apocalypse for alyss

“I always said that the apocalypse wouldn’t come via God’s great flood or Hell’s fire. It wouldn’t come from the Four Horsemen…death, sickness, wrath…and that other thing no one cares about, personified. People will not die randomly, and illness won’t strike the healthy and young. Wars won’t start over the latest pop celebrities that don’t include Justin Bieber or someone else.

No. The end of our world will not come through divine intervention, some freak disaster, or screaming pre-teens over their favorite auto-tuned singer.

At least, my world won’t end like that. My world will end at the hands of man. A boy.

His name? Jonah Sparks.”

I paused for a second, carefully dropping my arms to my sides, while giving Madame Barbara a ghost of a smile. Then I opened my mouth, throwing down the script I was reading.

“Oh my God, if I have to say another of these stupid lines, I’m going to scream. Cut the dramatic music, I SAID CUT THE DRAMATIC MUSIC. THIS SCRIPT IS CRAP.” I jumped off the stage and stormed past Madame Barbara, the Drama Director, headed towards my stuff. Madame Barbara yelled and ran after me, grabbing my shoulder. I stopped in my fit of irritation, and glowered at the platinum-blonde thirty-something year old.

“Alyss, please, listen dear! You’re the lead in this play! You must stay!”

“This play is crap, Madame Barbara. The lines are bland and monotone.” I snapped, turning back to my destination.

Gasps echoed across the room, and Madame Barbara’s knees buckled as her palm flew to her forehead. “Le gasp, oh non, ca va tres mal, ca va tres mal!”

I cocked my head to the side and rolled my eyes, as my black hair fell back. “The people listening to you don’t know anything about the French language, stop showing off. It doesn't change my opinion on Angela's crappy writing.” I scoffed, crossing my arms.

“HOW DARE YOU DISGRACE ANGELA’S WRITING?!” Madame Barbara bellowed as I crouched down and grabbed my satchel, filled to the brim with lined notebooks and sharpened pencils. I put the strap on my shoulder, adjusted the ratio of the bag’s weight to my weight and got up from my crouch.

“I don’t care if Angela graduated out of this stupid school and won like, twenty million Academy Awards for directing the stupidest movie on the planet. Her scripts are awful.” I huffed, as I calmly left a disheveled Madame Barbara in my wake.

Well, I would’ve if Juliette hadn’t intercepted me at the door. Her jealous green eyes flickered with distaste as my lips twitched into a sarcastic grin.

“Hi there, Juliette.”

“Alyss. Why are you leaving us?” She hissed, while crossing her arms over her chest. I shrugged and turned the doorknob that would lead me to freedom.

“Because this is stupid.”

“You’re the lead character in this ‘stupid’ play. You are Angie Starr, who is most definitely not an avatar from a different story that the author, Angela, wrote.”

I arched an eyebrow at Juliette’s suspiciously specific denial. “Whatever. I’m out. Tell Madame I’ll be back later.”

Juliette simply shook her head as I exited the room.

I ran down the halls of the high school I attended, moccasin-clad feet making contact with the floor every other second. My messenger bag was heavy and I was running. This wasn’t the best combination in the world, but a girl had to do what a girl had to do.

Finally, I arrived at my locker door. With a triumphant grin, I began attempting to remember my combination.

In retrospect, I believe that this is the moment I should’ve said ‘oh, forget you locker’ and gone back to my Drama Class to apologize to Madame Barbara.

Keyword here is ‘should have’. It’s obvious I didn’t do any of those things because as I was opening my locker and switching out books for my next class, someone arrived to the locker next to mine.

I slammed the locker door shut and turned my head around, ready to skip off to English class, because I wasn’t coming back to drama, happy and light as a bird…

Oh no.

It was…him. Oh no, oh no.

The boy...the boy.

His name, you ask?

His name is Caleb.

Apocalypse for Alyss, an original piece-

So, okay. Here’s the deal with Caleb and…me. He’s about perfect in every way imaginable. He has great grades, he’s a photography geek, tends to have intelligent conversations with everyone- but me, but we’ll get to that in a second-, and he’s like, the boy everyone wants. Every girl I know is completely head over heels for Caleb. I don’t blame them, because I’m one of them.

You see…we technically met last year, during our sophomore year. I was walking up the stairs that led to the school auditorium, dressed in a chic pinafore blue dress and black flats with thigh-high striped socks, on my way to our school’s performance of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ where I got the role of…you guess it, Alice. I was in costume, and everything, while Caleb was walking down stairs with his trusty camera. I guess that was the day he was stuck taking pictures.

We crashed into each other. The camera went into the air; I fell down a couple steps, as he slid down on his stomach-creasing his dark blue blazer-while trying to catch the falling camera.

I had the lovely luck of feeling a camera fall on my lap. I picked it up and Caleb gave me this alarmed look and I carefully handed the black camera to him. He was relieved, I could tell, but didn’t say a word.

We sat in the silence for a couple of minutes.

“…um, I’m Alyss.”

He fought the urge to smile, I could tell. His lips were twitching. “Alice, of Wonderland?”

I then realized that he thought my name was ‘Alice’, not ‘Alyss’, as in short for ‘Alysson’.

“Oh, no, I’m Alysson. But everyone calls me Alyss.” I laughed and stuck my hand out, in offering. He shook it.

“I’m Caleb.”

I almost said ‘I know’, but thankfully, kept my mouth shut.

“Cool.”

Silence.

“Um, okay, yeah, I gotta run. My lines start like…right now, crap…” I trailed on, as I got up, dusting off my pretty blue dress. Caleb took the cue and also stood up. He nodded and trotted off. I bit my lower lip, and kind of wished he didn’t leave.

So, I ran off to the auditorium and said those lines with every ounce of passion I could muster.

…okay, those were the days I actually liked Drama class. Nowadays, drama is a crappy hour filled with Juliette glaring daggers at me.Juliet

Oh yeah, now that we have some background information established, we can go back to my near-fainting spell at the sight of Caleb.

“Ohmigod, hi Caleb~!” I greeted cheerfully, black manicured nails tapping against my hip.

“Hey, Alyss. What’s up?” At that moment, his phone beeped. He gave me an apologetic glance before replying to whomever was text messaging him.

My eyes concentrated on the phone and I then realized that we owned the same phone. The only difference was the color. His was a blue phone, and mine was red.

“Oh my gosh, we have the same phone! But, haha, I hate my phone! It’s so screwy, I mean, it freezes up all the time!! Hahaha!” I tittered and giggled, as Caleb began to walk away slowly. I mentally slapped myself. Caleb thought I was some kind of giggling, yippee skippee freak! Oh no, oh no!

“Haha…that’s cool…well, I gotta go…” Caleb muttered before disappearing out of my sight.

As soon as he left, I groaned, burying my face in my hands. Good going, Alyss! You’re the weirdest person he knows!

It took me a while to pull myself back together, while chanting ‘you are awesome, Alyss’ about a million of times. I locked my locker and weaved through the hallway traffic, off to English class.

In English class I sat down, and Mr. Damon, our teacher, started to lecture about some stuff I honestly didn’t care about.

No wonder I was failing English.

But, then Mr. Damon said something about an assignment. I perked up.

“All right, class, you have to write a letter for today. It can be addressed to anyone you please. It just needs to be at least a page long. It is due tomorrow.” Mr. Damon then returned to his desk, leaving the buzzing class of juniors to their own devices.

I tapped my pencil against my desk, my brain already forming a letter, a letter that I honestly did not want to write.

I tried to lift my hand up and coax the pencil into writing, but the words would not flow.

Mr. Damon sensed tension and walked towards my desk.

“Something the matter, Alyss?”

“Oh, no…okay, yeah, it’s just that I can’t seem to write.”

“Hmm, why not?”

“I mean, I can write. I swear, it’s just that…it’s just really personal.”

Mr. Damon crossed his arms. “Then write. These aren’t going to be read aloud. I was looking forward to your writing; after all…your poetry is outstanding.”

“…um, thank you, I guess?”

Mr. Damon chuckled and went back to his desk, leaving me alone for the time-being. I let out a sigh and twenty minutes later, when the bell rang, my paper was still blank.

Which was expected, because as soon as I got home, I broke out the pen and paper and started writing like it was nobody’s business.

Dear Caleb;

To put things straight, I want you to know that I hate you. I hate your smile, your pretty hazel eyes, and the way you make me feel when you’re around. At least, that’s what I would say if we managed to have a full conversation, not a cheap monologue designed to kill time, instead of cherish it. After all, our last oh so ‘memorable’ conversation was about how much I hate my phone.

Pathetic? Very much so.

But…I don’t know. The reason I can’t even utter one intelligent phrase when you’re in my line of vision is the way you stand. Your eyes flicker with some kind of emotion I cannot decipher when I walk by. Why do I feel like we’ve known each other for forever and a half?

But you don’t me and I don’t know you.

Mr. Caleb, this was love at first sight.

I’m sorry; you must think I’m completely insane. But…when I met you, everything…clicked.

-Alyss

PS: I love you.

I dropped the pencil and stared at my letter in disbelief.

What the heck did I just write? I blinked a couple of times and then shook my head. This was…

The best English project ever. It was such as shame that I wasn’t going to turn it in. I got up from my desk, grabbed an envelope from my bookshelf, and stuffed the letter inside.

And just like that, I was out the door.

I was running, running and running as fast as I could. There was a destination in mind, and that was where I was going to be. It was insane, really, how a simple letter could drive this…effect.

I was going to Caleb’s house.

It sounded insane, but I was perfectly fine with that. My boots splashed in the puddles that remained from last night’s rain shower, as I finally arrived at the bus stop that would take me to his neighborhood.

The bus ride was short and finally, I was in front of his house, letter in hand.

I slowly walked up the path that led to his oak door and my knuckles rapped against the wood furnish. I tensed, as I waited for a reply.

The door opened, revealing not Caleb, but his sister, Cathleen.

“…oh, hi there, Alyss.” Cathleen said, with a confused look in her eyes. I took a deep breath before answering.

“Hi, Cathleen. Is Caleb home?”

“Um, no. Do you want me to call him, or something?”

“Oh, no it’s fine…but…um, can you give this to him, then?” I handed the letter to Cathleen who nodded, taking the envelope from my hands.

“All right. I’ll get this to him.”

The rain decided to start pouring at that very second. And I didn’t bring an umbrella.

“…ugh,” I muttered and Cathleen gave me a concerned look.

“Do you want an umbrella? I could go grab-”

“No, it’s fine. Thank you. I’ll be okay. Goodbye.” I added a smile, and waved, before turning on my heel, and running back towards the bus stop.

As soon as I arrived, I sat down on the roof covered bench, shivering as I waited for the bus.

“Stupid bus…” I muttered, as suddenly, the bus arrived. Sadly, it wasn’t the bus that would take me home.

I looked up for a second and flinched. Out of the bus, laughing and smiling, came out Juliette and…

Caleb.

“Haha, that was a great movie, right, Caleb?” Juliette cackled as Caleb laughed along.

“Yeah, it was really funny, remember that…oh.”

My mouth was slightly open and my dark eyes were staring in despair and disbelief.

Caleb caught my gaze and we stared at each other in silence, just like when we met.

“Oh…uh…”

I immediately got up from the bench and forced a smile. “Hi, Caleb, Juliette.”

Juliette hid a sneer under a smile. “Hi, Alyss.”

I blinked back the tears and nodded, as they continued on their way to Caleb’s home. Caleb looked back, once, but I never saw his apologetic gaze search for my face.

I was shaking, in pure and utter despair.

“…oh my God.” I let the phrase come out before bursting into tears, running as far as way from the bus stop as possible. I was drenched by the rain, and honestly? I didn’t care. I didn’t care if I got hypothermia, or whatever. Nothing mattered, really.

Because the lines I called ‘bland’ and ‘monotone’ came back to haunt me, like an ironic echo. The apocalypse wouldn’t come via God’s great flood or Hell’s fire. No, my apocalypse would be through man. A boy.

His name?

His name was Caleb.

--

a/n: this is by far, my worse piece of writing. ever.