[Closest] Chlorine Dreams
Do you know how the world ends? Apparently, I do. Two asteroids hit the earth, change the chemistry to such a point that huge, clouds of gas fill the sky, and our atmosphere fills with clouds of chlorine. Poisonous rains fall from the sky. It's very "On the Beach".
Certain things don't exist in this dream-- they are too painful to think about in the end times. My family being one of them, but I get closure in the end. So, my brain has been rifling through my pockets while I sleep and focusing on things I don't while I am awake and finding that which hasn't so obviously been getting to me. I've been focusing on cleaning the house (or tearing it apart, so it can be cleaner in the end). I've been focusing on the fact that D. will be in here two weeks. Or that I have a dozen small tasks before school starts.
I have been focusing outward, and suddenly all these dreams start turning inward. There's this place where the world is falling apart. It's coming to a nasty end and I'm watching, knowing the physiological response of of a body to breathing Cl2 gas, and I'm standing there with coffee knowing the water supply is going to hell, and there's a person beside me-- we're talking about something in the not-quite-casual way we had as these green clouds fill the sky. I remember it, vividly.
"This blows"
"Yeah"
"I'm sorry."
"Me too"
"Coffee?"
"Yeah."
And there's one arm, in an embrace that isn't afraid or cautious, and some time to watch some clouds fill the sky until it's time to go meet our ends in the more appropriate ways with more appropriate people. Capricious and fickle, I cared as the sky melted.