The old movies had it wrong. I couldn’t watch them, because they were so stupid. I can’t believe I came from those people, and I was almost glad that the last of the gas had gone south, the generators stopped, and movies were no longer a possibility.

In the movies, the apocalypse was like Never-Never Land. When the world goes to hell, you get to be a kid again. There aren’t any rules, there’s no one to tell you to stop that damned idiot thing that you’re doing, or ask you why you’re breaking that thing (or why you’re hurting that girl). You never have to grow up and do anything with yourself, because nothing that you do really matters anymore. You forget everything that came before, and you don’t really worry about what comes after. My ancestors had dreams of annihilation because they thought that it would be freedom.

What losers.

I can tell you a story about the apocalypse.

I dreamed of food, and a sky that isn’t grey.

This is the apocalypse: you wake up. That’s usually a bad. You check the doors and windows without moving (if you can see them), you listen for a couple of minutes for anything that sounds off–you get used to listening for that lack of noise that mean something fucked up is around. You’re quiet too. This isn’t difficult, because you’re always quiet, almost always. As long as you can be, anyway.

Then, when it seems to be okay, you crawl out of whatever hole you’ve found for yourself, mouth filled with that bile-copper taste of fear, shaking because this is the worst part of the day, when you don’t know what exactly is going to be out there and you don’t really want to get up. You think that maybe one day you’ll just hide and never come out, but now you’re hungry and you have to pee and these two conditions seem to be worth paying attention to.

This morning, you can see the sun when you finally squirm out of that damned soggy culvert pipe, but the infinite blue sky looks colorless to you. You check around again, listening. This morning, nothing. You remember other monochrome mornings that weren’t this peaceful. You don’t smile, but so far it’s a good day.

I dreamed of nothing, and when that happened, I was happy.

This is the apocalypse: you wander. There isn’t a good place to go, and the people who used to say that there was were liars, and now they are dead liars. To the north, the winter is freezing and there is no food. To the south, the summers are awful and the underbrush gets so thick that you can’t see through it and you spend all day straining your eyes for movement and all night listening to things that rustle and shake the bushes near you. On the coast, there are cities, and thinking about cities makes you want to puke like the taste of salt in the air and the taste of rot on the ground.

You’re looking for food, in a general sort of way. You ate yesterday, and you nibble on a few mouthfuls of dead rabbit now, so it’s not a big deal. Rabbits are good. They’re quiet too, and good at hiding. They have a home that’s a hole. You wish that you were a rabbit. You eat some grass to illustrate the point to yourself. It doesn’t taste very good.

I dreamed of home.

This is the apocalypse: you remember. Home was a place where lights turned on when you flicked a switch, and where you got food all the time without having to kill it or steal it. Then home was the back of Mom and Dad’s car, watching fires flicker behind a thick pane of glass that didn’t shatter even when it got hit with a clenched fist that was in front of crazy eyes, that you watched go by like you watched everything else, numb and shaking and stupid. Then a vacant lot with a shack, and then no place in particular.

You don’t really remember what happened to Mom and Dad after you started to wander under the baking sun. You think that maybe it will bake all of your memories away one day, and then you will be nothing but wandering hunger. You think this is what has happened to all those other people, and you wonder if they were good and so got to forget or if you are good and so get to remember.

You remember other people, who came and went. Sometimes they shoot at you, sometimes they give you food, sometimes they hurt you. Whatever happens, you take what is given to you and move on. It used to be that these people were noisy and stupid, and you were slipping away at the sound of the first screams. Now, the people you see are smarter, and mostly they just look at you and pass you by, because you aren’t much good to anyone and neither are they and you mean nothing to one another. This is freedom. You are completely free.

You don’t dream about crying, or the sound of running feet. You think that this is because today, right now, you crouch in the grass and wish you had a better place to hide since you’ve seen something on the horizon. It’s high grass, and you’re still pretty small. You are still and quiet, but behind you there’s a gust of wind, and it makes you stiffen because it blows your scent towards the shambling thing. You hear a shriek from what seems to be far away, and you are frozen in the grass, hoping that it doesn’t see you. But it does. It gets bigger and bigger in your vision. You see it like a series of still images as you blink. When you close your eyes for a moment longer than usual, it seems that instead of running, it’s springing forward at you. You don’t really notice man or woman anymore, you don’t think jeans or plaid, or blood, all you see are hands, teeth, and eyes.

You have a spear, but you’re the one that makes a sound like your last rabbit when you bring it up and shove it through an eye in a motion that you’ve had a lot of practice at. Teeth clench and unclench, heels drum on the ground, and then there is nothing. You wriggle the spear around in the hole that you just made to make sure. Then you pull it out and you run away as fast as you can, hoping that there won’t be another one. The breath in your lungs comes hard, at it feels like dying to go on, mile after mile.

I dreamed of dying.

This is the apocalypse: it wasn’t always, but it always will be. Someone said to you that people used to get old and sick and die and never get up again. You didn’t believe them, and you still don’t, really. Now, you are as old as you have ever been, and you are sick, mostly from that bite on your leg from the afternoon when you climbed a tree and thought that you were safe. You were wrong. Now you are climbing up, up, up a high tree, wrapped in the warmth of a fever and listening to hands clawing at bark below you. The spear is down there, too, somewhere, but you don’t really need it anymore in this old, tall tree, stubborn hope keeping you company.

When you watched Peter Pan, you hate that those stupid English kids started to forget everything once they learned how to fly. You are doing much better. When you creep out on a high branch, one that goes far away from the trunk of the tree and into open air, you remember. When you teach yourself how to fly, arms spread out in your sort-of belly flop that quickly becomes a dive, you are thinking about home.