Another end-of-the-world story

The end of the world didn’t come the way everyone expected it to, and Ravenna was the only one to realize what was happening. She sat in the cupola of her hilltop house and watched as the stars lined up behind the moon, single file like a gaggle of goslings behind their mother, and as the ocean drew back and back and back as if the Atlantic was baring its teeth before sic’ing. It was only a matter of time, she thought, before everything would end, and since there was nothing to be done about it, she simply sat and watched.

But dawn showed up anyway. The sun, rising in the south, must have missed the memo that the world was over and he could go on his way now; the Earth no longer needed him. Ravenna did the only thing she could think to do, what was the thing she always did: she got ready for work and rode her bike out to the atrium.

Her boss was nowhere to be found, nor were the animals she always tended. It seemed her charges must have known what was coming and fled, trampling the flora as they went.

Ravenna wandered the grounds and found nothing but yesterday’s traces of life. Nothing moved, nothing twittered, nothing scurried into the bushes.

That was when it dawned on her that she hadn’t seen a single car on the road that morning. Suddenly panicked, she leapt back onto her bicycle and rode until her legs couldn’t pedal anymore, through the business district, to the harbor, down the coast on the wrong side of the Jersey barrier. There wasn’t a moving car on the street.

She finally arrived at her old house. The family car was still there, but her family was gone.

A balmy breeze swept through the yard, though New England was waist-deep in November. Ravenna could only shiver in response. The world had ended, all right, and she’d been left behind.

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I wrote this a few weeks ago as an exercise for my class and forgot to post it. Thoughts? Comments? A simple Like or Unlike?

Peace, love and California dreamin',
Miss Rex