It's the End of the World

Last quarter in my short story writing class, we were given a strange first assignment. It is said that the shortest short story for a long time was as follows: "A woman sits alone in her house. She knows she is alone in the world, every living thing is dead. The doorbell rings." Our assignment was to turn this riddle-esque quotation into a 1000 word short story. Cute, right?

It was an intimidating assignment. I spent a lot of time worrying about whether I should really embrace the apocalyptic nature of this or try and do something creative. I couldn't find anything creative though that didn't scream cliche. So I did the most uncreative thing imaginable. I took myself and imagined what exactly I would do and how I would react if I was the only living thing in the world. I sat down and the first thing I wrote was "I had little else to do besides laugh." Because honestly, if I were to find myself in such a hopeless and meandering situation as an all-out apocalypse, I'd find in amusing and end up laughing out of sheer confusion and loss.

Earlier tonight I poured myself some chocolate milk, I pulled my hair back, and I put my glasses on to sit in front of my computer to find a job. A real job. Something that can make my life worthwhile, something that can give me a real salary. I spent about two-three hours scouring job websites, looking at different newspaper websites to see if they were hiring. I researched publishing houses, peace corp, teaching English abroad. I even looked at an ad to be a blogger writing about gay porn. As the the pornography example serves to illustrate, I found nothing that suited me, that seemed appropriate for what I have to offer.

I took the clip out of my hair, finished my last sip of milk, and dragged my feet in defeat as I walked the seven paces to my bed. I collapsed upon it and grabbed the book off my bedside table, "Roughing It" by Mark Twain. I read a few pages about his experiences being a tenderfoot in the wild west. I thought about my job search, about my desire to do something more with my life, and I started to laugh. I laughed so hard I had to put the book down. I laughed and looked at my ceiling, speaking to no one in particular saying "What the fuck am I going to do?"

Because at this moment, I have little else to do besides laugh.