Published in The Brasilia Review (July 2019). First prize, Amelia-Lapena Bonifacio Literary Prize (April 2017).
For all my hypothesizing of how the world would end, I completely miscalculated. I was so sure the world would end with panic: all the TV channels replaced with emergency news coverage on the gradual decimation of the planet; churches making frenzied house visits asking everyone inside to repent, the end is nigh, the kingdom come; scientists going on special broadcast interviews to remind the public to stay calm, stay put, everything is under control; and the government disappearing into a secret bunker or aboard an escape pod that will take them to safety in Mars. I imagined lots of screaming, and lots of blood and severed limbs. I imagined pandemonium.
Let me tell you what it sounded like: it sounded like bebop jazz.
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Dominic Dayta 