The world ended not with a bang, but with a game show.
It was a brisk, clear night when Earth was integrated into the system and John awoke to the sound of squealing.
His wife had thought it would be a grand idea to buy a teacup pig as a pet. She had seen one in an online video and immediately fallen in love with them.
It was a sentiment that John whole heartedly disagreed with as he was roused at approximately 3am to the sounds of scrabbling and squealing.
Groggily he rolled out of bed, forsaking the warmth of the duvet cover for the frozen wastes of their over-priced, second floor apartment.
The couple had hoped that they would be on the property ladder by this point in their lives, but as any millennial would attest, that was a luxury reserved predominately for the middle class and those with wealthy parents - in modern day society at least.
These were the kinds of ponderous thoughts John usually had when he was rudely awoken by Truffle the teacup pig during the night, along with his lamentation of the rising cost of energy bills – hence the low temperature of the room.
He plodded across the bedroom carpet and gasped slightly as his feet touched the laminate flooring in their living room / kitchen.
A small shadow with a thin, curly tail beat its cloven hooves against the front door, squealing and snorting as it desperately tried to escape. At seventeen inches tall and twenty pounds soaking wet, he had no chance of battering the door down, though this didn’t deter the plucky little guy from trying all the same.
The problem with owning a miniature farm animal when you lived in a second-floor apartment was oftentimes as simple as the call of nature. John and his wife didn’t have a garden, and Truffle couldn’t use a toilet. That was a bit of an issue.
Anne, John’s wife, had tried numerous times to teach the pig to use the toilet like a human, however, Truffle suffered from a vertical disadvantage and couldn’t quite reach up to lift the lid.
Any reasonable person might ascertain that by leaving the toilet seat up, Truffle’s chances of using it would increase tenfold. However, Anne was not a reasonable person and she had made it her life’s mission to berate John any time he forgot to put it down.
Apparently it was man’s solemn duty to close the lid and protect their female counterparts from ever having to sully their hands by touching one.
Despite her oftentimes nonsensical behaviour, John loved his wife and it was that love that drove him to curse under his breath as he scooped up the little pig and opened the door.
This was the third night in a row that Truffle’s bowls had failed him and John had been left to, quite literally, pick up the pieces.
Grabbing a dressing gown from the hook by the door and slinging it over his shoulders like a cape, John left the apartment and descended the stairs as goosebumps littered his exposed flesh.
He exited the building and unceremoniously dumped the small pig onto the grass outside of their apartment building. However, this night Truffle didn’t obediently do his business.
The pig squealed even louder and began thumping the ground. For such a small animal, Truffle could make an embarrassing amount of sound when he wanted to, which was something the neighbours knew all too well.
“If you don’t get that damn thing to shut the hell up I’ll come down there and make it into the world’s smallest bacon sandwich!” Joe, their downstairs neighbour, shouted as he slid his window open and shoved his partially bald head through it.
“You’d know all about the world’s smallest, Mr Parkinson,” John replied monotonously as he subconsciously rolled his eyes at the bitter old man.
He knew, of course, that the man’s outrage was completely justified in this instance, but that didn’t make John like him any better.
“No respect,” Joe muttered to himself as he shook his head in the window, “damn kids with their teacup pigs and their avocado toast, and you wonder why you can’t afford a house deposit.”
“Yes, Mr Parkinson,” John replied, “it’s definitely all the avocado’s fault. I take it that’s the reason that you live in the same block as I do? Perhaps avocado addiction is becoming a bit of an epidemic?”
Joe Parkinson slammed his window shut, leaving in a huff, and John’s attention was pulled back towards the little pig who was now facing away from him and staring up at the sky.
He was deathly quiet which, as anyone with a pet pig would tell you, was quite strange. John followed the pig’s gaze, gasping once again, but this time not because of the cold flooring.
A large, floating head with no hair and a blank facial expression lit up the night sky with its green, ethereal features. The ground shook suddenly and a nearby car alarm went off as John and Truffle silently stared.
“Honey, you’ve been gone a long time,” Anne called in a hushed shout as she exited the building, “is Truffle alright?”
Neither John nor Truffle replied as they stared up into the sky. He wasn’t sure if it was fear, shock, or sheer bewilderment that kept his feet firmly rooted in place, but that initial lack of movement might have just saved his life.
The ground shook once again with a tremor that cracked the ground behind the family. John and Anne turned their heads at almost the exact same time as their apartment block began to implode and a jagged cracked formed, splitting the building in two as something large and metallic forced its way through the earth’s crust right where their apartment block was.
The walls broke apart with a thundering crack and the front door exploded outwards, splinters narrowly missing John’s face as the wood popped under the pressure of the falling building.
“What’s all that racket!” Joe Parkinson shouted in a gruff and irritated voice as he stuck his head out of the window once more.
Those were the last words he would ever say as the shuddering building collapsed and a loose roofing tile fell from above to smash the elderly man in the back of the skull with a sickening crunch.
Anne shrieked as blood splattered her dressing gown and legs. The metallic structure rose higher and higher, shattering the brick falls of the building and flinging dust and debris everywhere. It resembled an archway, but it was much taller than most and the metallic material it was made from glimmered in a way that hurt John’s eyes.
As the strange object forced its way through the Earth’s crust it took out two whole blocks of buildings, roads, and anything else that blocked its path to ascension. John, still rooted to the spot, watched on with horror as family homes, cars, roads, and people were thrown miles into the air whilst the floating green head in the sky gazed impassively at the carnage.
If John, his wife, or Truffle had been even a few feet closer to their apartment building, they would’ve been killed. The fact that they had been saved by the pig’s infuriating lack of bowl control was not lost on John and became even more pertinent as the flying rubble crashed back down to earth.
Stolen novel; please report.
Craters erupted all around as building fragments, cars, and concrete hit the ground with the force of a bombing run. A stray piece of shrapnel slid past John’s arm but, though it hurt like hell, he was too numb to react.
Bodies fell to the ground and he stared in abject horror as his neighbours quite literally exploded with the impact. Gore and blood filled the streets and further stained Anne’s white dressing gown. The whole ordeal gave an entirely new meaning to the song It’s Raining Men.
It all happened in a few horrifying moments and was followed by an immediate and crushing silence that not even car alarms or sirens dared to break. John took a deep breath, his heart pounded as he looked at the wreckage in disbelief.
He barely had time to take in the scene before the green head opened its mouth for the first time and a booming voice bellowed out across the city so loudly it caused John physical pain as he instinctively cupped his ears.
“People of Earth,” it boomed in a deep, monotonous voice, “congratulations, you have been chosen to host the 999th Inter-Planetary System games. This is a tradition which has spanned millennia and you should be honoured to take part.
“In a few moments the torii gates will open allowing ten percent of your population to volunteer as contestants. I urge you all to attempt to enter your closest gate as any who are left behind will be exterminated.
“Each gate can only admit a limited number of people and will close in exactly five Earth minutes. Do your best, contestants. The entire universe is watching. It is with great pride that I now officially announce the commencement of Battle Royale Earth!”
With the final word the floating head disappeared and the strange structure that had destroyed the local area burst into bright, violet light.
Now that John could look at it properly, it did resemble a Japanese torii gate with a glowing, almost wet-looking, portal in the middle. However, in place of the red, curved wood which should have bisected the top of the two cylinders, there was a black, rectangular piece of metal with the number five sunken into it.
The number glowed in a scarlet hue and reminded John of the numbers on an old Casio watch from the nineties.
That number must be the countdown. John thought, his mind racing.
“What do we do?” Anne asked her husband, trembling and wide eyed.
He had always been the main decision maker in their relationship. His wife was many things, but clam under pressure, she was not.
John scooped up Truffle whilst he thought for a moment. Logically he had five minutes to make his choice, but he wouldn’t need that much time. The choice was obvious. The floating head had massacred his entire apartment building just to give its gate a place to sit, there was no doubt in John’s mind that a creature that powerful could and would eradicate all life on Earth. It had said as much and he had no reason to doubt its words.
Therefore, the choice was simple.
“We go through the gate,” he said stoically, gazing up at the large, purple portal before them.
“But what if it’s lying?” Anne asked as she visibly shook in the cold night air, the blood of their neighbours soaking her skin.
“It just killed god knows how many people in a matter of seconds,” John replied grimly, “if someone points a gun at you do you question whether there’s a round in the chamber? No, you just do what they say so you don’t get shot. So, we go through the gate.”
Anne looked at him thoughtfully as tears crested the edges of her green hazel eyes. John had always thought that they sparkled so beautifully when she was sad. It was morbid, he knew, to think that his wife was especially beautiful when she was upset, but the way they glittered as the thin layer of moisture hung there, just before the tears dropped, was simply breath taking.
“J-John,” she stuttered quietly, as if struggling to sound the words out. “What if whatever is through that gate is… worse than death?”
His eyes widened as he looked at the woman he loved. His heart hurt, stung by how easily she had inferred what was essentially a suicide pact. Even if she was right, it was surely worth the risk. She had to know that deep down even if she was terrified.
“There is no hope in death darling,” he breathed, barely able to find his voice, “but through that gate, no matter what awaits us, if we’re together… if we’re alive… then-”
He didn’t get the chance to finish his sentence as a family of three sprinted past him hysterically, nearly knocking him to the ground. He recognised them, the Johnsons. They were good people; Frank had helped him fix his car when it had broken down last winter.
Without hesitation the two men and their child dived into the purple light of the torii gate and vanished. It was as if they had been teleported away - where to was anyone’s guess.
Immediately after their departure John heard an electronic clicking sound which rang out three times. He turned back to Anne to see her face begin to pale as the cresting tears began to slide down her delicate, blood splattered cheeks.
“Where did they go?” She asked slowly.
“It doesn’t matter,” John replied hastily as he grabbed his wife’s hand with his free one, his other still holding the pig firmly under one arm. “The talking head said that the gate would only let a certain number of people through so we need to hurry.”
Anne pulled against his strong grip at first but it was a token effort. She was wide eyed and terrified but John knew that if he could just get her through the gate, even if he had to drag her through it, she would be ok. At least, if nothing else, she’d be alive and they’d be together.
He turned back towards the torii gate and out of the top corner of his eyes noticed that something was different. Looking upwards he saw that the glowing number five on the crossbeam now read two.
That’s all we need, he thought as he led his reluctant wife towards the gate, we’ve wasted three whole minutes arguing when we should have already gone through.
As he approached the portal he could feel a soothing heat being cast out from its flowing, violet form. It really did resemble water, like a calm lake’s surface before a storm.
John didn’t have a free hand with which to reach out, but part of him wanted to. He wanted to touch the strange liquid like a curious child. Instead, he would have to walk through it face first with Anne in tow, marching into the unknown.
Under any other circumstance he’d have never forced her to do something she wasn’t comfortable with, but he had seen shock before and he knew that preserving life was always the best option.
Maybe he was being selfish, but he couldn’t bear the thought of losing her. So he walked purposely towards the portal.
“Stop!” A voice shouted from behind them.
John turned back to see the barrel of a gun pointed at him. It was a black pistol with a flat top which he instantly recognised as a Glock 19.
“Back away from the portal buddy,” The stranger said shakily.
He was a clean-shaven man in a police uniform and he had a wild expression in his shifty eyes. Something about the way he stood with one foot forward and a balanced centre of gravity told John that this man knew how to use his weapon. The cop uniform may have also helped to inform that conclusion.
“What seems to be the problem officer?” John asked.
This had to be a case of mistaken identity or something. Though why anyone would continue performing their duties in the face of total annihilation was beyond him. Unless…
“The problem, pal, is that there are only two places left through that portal and I’m taking one of them.” The police officer said matter-of-factly as he took a tentative step to the side of Anne, edging closer to the portal.
John didn’t take his eyes off the man though he felt his wife’s hand tremble and he could hear her breathing quicken.
The number on the gate, he thought as realisation dawned on him, it’s not a countdown, it’s the number of places available. We have to get through it no matter what!
“If you take that spot you’ll be killing us!” John roared desperately at the officer.
“And?” He replied, a slight break to his voice, “if you take those places I’ll die. I’m not the bad guy here, I’m just trying to survive, exactly the same as you are.”
“What about my wife?” John retorted, an angry growl underpinning his words. “What happened to saving the women and children first? Didn’t you take an oath to protect and serve?”
“This isn’t the fifties pal,” the officer snarled back, pointing the Glock firmly at John’s head as he continued to circle them slowly. “Modern women want equality and what’s more equal than this? I’m practically a feminist,” he snorted a harsh laugh that didn’t reach his cold eyes.
At this point John knew that if he didn’t do something before the cop finished circling them then he and Anne would die. It was a foolish act to charge at a man holding a gun, but what choice did he have? He couldn’t let it end here. He wouldn’t allow his wife to be murdered by a genocidal alien overlord.
Letting go of Anne’s hand, he moved to shoulder barge the cop out of the way so that Anne could go through. She had to live. He’d die for her if he had to and if he took a bullet, at least he’d go out on his own terms instead of at the hands of a floating head in the sky.
He took a deep breath and prepared to charge, a surge of adrenaline coursing through his veins. Then, just as he let go of Anne’s hand, he felt something shove him forcefully to the side.
He looked towards his wife with wide eyes as she gazed at him with both arms held out.
“Anne?”
He fell, Truffle tucked under his arm, towards the torii gate. His skin touched the violet surface, it felt silky and warm.
John stared at his wife in abject horror, the world slowing to a crawl, as she smiled lovingly at him. Tears crested her eyes, yet the hysteria was gone and she was no longer shaking.
“You have to live John. You can beat this, you can win!” She called after him as the portal took hold, dragging him into the abyss.
His vision vanished and the image of his wife smiling at him with tears in her eyes was burned into his retina. He heard a gunshot and then… darkness.
“ANNE!” He yelled.