The world's been wanting to end, the last couple of days. No, months, she thinks, maybe months, but it's been everything the same that it's like time has frozen- she doesn't know if it's weeks or months or possibly- possibly even years.

Mostly, she goes about the same business, just a couple of changes (groceries short-term, ice cream and binge food but the mind is the same), nothing really mattering anymore and sitting outside at the park and staring at a blood-red breaking sky, always always dusk. The red shades cast all hues from vibrancy and she doesn't know sometimes if the sky used to be blue, or if it was a quirk of her imagination. Or a dream, one she had a long time ago.

Mostly, the same people who were there before are still. Still there, at least, at least not dead, suicide like the rest of the world. She doesn't read- doesn't even touch the few newspapers that still come out, depressing things that they are. In dark corners of her mind she rebels at it all, rebels at depression and existence and maybe she hasn't died, self-died, self-killed a reflexive verb of sorts, somehow maybe she's still alive, maybe somehow instead this is purgatory like her mother used to say, maybe everything is just purgatory, not real-real.

She's not dead yet. Yet is a key word, but like the big-picture people say, eventually it doesn't matter. She whittles away the time, sitting and thinking and dozing and life goes on, always like this (never was like this), everybody around- and her- in maybe a permanent shell-shock. And usually on her usual park bench, hours of staring, thinking of everything and nothing, another girl sits there, too, someone she used to- would have used to- labeled a punk and be done with it.

Punk-girl is different from her, even has tattoos, some messy and- dare she say, bloody, and she wouldn't be surprised to hear they were self-tattoos (another reflexive verb she thinks). Conservative shy idiot-that-was wouldn't have spoken to her, wouldn't have approached it, but it's end of the world and the after be damned.

She speaks to her surprise, her own voice steady but hoarse from days upon days of silence. Punk-girl on the other hand isn't surprised at all and they speak for hours without looking at each other, and so to her surprise and faint expectations when she comes to her- their bench, it happens again the next day. And again the next after that.

And she thinks abstractedly sometimes, maybe it would-could have been something deeper but there isn't time when you're waiting for the end of the world.

.

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a/n: never really written prose before. it's fun.