POMODORO
25 minutes. That’s all there was. One pomodoro’s worth of time.
Until the end of the world.
He glanced at the timer counting down and wanted to scream. The only thing that stopped him was the self-awareness that if he started screaming he wouldn’t be able to stop.
There was a whole world’s worth of people out there that didn’t know they were about to die. He envied them their ignorance.
No last goodbyes, but no last regrets either. Just going about their everyday lives with no awareness that the end was most definitely nigh.
24:35. 24:34. 24:33. 24:32.
He forced himself to look away. There was nothing useful about counting down the minutes and seconds. It would only add to the heavy sense of doom bearing down on him.
There were so many other things he could do like…
He scratched his head. His mind was a screaming miasma of different urges and desires. It was enough to choke him into immobility.
Finally he cursed and got out a notebook and pen. He began trying to plan out what he could do with his last 20 minutes.
Things that wouldn’t be worthless and a waste of his last little bit of time.
He glanced at the timer. Winced away.
22:45. 22:44.
He didn’t have anyone to call. His parents had died from COVID and his brother lived on the opposite side of the planet. Guy had met his wife online and moved away when he was 28 years old. They hadn’t seen each other in close to 6 years.
Guy was the kind of stickler for bedtimes that refused to answer the phone if it was past 9 o’clock at night. He was likely already in his pajamas cuddling with his pregnant wife.
There was no reason to call him, upset him, let him know what was to come.
It was better to let him enjoy this little bit of peace. It was a last bit of kindness that he could afford to give a brother he had never been particularly close to.
He thought about calling his friends, but decided against it.
How was he supposed to explain that the world was about to end? They would think he was delusional! Their last few minutes would be spent wondering if he was about to off himself or something.
It was better to let them continue on in their blissful ignorance.
20:29. 20:28.
There were 20 minutes left. He’d wasted 5 minutes mentally flailing and doing nothing.
He tapped his pen against the paper of the notebook. He’d made a checklist of things he could do, but nothing really called out to him as being something to spend his last minutes doing.
He didn’t even know why he’d added “Vacuum the carpet.”
Finally he shrugged and got up to head into the bathroom. One last orgasm to send off all life on Earth. Why not.
14:12. 14:11. 14.10.
He glared at the timer. It kept counting down. Even though it was digital, some part of him thought he could hear it working–click, click, click.
There wasn’t even time enough to order his favorite food from his favorite restaurant. Not that he felt particularly hungry.
There was a good chance that if he ate something now, he would throw it back up.
And how terrible would that be? To spend his last moments vomiting in the same toilet he’d just ejaculated into?
It would be some kind of metaphor. What kind of metaphor he didn’t know, but it would be something. Like life and death and defecation all being tied together, one unable to exist without the other or something heavily philosophical like that.
“God, I’m facetious,” he said out loud and laughed. It was heavy and joyful. Then suddenly it was tears. And he was crying, and it was the kind of crying that led to his nose leaking over his lips and down his chin to drip all over the front of his shirt in a disgusting stream.
But he couldn’t stop.
He was crying so hard he could barely breathe. He was hitching and gasping and his whole body was shuddering with the overwhelming realization that “I’m going to die!”
5:06. 5:05.
Once the waterworks started, they were hard to stop. His chest was still hitching and hiccuping, but he’d finally stopped crying. He took off his shirt and used it to mop his wet face.
“Ugh, I’m gross,” he said, rubbing the shirt under his nose to get rid of the last bit of mucus.
His upper lip felt sore and his eyes were uncomfortable. He hadn’t cried that hard since his parents died.
It was the kind of uncontrollable crying that didn’t really make anything feel better and maybe made things feel worse. Because it was accompanied by a sense of helplessness, of loss, of realizing that there had never been any sense of control in the first place.
Time was ticking down and there was nothing he could do to stop it. There was no one he could call. No one that he could wrap his arms around and bury himself into as the world came apart around them.
He was the only one that knew the world was about to end. And it was the loneliest of realizations.
Because everyone else got to keep thinking that there was always going to be tomorrow. All the things they didn’t get done today… All the things they wanted to do but weren’t able to do right now… They thought that tomorrow was waiting there for them, a sunset and a sunrise away.
1:21. 1:20.
Should I pray? he thought. Will my soul leave my body and journey to some other, new kind of existence?
He’d never been religious. His parents had been raised in soft-Christianity, which had resulted in them settling into quiet atheism. They’d never been the sort to speak bad about religion, but they’d never said anything good about it either.
He didn’t even know who he was supposed to direct his prayers to.
There were a lot of Christians, sure, but there were a lot of other religions out there too. How was he supposed to know which ones were real? Especially when the clock was ticking down and there was only… 45 seconds left?
Geez, he thought. Why does it feel as though time is going by too fast?
He began to pray without aiming his words toward anyone. He just gave his apologies. Told his parents and grandparents that he loved them. Hoped that if there was an afterlife it wasn’t going to be horrible.
0:09. 0:08. 0:07.
He looked away. There were only a few seconds left. Why spend them counting down like there was about to be a rocket launch?
He tried to think of what he had loved. What he had desired. What he would miss.
His mind was completely blank other than the looming awareness of what was about to happen.
He couldn’t help laughing at his own ridiculousness.
He’d only had 25 minutes to experience the whole rest of his life… and he’d wasted that bit of time counting down the seconds.
“I could have watched the final episode of my show,” he said to himself, chuckling. “I would have been able to know how things turned out between…”
=END=
Driving. Driving all night ’til the mornin’ come. Wanna see my bed, but first I’mma see the sun. Wishin’ you were here to whisper sweet things. Gonna close my eyes and visit you in my dreams.
