There are days when it feels like nothing in the world matters. Days when you just can’t be bothered to get out of bed. Days when you’d rather stare at the wall without even trying to rest. Days when you just can’t think of any reason why you should continue… living.

For Jolly, it was one of those days.

As the rays of the sun filtered through the gaps between the room’s blackout curtains, wisps of dust and smog swirled in the air. And, despite being thirty-nine floors up in a high-rise condominium, already, the cacophonous sounds of the streets beyond the building’s walls reverberated into Jolly’s single-bedroom abode. Sirens and horns wailed and honked below. Shouts and steps echoed past the front door and in the hallways. But still, all that noise was drowned by the chaos that was Jolly’s thoughts:

“I’m so tired.”

“I want to die.”

“Need to pay the bills.

“I want to cry.”

“Fuck all my friends.”

“Do I even have any?”

“Fuck all my family.”

“Ew. That sounded dirty.”

“Oh wait. The alarm…”

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“Fuck…”

And so, the alarm did blast its annoying tone before our heroine had the mind to get her phone. Charging via outlet near the bed and buried under her head pillow, quiet and peace was never an option. This was Jolly’s life, the phone her almighty dictator. And it says it was time for her to get up.

But she didn’t.

Instead, she just let her phone cry on with that abominable song. Some opening from a show she used to like, but by now the melody sounded grating. A reminder of another day of work and slowly dying, instead of a motivation to live life and feel like trying.

The music ended… It would play again. Alarms looped the chosen song after all. So Jolly snapped her phone up before it could and shut it up before it would.

Then she stared at her phone as she held it before her. Thumb on the screen, eyes on the numbers. It was past eight o’clock. Time to get up. But she didn’t want to. The warmth of her bed was so sooo inviting…

Oh. But the smell of searing meat was inviting too.

Ah. The neighbors might be cooking. They always did so, early in the morning. But Jolly wondered after slowly pondering the smell.

“Weren’t they vegan?” she said in her mind as she remembered the neighbor couples’ fight about dairy a couple weeks back.

And then, she heard the screams.

Screams.

Not shouting, or bustling, or stomping, or fighting.

Not the condominium’s normal sounds of chaos.

But screams of fear. Of terror. Of agony.

And the sirens below, despite being an everyday obnoxious occurrence, were never that many.

And the dust and smog in the room… was never this thick.

Fire.

FIRE!

The building was on fire!

Jolly realized…

But she didn’t give a fuck. She didn’t want to get up.

There are days when it feels like nothing in the world matters.

Days when you just can’t be bothered to get out of bed.

Days when you’d rather stare at the wall without even trying to rest.

Days when you just can’t think of any reason why you should continue living.

This was one of those days. And to Jolly, she didn’t care if her own world was ending.

Unfortunately for the rest of mankind, their world was ending too.