashes. Little flakes of skin or whatever cling stickily to the hairs. The blackness keeps coming. I can hear it now, faintly. Like a buzzing sound. It’s so low I feel it more than I hear it.
Suddenly a thundering sound so loud it feels like it should break windows. Before the first is over my head rattles again with another bellowing thump. My heart.

The blackness is almost here. Buildings are passing effortlessly through it’s inky wall. My eyelids are starting to obscure my vision. I strain to keep them open. To glimpse what six billion people before me saw less than a second ago. My eyes are almost completely closed. Everything turns red as light filters through my eyelids. The buzzing is getting loud now. I can hardly bear it. Louder. I think about everything.

Everything I ever did.
Regrets.
Everything other people ever did.
Wishes.
Everything I never did.
More regrets.

My entire life and the lives of all the people I ever met mean nothing here. This blackness took that all away. The sound is so loud that I can’t even comprehend. My body vibrates in slow motion. I am hit with pulse after pulse of would-be sound.

This is how the world ends.
Unfortunate.
Not with a bang.
An anti-climax for the ages.
But with a hum.
Deafening.

Then, as my eyes finally close, the red that enveloped my vision becomes black. Just like everything else. There’s no point in opening them, because outside my head is just as dark.

A lot of things can happen in the blink of an eye.
The end.