the end of time
Everywhere I turned, I saw myself. The floors, the walls, the ceilings. Nothing made sense anymore. Even in the darkness I was able to make out the features of the mirrored surface, smooth yet textured, a blurred reflection of my life. The familiar turned unfamiliar. In the house of mirrors, I walked by, not knowing where I was to head. Not only light but sounds reflected off the walls, sounds that seemed source less. A dull thumping turned into a heartbeat; a faded ringing turned into a deafening roar. Streams of red light poured into the House of Mirrors, light that now illuminated the space. The lights seemed to flicker in sync with the roars. The glass walls shook and squeaked. I saw myself fade into a blurry outline on one of the walls. As the glass shattered the room went dark and quiet.
I could make out window blinds, a TV, a bed frame. I could see how these objects seemed familiar. I woke up to realize it was my room. Shards of shattered glass lined the floor. The window blinds blinded nothing more than a bare metal frame. Strangely, the morning light seemed warmer than ever. I walked across the room, careful to not step on any of the glass shards, towards the, now, window-frame. In the corner of my eyes, I caught the clock. It said “01:07”. It surely couldn’t be 1 am, I could clearly spot sunlight. I open the blinds to spot a dull, red sky. The sun was nowhere to be seen. The plants and the birds, stuck as they were. I glanced at Rachel, who was still lying asleep in the bed. Her phone, on the nightstand, lit up. The same deafening roars sounded. It was the EAS. The message? A catastrophic Solar Event. Disturbed from her deep slumber she woke, puzzled at the sounds. I showed her her phone. Through her dry eyes, tears flowed. We stood in silence. This was it. I sat next to her. Not a word was uttered. A glowing orange spot appeared near the horizon. It grew larger and larger. It reached a critical size when it began to change colors. The now red spot filled the view of the sky from my window. Pools of red light poured into the room. A thundering roar sounded. The land shook, as the frozen plants suddenly seemed alive. The window blinds flapping about bathed the room in a dim, flickering light. As the sounds grew louder, the vibrations, stronger, I heard the trees collapse. The time still was 01:07, it had been for a while.
I held her close, staring at the dim red sky, all through the end of time.
Reading your piece on “the end of time” pulled me straight back to a night in my twenties when I stayed up until sunrise on a rooftop, watching the city lights flicker as the world seemed to pause. I remember the sky turning a deep indigo, the stars barely visible through the glow, and a feeling that everything was both fleeting and infinite. That moment taught me that time isn’t just a ticking clock; it’s a series of breaths we take between the big, quiet stretches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PokerStars Your reflections reminded me of that fragile balance between urgency and calm, and how sometimes we need to step back and watch the world slow down just to remember we’re part of something…
Reading your piece on “the end of time” pulled me back to a night three years ago when I stayed up on a roof, watching a meteor shower streak across the sky. I remember the way the stars seemed to dissolve, each burst a reminder that moments slip away faster than we realize. I tried to capture that feeling in a sketch, but the paper could never hold the weight of that fleeting awe https://www.beyondblue.org.au/ It’s strange how a concept that feels so abstract can become intensely personal when you think about those quiet hours when time feels both stretched and compressed. I’ve since made a habit of pausing on long drives, just to listen to the hum of the…
Reading your piece on “the end of time” unexpectedly pulled me back to a night in 2015 when I camped alone on a remote beach in Maine. The tide was receding, the sky bruised with deep indigo, and the stars seemed to stretch forever, as if the universe were holding its breath. I remember lying on the sand, listening to the rhythmic crash of waves, feeling both infinitesimally small and oddly timeless https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/economy/finance/household-expenditure-survey/latest-release In that moment, the concept of an endpoint felt absurd; everything was just a pulse in a larger, endless rhythm. Your reflections on the paradox of endings reminded me how fragile our perception of time can be when we step outside the rush of daily schedules. It’s…