Written and Performed by Anisa Khandkar
Inspired by the artwork of Jason Bagatta
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Just as the dawn broke on another sleepless night, it appeared before her. At first, Tara dismissed the shimmer as a flare from a passing car’s headlights. But the sound of the car had long receded, and yet — the point of light was still there.
Tara sat upright in her bed and looked at the window opposite the light — the place from which she assumed it had entered her room. But she was met with a dark, unchanging frame. Slowly, she turned her head from the window, to the point of light, and then back to the window again.
She closed her eyes. Pinching the bridge of her nose, she tried to quell the fear that was rising to the surface. This was it. She had finally snapped.
Get it together Tara. She repeated it several times, while taking deep, cleansing breaths that suddenly became cold, astringent. She opened her eyes and realized that she could see her breath, as if she were suddenly outside on a crisp, winter’s day.
Tara turned toward the light. And it began to — grow? The light was now a sphere that distorted the space around it. Now the size of a tennis ball, it glowed ever so slightly, warping the straight lines of the wood paneling just behind it. Slowly, Tara got out of bed and approached it. The sphere continued to grow, with cracks reminiscent of fault lines playing across its surface. It reminded her of the crust of a still-molten primordial planet, except that bright white light leaked through the faults. It radiated heat. Tara realized that the ice-cold room began to warm — uncomfortably so — as she neared the sphere.
At first, her mind saw the sphere as a mirrored surface. A broken mirror. She dared to draw near enough to it but then realized that it wasn’t her reflection that she was seeing at all. Within that sphere, a story played out with such speed that it took her quite some time to make sense of it. By the time she recognized the birth and death of stars, galaxies coalesce and burn out, her awareness had narrowed to a single world being born. As time progressed, pristine lands became fractured — not by the odd surface effect of the sphere, but by agriculture, and then industrialization. The world that was one, rapidly broken by notions of ownership tracts and property lines. Some fragments sprang into buildings, some buildings decomposed back into land. Some lands erupted in fire — only for tiny buildings to spring up and begin growing once again.
Tara walked around the sphere slowly, until she saw a crowd of small figurines all prostrating themselves in unison. The crowd’s size ebbed and flowed with the destruction and creation of the lands around them. She realized that often, as the cycle of war and prosperity went on and on, the crowd of worshipers fractured. As time marched on, some figures began to loom large, crushing those that worshiped at their feet.
Sadness broke through her confusion, as she realized that she was watching the history of mankind play before her at an unimaginable scale.
“Tara?” Her roommate, Dan, called with a simultaneous knock on the door. Tara turned towards the opening door and heard a screech and — the little world popped out of existence. In a instant, it was gone.
“Please tell me you saw that.”
“Saw wha-aaaat happened to you?”, his attention shifted as he took in the whole of her. Tara looked down at herself and saw that her pajamas were drenched, made transparent with sweat.
“You didn’t see that ball of light in front of me?”
“What? No. Are you sleep walking? Why are you so wet?”
“No. I’m not sle —.” She exhaled sharply. “If that was a dream it was the realest dream I’ve ever had.” Tara spoke mutedly — and more so to herself than Dan. “I’m sorry. Uhh — give me a few minutes to get ready for work?” She looked up and saw the concern washing over him. “I’m okay, I promise. It was. It was just a bad dream.”
Dan and Tara both worked at the local pharmacy back in town. It was a three-mile walk along a mostly-quiet country road. Daylight was just breaking as they set out. The sun warmed the fog all around them, obscuring the lonely road ahead as the light bounced off the vapor. The sidewalk bustled in the way that any city does at midday. Even worn-down ones. Tara spun around slowly, taking in the aged buildings, the children running, the adults — frantically packing? And to her relief, Dan was still there.
Her voice trembled. “Do you see this, Dan?”
“See what?”
“Th—this,” she waved her arms frantically, maniacally — at everything. “We were just walking on River Road and now we are in a city,” She paused and continued incredulously,”… “that.we’ve.never.seen.before.”
He stared at her blankly and her blood ran cold. Tara reached out and touched the brick facade of the building next to them, and it was real. “You can see this building?”
“Tara you are scaring me.” “Please, just answer—” “Yes, of course I can see the building.” “And you saw it spring out of nothingness, right?” “What?!”
Suddenly, a warship flew above them both. And Tara knew that it was a machine of war, though she’d never seen anything like it before. It was shaped roughly like a blimp, though it had silhouettes of what were unmistakable canons mounted all about it.
As they both stared into the sky, the world appeared to crack open, as if all of reality were but a rigid shell that had finally met its end. Dan squeezed her hand, and she knew he could see it too, that he could also see the universe fracturing. Everything was breaking into tiny pieces. Everything was becoming undone. In the distance, Tara could see a wave ripping down the street toward them, leaving reality broken in its wake. The river, the tall buildings, then the road itself shattered in succession — and it was coming directly for them.
She saw her body break into thousand pieces.
When she came to, Tara saw the world, empty. And she knew that she was no longer a part of it. She saw the very last person on Earth — a woman — looking up into the sky. And there — she saw God. She heard the woman screaming, her voice calloused. Tara could tell that it was this woman alone holding reality together.
“God, is that You? God! Can you hear me?”
But God didn’t respond. Instead he seemed to exhale a deep breath, displeased with his last worshiper. He lowered his head and began to turn away.
“God! Please! Don’t look away, God. Please, I’m still here!” The woman screamed through tears, pleading with all her might.
Cold. It was a coldness that could be felt, even without a body.
And the world popped out of existence.