The ground was shaking, cracking as thunder roared beneath it.
It was the final night, and we all knew it.
"The hour of the creeping death is arriving" The priest beside me whispered.
I checked my watch, he was right, 2:58 AM.
The hour of the creeping death was at our doorsteps, and we were all doomed.
My girlfriend, Denise, held my hand all along.
When the priest informed us of the time, she started shivering.
"The portals of death are opened" She said calmly, as a tear streamed down her beautiful face.
I smiled at her, trying to make her realize that there was nothing to fear.
In a couple of minutes, it would all be over.
"One minute left" The priest said, smiling.
Josh, my best friend, reached me his hand.
I shook it, holding Denise with my other.
"It's been nice knowing you all" Josh said, kissing Denise on the cheek before shaking the priests hand and hugging Marian, another one of our friends.
"I love you all" Marian said, as she took turns in kissing us all gently on the lips.
"We love you too" I said, expressing what we all felt.
"My only regret is that I didn't meet you four earlier" The young priest said, smiling at us all.
We all looked up at the sky, as we hard a roaring explosion above.
The skies turned red, and there was not a single cloud to be seen, nor any trace of an explosion.
"It's 3 AM" Josh said, swallowing a lump of anticipation and fear.
"Hell" The priest said, as his glasses cracked and he took them off.
He closed his eyes, and turned his head downwards.
Suddenly, everything became quiet.
But after a second or two, the priest broke the silence.
He lifted his head, and opened his eyes.
His eyes were black as the night, and they started bleeding.
Blood emerged like tears, before suddenly starting to gush out like from a morbid fountain.
The priest started screaming.
"Oh my God, stop it, please" Denise shouted, clinging to me and closing her eyes.
"The creeping death got him" Josh said, not believing his own eyes.
Marian mimicked Denise, and clung to Josh, not wanting to see what was happening.
Following his final deathcries, the priest puked blood before he fell to the ground.
Some of his intestines had followed the blood in the final puke, making the sight very disturbing.
Before anyone could really realize it, a bony and half-rotted arm had emerged from the ground beneath the priest. The arm impaled the priest from beneath, and dragged his body trough the tiny hole it had emerged from. The sound of bones crushing and flesh being ripped apart filled the air for a brief minute.
In seconds, blood and flesh was the only thing left by the hole, alongside pieces of the priests black robe.
After a short moment, blood started gushing out from the hole.
"Let us go away from the hole" Josh said, trying not to puke.
I nodded in agreement.
Marian and Denise had not seen what happened to the priest, but didn't want to either, still clenching their eyes shut.
As we ran from the site of the priests death, we were met by the exactly same landscape.
Every tree and building was gone, leaving a hard volcano-like surface left, always cracking and glowing red.
We stopped after a while, deciding that it didn't matter at all where we would go, we would still meet our destiny soon enough.
And as we stopped, we came aware of hoofbeats sounding directly behind us.
We all turned around, Marian and Denise opening their eyes again, thinking that someone might come with horses for us.
We were met by a shocking sight.
Four riders came towards us, all of them seeming to be undead.
They looked like the hand that grabbed the priest, bony and halfway rotted.
One of them, the seemingly "leader" rode a pale horse, pale because it didn't seem to have any color, nor was it white.
The pale horse seemed sickly and fragile, yet it was the fastest of the four.
The other three were riding a red, a black and a white horse.
"The four horsemen of the apocalypse" I said silently, as they approached us fast.
The riders suddenly stopped, just a few feet away from us.
They brought a smell of brimstone and fire.
Marian cried, as she turned away from them and started running.
Three of the horsemen stood their ground, but the red one reacted.
The red one was the only one holding a sword, and he started riding after Marian.
He had no problems with catching up with her, and his sword quickly cut through the air, severing Marians head from her body.
The body kept running for a second, before it slowly collapsed.
After he had killed her, the rider with the red horse returned to the others side, facing me, Josh and Denise.
Josh was now crying like a child.
"You killed her!" He shouted towards the rider, starting to walk towards them.
I didn't make any effort to stop him, because I knew it would be futile.
The rider of the White horse stepped off his horse, and walked towards Josh, as if to stop him.
Although the rider was disturbing to watch, with his rotted flesh and bony skeleton-like appearance, he was also somewhat grand.
He was wearing a long red cape, and a shining golden crown at the top of his head.
A bow hung on his back, and he was holding a bloodsoaked arrow in his right hand.
"What are you going to do, are you going to take us all to hell, huh?" Josh asked through his sorrow, now turning into a violent rage.
"Come and see" The rider answered in a deep voice, finishing his words with a laugh that made his jaw squeak.
Josh was about to punch the rider, as he suddenly stopped all actions.
He looked down at his own abdomen, not noticing that the rider had stabbed him with his arrow.
Josh fell to his knees, before the rider finished him off by dragging out the arrow and stabbing him again.
The unearthly laugh that had followed the riders only words yet again filled the air.
"Let me be next" Denise said to me, as she started walking against the riders.
I didn't want her to, God knows I didn't ever want to see her die.. But it was her last wish to go before me.
I didn't try to stop her, but I gently kissed her soft lips before she walked away.
As a final goodbye, I whispered that I loved her.
Approaching her was the rider of the black horse.
He was the least disturbing of them all, meaning he was the least rotted and bony in appearance.
Actually, he looked quite muscular, though representing an undead being nonetheless.
"Take my hand" He said to Denise, smiling at her.
She gently reached out her hand, and he took it.
At the very moment of the touch, she turned pale and almost white, before falling lifeless to the ground.
"Only you left" The last one, the rider of the pale horse, said and pointed at me.
He was holding a scythe in his right hand, and I realized that it would soon cause my life to end.
The rider solemnly climbed off his horse, and walked towards me.
I stood my ground, not saying or doing anything.
"I, the adversary, the dark one... I shall grant you passage to the world above, for you are the last of the human race" Said the rider to me.
"The other four, where did they go?" I asked him, hoping he understood my question.
"Since they were killed in this hour, and by us" He said, "They went down".
I pushed my last thoughts about a beautiful white and cloudy heaven away from my mind.
"Then I want to follow them" I said, looking into the dark eyes of the rider.
"Very well" He said, smiling a sad smile to me.
Then he raised his scythe, and swung it towards me.
"Thanks" I said, closing my eyes as I felt the cold metal entering my body.
A contest entry
- Once upon a time...isn't how this contest begins. by lovely nightmare.
400 points, ended August 13, 2007, 18 entries
• next story in this contest, remove from contest - It’s the end of the world as we know it, by Oddities.
225 points, ended August 21, 2007, 9 entries
• next story in this contest, remove from contest - And They All Lived Happily Ever After? Yeah, Right. by abba12.
175 points, ended October 31, 2007, 44 entries
• next story in this contest, remove from contest - The end is coming, we're all going to die! Wait how are we going to die again? by Forgotten Anomaly.
900 points, ended May 19, 2008, 10 entries
Honorable mention
• next story in this contest, remove from contest
Please tell me what you think
Comments
1 - 15 of 15
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I hope disturbing was what you were going for, because that is the first thing that came to my mind pretty much right off the bat. The only thing I might have changed was the rigid sounding dialogue, but then I might talk that way if I was staring down the apocalypse. Your visualizations were stomach-curdling, and the story as a whole did leave me with a sense of dread and unease, so I would have to say it was very effective. Good work.
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It was pretty good and terrifing. 10/10!
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I thought I'd commented on this last time I read it. Either way a wonderful story, with good charactor development for its length. The plot is a little overdone in some perspectives but overall it is quite good. A few spots where the grammer could use some work (not that I'm one to talk), but overall well writen. Thank you for entering my contest and good luck.
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Good Grief
Now that was just plain mean....
Your friend grabbing your hand you dismissed it
thats so mean
Nevertheless the images started off a bit sluggish but fixed themselves thereafter and just simply ...wow -
Extroadinary!
OMG!!!! this was so eerie, so extremely tragic and sad, but so well done. But I wish I knew why the world was ending in your story, I liked the ending so much. I was glad that it wasn't like those other stories with the cheesy happy endings! I wish the character would have chosen heaven, but I wonder why his friends were sent to hell.Maybe they were great sinners. And I also wonder why he was the only one chosen to go to heaven - maybe he has done good in his life. I wonder why the priest went to hell, maybe he was one of those bad priests. Great story!!!! NO sugar-coating that's why I love it!!!
beginning: 5, language: 5, plot: 5, ending: 5, dialog: 5, characters: 5.
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stunning
Wow. Its really good. Its just... sad, though. Anyway, it was really good and I enjoyed it. -
This has a very good plot, although i'm a little confused on WHY the world was ending. The gates to hell were opened and let out the 4 riders, who brought the end to mankind? I liked the ending, although it wasn't happy, it wasn't exactly sad either. Good write, and good luck!
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...I told myself that if and when the world ends.. I won't be there to see it, hahahaha!
The four horsemen, Death, Famine, War... what is the fourth one? *isn't even sure if I got ALL of them right*
I would rather.. have died like Denise.. but she went to hell? x.x omg.. I don't want to go to hell...
and.. this is realy just sad and freakish and... wow, the last human alive - the notion never did pique my interest, especially after reading this, I wouldn't want to be the last one.. I hate zombies/undead/skeletons... and.. well.. omg... just... I'm glad I didn't read this at night ^_^;
Applauding for.. nightmarish stuff.. x.x
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woot ^^
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Not really what I want. Sorry.
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I do not want to be there when that happens...
That piece of writing was rather...apocalyptic. Im going to get the bad stuff out of the way first. There isn't much of it, but I hope it helps you.
Firstly, I'm not too sure why you started a new paragraph for ever sentence. One could only assume that it was some sort of poetic addition. If thats true then thats fine. As long as you know what a paragraph is normally for . My other little niggle was that the character you were narrating through seemed, at the beginning, quite removed from the whole scene. This was probably down to the lack of senses used in your writing and how he is feeling about what is happening around him. And to further this point, I don't think anyone in that situation would be able to say "Let us go away from the hole" with a straight face. I would probably go "Sh*t get the hell away from that hell hole!" or something.
The good news is that theres alot of it. Your whole idea of an apocalypse happening in front of the eyes of these four ordinary teenagers is very inspiring. The scenes are really quite gruesome, which adds to the dread of the apocalypse. Then theres the fact that there is simply no escape. That was the end, they couldn't get away from a dreadful finish to their lives and they knew it. That thought was quite powerful and it made the ending that much better. And I love the fact that the last person decided to follow his friends instead of the Utopia he was offered.
Good stuff, but it could have done with a little more substance!beginning: 2, language: 3, plot: 3, ending: 4, dialog: 1, characters: 2.
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wow. amazing story. kickass imagery. "The body kept running for a second, before it slowly collapsed." niiiiiiiiiice (in a horribly morbid way of course)
main character's an idiot.....though i find it hard to believe God would ever let someone with that much heart rot in hell. so he prolly picked the right choice either way O.o...maybe.
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Woah.
That was a great storie, although indeed some spelling errors it kept you wanting more at the end! -
Huh, well I guess that was ths stupidest damn thing to do. But well done.
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Wow...this is awesome. I did find a couple of spelling mistakes, like 'scyte' should be 'schythe'. Love it, Mads, like always .
LJ
beginning: 5, language: 5, plot: 5, ending: 5, dialog: 5, characters: 5.
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