The last witness

Published on by Perilous Reading

The day the earth died passed by unnoticed. He watched it happen like he was watching a car fall off a cliff, and in that one moment he saw how all the pieces of rescue had been lost along the way.

Some had proclaimed that the end of the world would come suddenly, panic igniting the great, grey beacons, primed and long stoked with the coals of rhetoric and fear. Some had hailed the coming of the horseman, death carried on dark plague ships of antibiotic resistance. Some whispered that the swansong would come slowly, tales of Bluesky told by the lost ones in generations raised under a grey sun. Some declared it would end with water. Some that it would end in a battle between heaven and hell. Some had sworn with their lives that aliens would come back for everything they’d left behind.

But they were all wrong. All of them. Because he had been there, he had seen the moment the earth died. And it hadn’t ended in chaos, it had ended with one ordinary person and one small, insignificant choice. A choice so small, it seemed like nothing more than throwing a plastic bottle into a bin.

When a car is balancing on the edge of a cliff it just takes one small thing to tip it over, and once it’s falling, there is no way on earth to stop it.

Power isn’t about governments, it’s about choice. The end is coming, and the moment of no return is closer than you think.

 

11 thoughts on “The last witness”

  1. tales of Bluesky told by the lost ones in generations raised under a grey sun.

    I wish this piece was longer 🙂 I really liked the prose here, beautiful words in all of that hopelessness.

    Liked by 1 person

  5. I like this one because I feel like it speaks to that feeling I (imagine) most people get when they look at some of the things that are going on in the world today and how a lot of other people react (or don’t). Sometimes you can look at it all and think that the end has already begun and everyone just hasn’t realised yet.

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  6. Absolutely right. I remember a Buddhist teacher saying once, that when we look at all the things that are happening in the world it overwhelms us and makes us feel powerless. Instead of looking at what we can’t change, we should look at the things we can change. Bring it home, do what we can where we are. That’s what I had in mind when I wrote this too. Like in ever moment there is a choice, and that’s where the power to change things lies.

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