View From My Kitchen – Sci-Fi Short Story by David Nadas
End of Days Series – Part Three
They said it would come, that it would start with a sunset of such unbelievable beauty it would bring tears to your eyes. They were right.
It was quiet. Eerily quiet. No bird chirps or the whine of motorboats speeding across the lake. No one in their back yards, no joyous shrieks of children chasing fireflies, no smell of fire-pits and no sound of car tires rolling down the crushed stone roads, eager to get to their weekend camps. Everyone was down in their last minute shelters with not enough supplies to outlast what was about to unfold.
My children, grandchildren, friends, and neighbors begged me to come with them into the town’s shelter. But why miss the last sunset one would ever see. Where was there to go? Nowhere. It would take ten thousand years just for the fires to burn out, and the only reason they would extinguish would be due to the absence of oxygen left on Earth.
I know it might seem selfish — that I should spend the last of days surrounded by family and friends — but I just wanted to spend it in my kitchen, overlooking the lake where I can see the memories of my grandchildren out on the dock, their silhouettes with fishing poles matching the paintings in my home. So here I stand, a glass of Chardonnay in hand and raising it to the sky, thankful I was given this sliver of time to see and experience this magnificent world and hoping my next journey will be as spectacular. Cheers.
Photo Credits:
Background – “Sunset” by theshutterbug is licensed under CC-BY 2.0. The image that was resized and cropped.
Featured Image: Photograph by Ann Swanson, used by permission.
David Nadas is a science fiction writer based out of Florida with a background in computer science and marine biology. His novel November Seed takes the almost now formulaic zombie infection theme and turns it into something new and unusual. Fun and realistic characters and a smooth flowing plot follow two N.J. Fish & Wildlife biologists that stumble upon an extraterrestrial zombie contagion. What happens next is entirely unexpected. To read more about the novel follow this link: November Seed by David Nadas.