It’s the most beautiful time of day, during the last evening of the last summer of Betty and Karl’s world. They’re sitting on a dirty gas-station roof, while a massive albino dragon is flying over the magical metropolis Lira. They’re watching the fantastical beast melt large chunks of the city in periodical low altitude assaults. Neither of their faces show a hint of fear as bright orange light douses the city in the light of a never-ending sunset.
Karl forms a small flame using the rune circle tattooed on the back of his hand, as well as the small amount of destructive arcane energy inherit in all human beings, to light a self-rolled cigarette. Betty is softly strumming upbeat chord progressions on her ukulele, with occasional melancholic off-key notes littered in between.
“I imagined this to be over much quicker,” Karl says and pauses for a second before looking towards Betty. “What do we do now?”
“Looting looks fun,” Betty responds as she watches a man wearing tattered rags rob a liquor store across the street.
A knight in cyan coloured armour turns up and threatens the criminal with a gold-plated broad sword. The thief grabs whatever bottles he can find, before throwing one of them in the knight’s face and running off. Karl shakes his head.
“I don’t know, seems kind of meaningless to me.”
“Meaning is gonna be pretty hard to come by at this point.”
“They certainly seem to have found some,” Karl says as he watches a crowd rally around their literal knight in shining armour. A wizard amplifies the knights voice, so that his inspirational words may drown out the cities background noises of agony.
“Brave folk of Lira. Let me applaud your awe-inspiring commitment to the defence of your home city. Whilst most have succumbed to the vices of cowardice, selfishness and greed, you, in the face of uncertain survival, have all risen to the occasion. Truly, it is in the darkest of times that our humanities light shines the brightest.”
“Bet the dragon fire shines brighter,” Betty sneers.
“It’s a good speech, considering he’s improvising.”
“Oh, please,” Betty rolls her eyes. “He’s been practicing that in a mirror since he was three years old.”
“I wonder what he’d do. If he knew, what we know.”
“Probably lose his mind.”
“Yeah… Sounds about right.” Karl pauses for a moment before he continues. “Hey, why aren’t we losing our minds?”
“Not much mind left to lose I’d say.”
“True,” Karl says and takes a long drag of his cigarette. Betty’s gotten used to his dramatic smoke pauses. “Not after Hope was done with us.” Betty grimaces in response.
The knight finishes his speech and his audience grabs anything even remotely comparable to a weapon as they erupt into the misguided roars of an army that has never been to war.
Stolen story; please report.
“Oh damn, that old dude’s packing brass knuckles!” Betty shouts and excitedly jumps up. “Where’d he even get those?!”
“Old man wielding brass knuckles versus ancient cosmic dragon.”
“Screw the knight, that’s the kind of man that I’d follow to the end of the world!”
“Maybe we should give it a shot. Can’t be a worse leader than Hope was,” Karl says. Betty furrows her brows and sits back down.
“No more leaders,” she responds as she puts down her ukulele. She rests her head on her knees and both watch as the knight erupts into yet another speech.
“Man, he sure likes talking. Almost as much as Ho-”
“Please,” Betty interrupts him, “stop saying her name.” Awkward silence fills the last room left in a heavily overburdened soundscape.
“You don’t want to shit-talk our friends, you don’t want to follow a brass knuckle wielding, dragon fighting maniac grandpa into certain death. I guess we’ll just sit here and watch the world end until we eventually get burned to a crisp, die of thirst or suffocate,” Karl responds and sighs. “This is gonna be one boring apocalypse.” He leans back and blankly stares down the horizon.
Betty turns her head and watches the burning cities lights dance on his face. Karl rarely smiled, but before all of this she could always see this sparkle in his eyes whenever he watched a fire. Now, faced with the biggest inferno in all of world history, his eyes remain black and his expression blank.
“Fuck that!” She shouts. Karl gets startled out of his thousand-yard stare and turns toward her. “If the world has to end in a pointless, scary and violent shit-fest we can at least honour it with an equally pointless, scary and violent last-minute tribute to pure hedonistic joy! Instead of moping around on a dirty gas-station roof we should get out there! Let’s finally fulfil our greatest dream.” She pauses for a moment to put emphasize on her truly inspired plan. “Let’s become pirates!”
“I am absolutely certain that I have never wanted to be a pirate in my entire life.”
“Not even when you were a kid?”
“No.”
“Alright fine, so maybe it’s only my dream. But still, what a great dream though! Think about it, the open sea, the fresh salt-infused wind, the absolutely unbridled freedom!”
“The fantasy sounds nice enough, but becoming a pirate requires a whole lot of prep time that I don’t think you’ve properly considered. We’d have to steal a boat, find a crew… And after all that, we’d probably only be able to squeeze in, like, four hours of actual pirating.”
“I’m pretty sure stealing a boat already technically counts as pirating.”
“Not if you’re not already on a boat while you’re doing it. That’s just plain old grand theft boat.”
“Alright fine. No becoming pirates. Then how about…” Betty thinks for a moment. “How about I finally show you my side of Lira.”
“Your side of Lira?”
“Yeah. The fun side! You spent all your life studying, reading, never enjoying a single second of it!”
“I’ve had plenty of fun.”
“No you haven’t! You’ve never forgotten the existence of a following day in a drunken blackout, you’ve never downed a random psycho-active potion just for the fuck of it, fuck, you’ve never even been to a party, much less experienced the multifaceted euphoria of a properly enjoyed one! Let me show you what this city can be like, let’s make our last night on earth a night worth writing songs about. A potion-fuelled, drug filled night of ultimate debauchery!”
“Ah, I don’t know Bets. I’ve never met anyone who parties as... intensely as you do. It’d be like participating in an Olympic event before you’d even touched the sport.”
“Karl, this is no time to be cautious. It’s the end of the world, baby! There is literally nothing left to lose!” Betty gets up again and places her hands on her hips. She looks Karl in the eyes, and for a split second she spots that sparkle again. Encouraged, she holds out her hand towards him. “Come on. We earned this.” Karl hesitates for a moment.
“Alright,” he finally says with a hint of a smile before grabbing her hand. “Fine, I’m in. Let’s do this.”
Betty laughs, straps her ukulele behind her back and drags Karl towards the roofs exit stairway as he flicks his burned-out cigarette butt at the cyan armoured knight below them.