| Suddenly I found it
|
| The page at the end of the internet
|
| As I did sink through trails of links
|
| Somehow I landed there
|
| The address was all asterisks
|
| No paths leading in or out of it
|
| A visit counter at the top read zero-zero-one
|
| The background: tiny tiled stars in the night sky
|
| A midi file droning single notes at a time
|
| A row of gifs of planet earth, all their rotations in line
|
| A cluster block of times new roman all caps center aligned
|
| And this is what it said:
|
| «I looked into the mirror. |
| The person who looked back was not myself.
|
| They were the other. |
| God’s unfortunate messenger. |
| They had a message for me.
|
| For the whole world. |
| They told me the truth. |
| They told me the world would end
|
| when its core stopped spinning. |
| There was an urgency to their message.
|
| The event would happen soon. |
| I saw the earth from space. |
| The great blue dot.
|
| But it wasn’t blue. |
| It was now red. |
| Like the whole world was ablaze.
|
| One supercontinent wrapping around its center with its oceans on its top and
|
| bottom. |
| I saw the world break. |
| Huge cracks in the earth. |
| In them the throne of
|
| beelzebub was visible. |
| His red hot gaze burnt the souls right out of those
|
| unfortunate to be too close. |
| I saw the earth stop moving., atmosphere still
|
| traveled. |
| Thousand mile winds still spinning on a stationary earth.
|
| Thousand mile winds still spinning on a stationary earth. |
| Mountaintops torn
|
| off their bases. |
| Trees violently uprooted. |
| A young boy ripped from his mothers
|
| arms which were ripped from their sockets entirely. |
| All sent skyward at a speed
|
| I could barely comprehend. |
| I saw men whose feet once stood firmly on the ground
|
| flying. |
| No, floating. |
| Helplessly flailing. |
| Their eyes bulged. |
| Their stomachs
|
| distended to the point of bursting. |
| Then they burst. |
| Their viscera floating
|
| away from them as their lifeless bodies looked on. |
| I saw men, women, children.
|
| Their skin so burned and covered in blisters they no longer looked human.
|
| The sun’s radiation turning them into something otherworldly. |
| Then the vision
|
| stopped. |
| The person in the mirror stared back. |
| The strangest thing happened.
|
| A burning sensation in the back of my skull. |
| Four numbers branded into the
|
| neural cavities. |
| Days. |
| Hours. |
| Minutes. |
| Seconds. |
| The numbers kept flipping.
|
| Changing. |
| Counting down. |
| I knew when these numbers reached zero the core would
|
| stop spinning. |
| The world would end. |
| The prophecy would become true.
|
| The numbers are still there. |
| Now I will relay them to you. |
| Counting down
|
| 37 days, 12 hrs, 33 mins, 53 sec
|
| 37 days, 12 hrs, 33 mins, 50 sec
|
| 37 days, 12 hrs, 33 mins, 47 sec.» |