Here is the end of the world: a vacant Walmart parking lot infested with lead-footed snow plows. Our night sky is snow-black, bright in the wake of frigid precipitation. You and I—two university dipshits and sole witnesses of the end as we knew it—park perpendicular to implied lines powdered over in white.

Although blizzard gusts rock your vehicle, we consider braving the cold for a midnight mission.

“I need some bleach,” you’d announced in my dorm room. A beat passed. “For my sheets and clothing.”

I’d rubbed my eyes, fatigued from staring at my laptop screen. “Right now?”

“Yes. We can buy pizza rolls while we’re out.”

Sold. A desire too tempting to pass up, one that may strand us here in the parking lot if we don’t act on it.

The defroster is fighting a losing battle against translucent windows. Blurred vehicles whiz past, pushing accumulating snow into mountains. Speeding in reverse impresses us in these icy conditions.

“Look at ‘em go,” you laugh. “They’re booking it.”

“We’d get pulverized if we stepped in their way.” I say, fidgeting with the stereo’s volume knob. “Probably best to wait this out.”

The end of the world has a soundtrack handpicked from the poor soul manning the student radio this late in the night. Its opening tune seeps through your antiquated speakers—an outlandish track from the seventies titled “Georgel” by Cluster. 

A low dissonance of organ keys bend and contort between satanic chords. Obscure howls, beeps, and pulsing echoes drift in and out of a charged, extraterrestrial ambiance that holds us in a vice-like grip. With our heads glued to the seat rests, we stare forward at the frost-bitten windshield until our eyes glaze over.

Four minutes in, you snap out of your daze. “What the fuck are we listening to?”

“I have no idea,” I giggle.

“It sounds like the end of the world.”

“Maybe this is the end of the world.”

And just like that, we have spoken the end into existence.

The shift will be subtle at first. We will joke that nothing has felt the same since the night in the blizzard, but we won’t be able to pinpoint why. Eccentric vibes will charge our daily routine, raising miniscule follicles on the surface of our nerves.

We’ll adopt an all-or-nothing attitude. Play by the rules, or generate everlasting memories. Spend every waking moment together, or lose touch. Save each other from our own emotions, or fall apart. Our shared company will feel forbidden. Addicting. Nearly toxic if we think too hard about it.

Within weeks, civilization will crumble to disease. Watching the news while confined to our bubbles of isolation will feel apocalyptic to some degree. I’ll weep at the implication of losing everyone I love to unpredictability, likely quarantined for eternity or until death sweeps them out of my reach.

Nothing will ever go back to the way it was, you’ll convince me.

As much as I hate this logic, you’ll be right.

Involuntary solitude will make me desperate for connection. You’ll undergo an opposite metamorphosis, repelling all traces of affection. By the time we move in together, our differences will wear us haggard. I will take on the role of people pleaser. Overthinker. Self-deprecator. Anything to bring back our pre-blizzard friendship. You will hate me for this. You’ll push me away. Convince me I’m insane. Pretend I don’t exist.

And since time cannot be reversed, our codependent disaster of a friendship will come to a head, driving us to part ways and never speak to one another again. For a while, this loss will feel truly like the end of the world. You’ve called it, after all.

But, of course, we don’t know this yet. We’ve only just summoned the future. Right now, we are comfortable in the warmth of your car, enamored by an otherworldly scene unfolding before our eyes.

I record an audio clip of the bizarre instrumental rattling our intestines. “This song is growing on me.”

You grin. “You’re crazy, girl.”

“The craziest.” Using my sweater sleeve, I rub the windshield fogging over from our breaths. “I think Walmart is a bust. We should probably get out of here.”

“You’re probably right,” you say, shifting into reverse. “I might have one box of pizza rolls left that we can share, anyway.”

I bounce in my seat. “You’re the best!”

“I know.”

We don’t realize it yet but, in that parking lot, we leave behind versions of ourselves that we will never recover. Watching us peel out into the empty midnight street, they shiver in ankle-high snow, frozen in time.