Cathy Ulrich
i.
We all go to the Grand Canyon at once. Everybody does. We go in cars, in buses, on the backs of our boyfriend’s sputtering motorcycles.
Someone has champagne, someone else has wine.
Kampai! we toast, and wait for the end.
ii.
A small man presses a large button.
iii.
A small man insults another small man. The second small man insults the first. Cities get involved, then countries. Everyone chooses sides. Someone presses a button.
iv.
Meteors fall from the sky. We all step out on our porches to watch.
Grandpa puffs on one of his darn (Grandma used to call them, before she died) cigars.
We had a good run while it lasted, he says, eyes skyward.
v.
Meteors fall from the sky. Someone has invented a laser grid to shoot them down. It isn’t as effective as we had hoped.
vi.
A small man shoots some people with a big gun. More and more small men do this until all that is left is two small men and two big guns.
vii.
Someone opens a portal to a wormhole. We stretch and churn into the vacuum of space.
viii.
Aliens. They’re angry about something.
ix.
Aliens. They have come to save us, they say, except they actually mean the sea turtles, whose old man faces they adore. The vaporize the rest of us with their fancy alien weapons.
x.
The ice caps melt. We all drown. Our corpses poison the water. The last thing left is one sad-eyed sea turtle.
xi.
The wrath of god takes us as we deserve. Our religious aunties clutch their bibles to their chests.
At last, they say, and their faces are aglow with death and faith.
xii.
There is one bird feather in the grass. The wind ripples through it in the quiet now.
Elsewhere, there are only bones.
