Manifest of the Apocalypse ( Short Story)

Hi,

I am trying my hand at writing short stories . This is my first attempt , do leave comments and let me know what you feel .............





Being an IT professional and hence a sedentary worker, Angela could never sleep like a log. She was not an insomniac but of late her sleep used to break a bit in the wee hours of the morning and whenever that happened she made it a point to check the time on her cell phone. She would sleepily and silently rejoice if it was a long time before six a.m. i.e. the time she had to rise in the morning. After that, immediately she returned back to the world of her dreams. The kind of person she was, her dreams could never have been ordinary. All her life, she strived to be the best and more importantly, different from the rest.

Angela always felt that software engineers were workaholic donkeys. Her perpetual attempt was to segregate her so-called ‘personal’ life from her ‘professional’ life. She could hardly succeed but felt no harm in trying. 2nd March 2009 was yet another usual day at work. She went to bed at about mid night after a little pillow talk with her chatty roomy Danielle .As was the trend in her sleep pattern , that night or rather morning Angela found herself awake . Stretching from her bed she reached out to her cell phone. It was dark outside so she assumed that there was plenty of time before she would have to get out of bed .The time on the cell was a mild disappointment for her but more importantly it was a big surprise which shocked her out of her sleep.





Was she dreaming?.

Naah ! such weird dreams could never belong to her. She was highly realistic in life , detested Steven Spielberg , J K Rowling and Kafka for their outlandish works .Her world of dreams was exciting , wild and wonderful but never weird or outlandish. It was six in the morning and it was pitch dark outside. This time of the year she never expected it to be so dark at dawn, in fact , there was no dawn right now . Angie, as her friends would call her, cross checked the time on the wall clock. SIX ! . For a moment she thought of proceeding for her ablutions, get ready in her tights and start with her early morning power yoga routine. The suryanamaskars , yoga stretches , breathing and meditation improved her quality of life or so she believed. However, she was bothered by the pitch dark environment outside. Her mind could not really comprehend why the sun would snooze in excess. Her Corporate mind wished that the sun had an email where she could mail and at least get an out-of-office reply with an appropriate reason.

Suddenly, she realized that it was not her personal sun that she should be bothering about all this .Was everyone in the neighborhood asleep? She felt like waking up Danielle but feared making a fool of herself in case the sun rose.

Brilliant idea! She decided to switch on the TV and check the news. Of late she had stopped watching the news because it appeared to her more of a circus to increase TRPs by making news more appetizing which meant making Himesh and Rakhi Sawant the protagonists or clowns or outcasts , call it whatever you want . On NDTV there was ‘live’ displayed next to the channel logo. Angie was shocked to see famous news correspondent Rajdeep Faldesai fainting on national television. What on earth was happening? She shifted her eyes to the live news ticker that moved down the screen on that channel. It reported ‘Nuclear dust cloud covers sub-continent, causes unknown’. Angela could not believe her eyes, the sun being blocked by a cloud of nuclear dust? Nuclear dust was harmful but with the sun being screened away there was no chance of survival for any human being in this part of the planet. This would probably be the worst nuclear disaster after Hiroshima and Nagasaki . Nobody would survive. Manifest of the apocalypse. Can even God save us?

Angie suddenly woke up with a start, gasping for breath. For the first time , the sms tone on her cell sounded so loud. It was yet another sweet GOOD MORNING sms from her boyfriend Fred. She was thankful and at the same time relieved. Back to reality not a harsh one this time .. pleasant , indeed very pleasant!