Butterflies and Hurricanes

It was the end. It was finally, truly, the ultimate end. It wasn’t like one of Nostradamus’ prophecies, or the farcical 2012 prediction, or the old blokes who sat around a bonfire waiting for it to happen. No, this time, it was real.

She felt goose pimples forming all over her skin, as the storm picked up and uprooted trees and buildings. It vanquished everything in its sight, as town after town tumbled into nothingness. It was eerily dark in the middle of the afternoon. The wind was cold, the dust blew in swirls, and lightning struck mercilessly. Over and over again.  Swallowing communities whole, with its purple, electric mouth. It wasn’t just ordinary lightning. It was the most terrifying sight she had ever seen. Each bolt was as thick as a tree trunk, and it burned forests, farms, and cities into crispy wastelands of death with one hit. And it was coming towards them.

She knew in her heart and in her soul, there was no escaping this time. This time, it was absolution. She felt a smile creeping across her face. Serves them right, she thought. Maybe now they will understand what it is to be human. To be nothing more than mere puppets, bags of bones and flesh and chemicals aimlessly running about, lustful and greedy, on an organic little speck.

N ran up to her, bewildered and frantic. He shoved the ‘death toll’ device, as they used to call it, in her face. “8 million people, A! 8 million people were wiped out in the last 7 minutes.” They thought that device would be revolutionary. They thought it would help them detect disasters and “change the way they addressed them.” She wanted to laugh at their pithy attempts at overcoming the wanton vandalism of nature itself.

She knew this was going to happen. But she didn’t know it would be so sudden, and so marvelously dramatic. “Nature will find a way to get back at us,” they said. Please. Nature doesn’t give a damn about what we do to it. Our planet has survived five mass extinctions. Do you think it cares whether a bunch of fragile, mortal, puny organisms wreak havoc upon it for a few years? It can always replenish itself. It doesn’t need revenge. It needs rebooting.

She thought of all those people. The ones who walk around with their obscene, bloated egos, with their obese bank accounts, and their deluded conceit. The haters, the religious bigots, the terrorists, the pompous, the malicious and the powerful. The old, the young, the fat, the thin, the black, brown, white and all the colours in between. The hungry, the homeless and the helpless. They will finally all be free. They all stood together, as one species. At last, bare, broken and beleaguered. In this moment of grand anarchy, they were finally united.

N was hysterical now, shaking his head in disbelief. “14 million. Gone. Just gone. I can’t call home.. I can’t…”

“Shhh. It’s over, don’t worry about it now. You won’t feel a thing. It’ll only be a second.”

“Our house… our plans… everything.”

She laughed. “It doesn’t matter. Let it go. Nothing in this world matters anymore. Don’t you see? It’s beautiful.”

She looked at that relentless bolt of lightning, fast approaching them, ravaging the planet they had called their own for millions of years. She felt the heat on her face, her hair blew back as the storm came closer. It was a radiance she could have never imagined. She licked her lips.

“N, we’ve spent our entire lives fighting for World Peace. And now, we finally, finally, have it.”