#might return

The world is ending, completely and totally, no life on Earth will survive. After the news broke nearly a month ago not much changed at first. As with any natural disaster, people crowded into their grocery stores and bought up more non-essentials than anything like water or food. Not that it mattered much, the world is ending, no amount of stored food or water would change that. You may as well buy out your favourite chocolate bar, when would you be able to indulge again? Sure, during these store raids a few knees got scraped, but people organized themselves shortly and there was some order. Why kill yourself fighting when the world is ending? It was funny, the doomsday preachers that usually led their sermons to no one now had people listening. The world is ending, how could this happen? After a few weeks, businesses began to close. Ships returned from sea with their last loads of cargo. People organized to transport these goods inland. Foreign nationals organized to secure passage home to their family. People worked, not for money but to secure their own interests, their family and friends. Besides this, people did not do much. They sat inside, they sat in parks, they cried. A few partied, though most agreed it was in bad taste. The world is ending. In the midst of it all, my friend was murdered. It was in the hallway of the twelfth floor of her apartment complex. Her body fell three doors from the elevator lobby, eight doors from her apartment. The murderer had stuck her between the ribs three times and once between the shoulder blades where they left the weapon, a Zwilling eight inch chef’s knife. Her forehead was bloodied from falling onto the doorhandle of apartment 1220. The apartment's occupant did not bother to open the door in the fourteen hours she laid there, didn't care to, neither did the rest of the floor's inhabitants. The world is ending. It had been three months since I had last seen her. The last time I saw her alive I had bumped into her at a bar two blocks down from the university that we had both attended. I had received a failing grade the semester before and was looking to make a show of my misery - to sit at the bar mean-mugging my peers as they celebrated their coming convocation. She too was there to celebrate, both the fact she was graduating and the fact that she had secured an internship overseas for the fall. The internship would never come, the world is going to end. We had shared a few classes together, though, I knew her best as a the one who'd buy you a drink as a greeting. When the bartender handed me a beer I didn't order, I knew she was on her way over. I took the drink and began to scan the bar for her, this was the game she played, I was in no mood. She wore a frown like nothing else after she realized I gave up looking for her. I didn't say much, this was also one of her games. She told me to quit scowling and to be grateful for the drink so I returned a performative smile. I danced around her questions, and before long she turned to discussing her own plans. It was all so bitter to me. Finally, she asked why I stopped coming around to her place with everyone else. I boiled over. I told her that I was a failure that was tired of hanging out with losers. I told her that she's successful now, but what does it matter, she may have an internship lined up for the fall but what if the world ends before then? What would it matter then? Well, the world is ending. I don't know what happened to the rest of the people we hung around with, they had graduated and left town, but she was to stay until her relocation overseas. Her apartment had been our muster point. It was the in the goldilocks zone between where we had all lived respectively, as well as the bars, parks, and cafes we frequented.