Painting of the World

Man woke up unenthusiastically. He saw the sky out of the bedroom window, peeling like an oil painting over a fire or wallpaper decrepit and old falling off the rotting walls of a lone house. He knew what today was. Today was the end of the world. There was no designated year or day or hour or god or decision, the world had just grown tired. The world was currently losing it's composure and all illusion that we may all be dead by the time the end comes. Could you imagine the people who might be alive when the world ended? But this was a peaceful end.


Man got dressed in his best suit for the end and walked outside with a backpack on one shoulder. Already the ground had thinned to a sheet that nobody seemed to notice, the trees had peeled like a banana, and buildings looked like the barrel of a jammed gun, after it'd been fired. Man looked up as a large layer of sky, holding a chunk of a floating white marshmallow cloud peeled over itself into a curled roll, revealing the black of nothing behind it. Man was not scared though. Man approached the sky and yelled, "Hello dead sky! It is I, Man. I will be joining you soon and you may trace the skies of wherever we may go, following me. I'll see you then!"


Man walked and walked as the ground surrounding him curled and drove forward, revealing nothing. Man heard the pained cries of the trees screaming, "Mother Earth! Cruel, cruel world! Do not kill us too!"


Man laughed at the futile attempts as he stopped and dug himself a six deep hole. He told the trees, "Do not cry, trees. For you know just as well as myself that this is Earth's decision and Earth's decision it shall be. I am Man and you do not see me fretting peaceful trees."


The trees stayed quiet but occasionally one would cry in agony and the peeling world's air was filled with whimpers of lost hope and deep sadness. Man looked up at nothing, and decided, it was time to lay himself. Man dropped into the hole and waited. Soon the hole started to tremble and the dirt walls about him curled. Man felt his own body peel and he knew exactly how the thin yellow paint in the home of his own had felt when a piece flaked and an edge developed. The edge weighed down the rest of the paint underneath and it would fold neatly into a strip that swirled ever so delicately.


First Man's skin went, and then the muscle, followed by bones and nerves, then his organs. All that was left for last was Man's mind. And the entire time of his short, and seemingly painless death, Man laughed. Man laughed and laughed and laughed. Man laughed so hard, he would've cried, but his eyes had peeled and the tears had peeled with them. Soon Man's mind peeled and the world sunk into a deep pit of nothing. There was no whole or space or shape or mass.


It was nothing and so nothing it wasn't, because nothing, is something.