A Quiet Eternity, A Sarcastic Smile

The dust settled. Literally. And figuratively, I suppose. After what felt like an eternity of dodging clawed hands and celestial smacks, things… calmed down. The sky, which had been a delightful shade of bruised plum for what felt like centuries, slowly bled back into a more respectable cerulean. The skeletal remains of skyscrapers, once jagged teeth against that ghastly sky, seemed to shrink, then shimmer, and finally, with a faint sigh of displaced air, revert to their former, less alarming, selves. Buildings, parks, even that perpetually overflowing bin outside Mrs. Higgins' bakery – it was all back. Miraculously, gloriously, annoyingly back.

And me? Well, I was still here. Still breathing. Still, to my unending chagrin, immortal. The divine and infernal powers, having apparently tired of their cosmic game of tag, had declared the Earth ‘repaired’ and conveniently forgotten to revoke my eternal lease on life. Figures. They’d probably high-fived each other – or whatever celestial/infernal equivalent that entails – and gone back to arguing over who gets the best parking spot in the afterlife.

I found myself perched on a rather ordinary park bench, the kind that’s perpetually damp and smells faintly of pigeon. The world around me was humming with a normalcy that was, frankly, deafening. Children’s laughter, the drone of traffic, the distant siren – all the sounds I’d fought, and inadvertently caused, to protect. It was… beautiful. And utterly, soul-crushingly, boring.