The end of the world was not what we expected.

Scientists, news outlets, self-proclaimed prophets – the only thing that they all could agree on was that the end of the world would be big. Many options were put on the table: asteroids, mass-extinction events, over-population, climate change… the list went on.

So when the end of the world did arrive, it took us a while before we realised.

It started with the children. At first, it was isolated incidents – they would go into hospital for standard procedures, but remain comatose long after the anesthetic was supposed to wear off. Upon further study, the doctors found that all of the children’s vitals were stable, optimal even, save for one – their brain function.

Parents were left horrified and grief-stricken. Doctors were stumped. Test after test was performed in the hopes of finding out what was causing this “sleeping death”, but to no avail. Eventually, it was written off as a new virus that required further study, and was nicknamed the Sleeping Beauty syndrome.

But then it started happening in schools – parents would receive frantic calls from teachers unable to wake their sleeping children, and hospital tests reached the same conclusion: strong vitals with no brain function. Governments worldwide banded together to put their best scientists and doctors onto this mysterious illness, until it began affecting adults.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

The elderly went first, with no warning, so much so that it was first brushed off as old age. The adults only started taking note after a particularly nasty event that was televised during some ceremony of state, during which the driver of a state vehicle fell asleep and crashed into other occupied state vehicles. Many were killed, probably the last few to go in such a gruesome manner.

With no clear pattern on who would next be affected by this Sleeping Beauty syndrome, the world spun into chaos, as one by one, day after day, people dropped into a dead sleep, never to wake again.

Cars became coffins, houses family mausoleums.

Eventually, with no one left to run them, all power plants stopped running and the world went silent save for the sounds of nature. Or what was left of it, anyways. I can’t remember the last time I heard a dog bark, or the trilling notes of birdsong, or the deep, throaty bellows of the frogs in the pond.

I am probably the last person still awake, but even now, I can feel my eyelids drooping, ready to slip into sleep-no, death’s-oblivion. As my eyes slip shut, I can vaguely make out a bright beam approaching Earth.

The end of the world was not what we expected, but maybe it was the lesser evil.