PETR AWOKE TO THE sounds of lonely car alarms blaring far off in the distance. For a moment, he wondered if it was the reason behind his sleep disruption. Unable to arrive at a clear answer, he let his right arm fall on Ivanna’s side. The gentle curve of her hip calmed him for a while. In the moist darkness he tried to synchronize his breathing with hers. Gently.

Dogs began to howl outside of the cold bedroom window. Closer this time.

Petr, as would a kid, turned away from the window and onto his side, spooning his mistress with the maximum of his body, feeling the furnace she always had been. Outside, the car alarms seemed to get closer to the house, one by one, before trailing off into the distance.

Ivanna moaned. Petr tried to comfort her.

Something exploded, close enough to send trinkets clattering from shelves to the floor all around the house.

Ivanna stood up, alarmed, knocking into Petr’s teeth as he leaned in to reassure her with a kiss.

“Ouch,” he shot while she went on, uncaring:

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. Something exploded somewhere,” he answered, putting a hand to his bleeding lip.

He knew Ivanna had loved, well still loved, this nonchalance about him, the way his presence made everything feel somehow removed. This carelessness—while his naked body lay haphazardly in her bed, stained by the mercury lamplight outside—she seemed to hate it right now.

“And that’s all you got to say about it?”

“What do you want me to do? Even if I knew it wouldn’t be like I could do anything.”

“Bandages are in the bathroom,” she asserted while bending to get her phone on her bedside table.

“I’m not gonna bandage my lip, Ivy.”

She sat next to him, her phone’s screen turning her skin an ornate blue. Fumbling through social media, she wiped a cigarette with her left hand, lit it and started to puff.

“Everyone’s like: What’s that sound? Did you hear that? On Twitter.”

“They’re as powerless as we are,” Petr said, closing in on her and starting to kiss her shoulder.

“Don’t leave your bloody blood on me.”

“I thought you liked blood Mrs. I’ve read every Anne Rice novel ‘til she turned Christian.”

He thought Ivanna would’ve liked the compliment if she had paid him any attention. She was focused on her screen. A photograph of a big gap splitting a town in two.

“What the actual fuck?” she muttered as Petr sank his left hand in between her thighs. “Can’t you see I’m not wet?” she asked with a hint of contempt.

Petr felt tiny and then ridicule and then realized his fault, taking his hand away.

“Sorry.”

“I thought we talked about consent.”

“You’re just too sexy.”

“Stop trying to find excuses. Sexuality is way more healthy when individuals communicate.” She turned towards him, showing him her screen. The blue light blinded the man. “Now’s not the time. Look at that shit.”

“What is that?” Petr yelled while grabbing the phone. He got off the bed still scrolling, Ivanna seemed impressed by his sense of balance.

“What is that?” he wondered for a second time, as if the first had needed some kind of answer.

His first thought was unspoken: This is not real, this cannot happen. Those kinds of photographs were the ones you’d found in Turkey or Syria. In the middle of the desert right after shit hits the fan February 2023. Yet he definitely recognized Oslo.

***

“I think there’s been an earthquake,” Ivanna said while crushing down her cigarette filter.

The barking outside was slowly creeping on her nerves. Petr, still half asleep, began to pull on his pants. She watched his hairy skin being devoured by the trousers.

“I gotta get to my kids,” he said.

“Are you serious?”

Coming from the cell phone, Ivanna heard a loud crack, type of sound you would only hear on documentaries about the Arctic. In the blue glare, she saw Petr’s eyes grow.

Then the windows exploded.

Trying to regain her composure, she began to discern the sound of glass raining onto the street outside her home. So pristine yet so dreadful.

Petr, bare-chested, was already descending the stairs to the first floor. She got up, stabbed her feet on a shard and yelped.

Ivanna sat back on the bed and examined her sole. With her left hand, she began to pick at the snowflakes of glass embedded in her skin. It was hard gripping the tiny, flat slivers with all the blood but she was finally able to do so.

Carefully, she stood back up and went downstairs.

The door was ajar. Under it, her phone lay shattered. It was as she was bending down to get a hold of it that the crack appeared.

It shattered the road as a racing car would a school zone. The houses across the street sank with a loud thud.

She thought of Petr, then she began to run.

***

It didn’t take long before Petr hit the traffic jam that had formed—thanks to other civilians trying to flee just like him.

All around, passersby ventured like zombies under the greenish mercury street lights, spinning aimlessly with each new explosion. Here a gas station erupted, here some high-rise buildings fell down. Everywhere, a rain of glass reflected the lamp post, the traffic lights. Glitter.

Slamming his hands on the steering wheel, Petr yelled, “Annick!” Then, “Johann!”

Tears welled up in his eyes and for a brief moment, despair swept over him, first settling in his stomach then closing on his throat, choking out his breath. He shuddered, tried to calm his inhalations, fix them on Ivanna’s. Tears fell down as he glanced at the empty seat next to him.

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

When the father opened his eyes, he was more focused, more assured. He closed his eyes once more before he swerved to the left and up onto the sidewalk.

He winced at the first impact of a body upon his hood.

By the tenth he did not care anymore.

***

Susan wasn’t asleep. She had put both children to bed, Annick begging for a story and Johann as usual following along. The two had nestled together in Annick’s bed, and Susan had begun reading them Hans Christian Andersen’s original version of The Little Mermaid before realizing her error in choosing a title. The Princess and the Pea would have been a better fit. With a sigh of gratitude, she had thanked the world order that both children had fallen asleep before any mature content appeared. Small mercies.

She carried Johann back to his own bed and made her way downstairs. In the empty living room, which always felt like a rainy forest, she turned on the boob tube and watched a replay of a TV show—cooking apprentices competing for a spot in the big Master Chef race. Susan liked the idea of younglings going up against the big guns. Her favorite, this year, was definitely Christabella, the daughter of a baker who specialized in vegetable cooking and trompe-l’oeil dish. Kid definitely got talent.

The contest was down to four candidates, each fighting to craft the most original presentation of a homard bisque, when the first explosion jolted Susan out of her semi-vegetative state. She leapt to her feet, bolted up the stairs, and flung open the door to the kids’ bedroom. Quickly she scanned the room. Nothing appeared to have penetrated either wall or window but both kids now seemed awake. She knelt before her son, feeling him up and down as he parted his weary eyes, and asked them, “Are you all right?”

Trembling but unharmed, they both stammered, “Y…yes.”

“Can you be brave and stay inside?” Annick nodded, and taking the lead from his sister, Johann did, as well. Susan left them clinging to one another, and as she descended the stairs in her robe, the thought tore through her: Where are you, Petr?

She opened the front door and stepped out onto the porch. Bleary-eyed adults were emerging from their homes. Some certainly had been dozing off in front of the TV, just like her. She wondered how many had been watching Master Chef before another fiery explosion rocked the night sky.

They all crouched, as pagans once did under roaring heavens, taken aback by the suddenness of it. Susan watched in awe. Above, a fire snake uncoiled onto the dark skies as if it were alive, and she thought—although it was impossible—that behind it lay the biggest wall of scale she had seen in her life. As if to reassure herself, Susan began to search for the moon, which was nowhere to be found.

For it lies behind whatever was revealed by the flaming coil.

Susan turned around, entered her home, and sprinted up the stairs. A loud crack came from outside, as if the moon itself had been shattered in two. She didn’t bother looking through the windows for she knew what was happening. Earth breaking as Antarctic-thin ice.

She entered the kids’ bedroom to find both huddled in Annick’s bed. She would have reflected on the ouroboros of being a mom had she not been in such a hurry.

“Get your pants on,” she said. “And your coats.”

“But Mom,” yelped her daughter.

“Annick, I haven’t got time for this,” Susan snapped as she knelt before her son and began to dress him. “I need you to be a grown girl and do as I say.”

Susan had struck just the right tone, as Annick began to scramble and dress with the most profound seriousness. Susan focused, no longer worried about the car alarms and the screams from outside.

“Now you both listen to me,” Susan said while zipping Johann’s coat. “We’re all going to get in the car and we’re going to Grandma’s house, okay? I want you both to get in as quick as possible, put on your seat belts and close your eyes. Is that understood?”

They were headed for the front door when they heard Petr’s stupid car honk, the gift he had asked for last Christmas.

***

“Weren’t you in Akranes?” Susan asked, her accusing tone drowning the roar of Petr’s engine through the streets, onto the lawns.

“I don’t think this the right moment,”

“Mom, where are we going?” Annick asked from the back seat.

The wife had noticed the disarray in her partner’s clothes. The spiky scent which clung to him and permeated the whole vehicle. She first felt anger, then relief that he’d come for them.

“What’s happening, Petr?”

“Didn’t really have the time to doom scroll, Suz,” he answered, his voice clipped.

She opened her mouth to say more but stopped, took out her cell phone, opened Facebook.

A bump startled her.

“What the fuck is that, Petr?” When entering the car, she had noticed the streaks of blood on the hood and windshield, but had put them out of her mind. Now, she shivered at the realization that the thump could have been a kid.

“Don’t look, hon.”

“It was a man, Mom,” Annick cried out. Johann began to cry.

“Hush, hush baby. It’s okay.”

“He was not o-kaaaay.” Her daughter’s voice trilled into a shriek. Johann matched his sister’s volume.

“Please both of you.”

“SHUT UP!” Petr bellowed, the sound of his shout so loud it produced a slight echo in the car. The detonation turned his progeny mute. “What do they say on the fucking internet, Susan?”

She had begun to scroll again when her husband braked so vigorously that she threw up her hand to keep from hitting the dashboard.

“The fuck, Petr?”

Her husband didn’t answer. A slow rumble rose from outside the car. As Susan looked up she could see the neighborhood rising in front of the car. As if a time bomb had just exploded underneath the ground. Beyond the windshield, the horizon line bent and twisted. An earth-and-cement tsunami.

Her mouth opened in a howl that never came as houses and lamp posts and roads were lifted upwards as if they’d been seated on a camel’s back. As if the land had awoken.

“Inception,” Petr whispered—at least Susan thought this was what he said.

From the bent road in front of them, gardening tools and cars began to rain down from the sky. For a moment all four stared, mesmerized. Then Petr set the car in reverse and crushed the accelerator as ahead of them, the road opened up in a crack and clouds of smoke began to pour from it, each puff accompanied by an explosion.

Susan knew Petr had never been fond of driving in reverse and this didn’t reassure her. She closed her eyes, hated not knowing what they sped backward into, vaguely wondering whether it was the tortured engine or her sheer terror that caused the chill in her spine.

Uselessly, she lowered her head to peer through the windshield into the high sky. Behind the rising world, Susan saw what she thought was a giant snake. Its enormous head so big it looked like it could swallow the moon. Susan shrieked. The children shrieked. The creature shrieked.

A droplet of blood spat from Petr’s ear onto her cheek. The rushing landslide in front of her came ever closer.

The car hit something.

All sound was drowned out by the rumble of the stone cascade.

***

In the distance of the black void, a car horn yelled and screamed and howled like a dying breed. Petr returned to consciousness, the siren screaming into his ears at the relative speed of a car crash.

The windshield was completely obstructed by a large rock facade. Petr tried to decipher it, wondered for an instant what lay underneath the car, heard a gentle cry coming from the back seat.

Sitting shotgun, her teeth dispatched across the dashboard with the forceful fury of a vengeful deity, Susan rested in an unnatural position. Dead. Petr didn’t move, instead taking in the giant rock which had crashed through the roof, burying his wife, folding her in two, crushing her skull. The husband stared at the eye which had popped out of its socket, no longer accusing him.

He thought of Annick and dreaded having to turn around. But he did.

“No, nooooo.” His guttural howl devolved into awful cries as the scene before him took shape. The monolith had crushed the right side of the back seat. Underneath the black marble, his daughter’s tiny leg bent, blood smearing the upper part of her white stockings.

Petr grazed the lifeless leg, which gave off no energy under his gentle touch. He feared gripping the small appendage would tear it off his daughter’s corpse.

A second moan snapped him back to his still-breathing son.

“Johann!” He threw up his hand in the vain hope of blocking his son’s view of the horror.

“Wha’ ‘pened?” the boy asked, a small contusion appearing underneath his shoulder where the seat belt had held him secure.

“There’s nothing, boy. Nothing happened.”

“Sss Annick?” the boy wondered, his eyes growing wide at the sight of the leg.

“Nothing happened, Johann. We’re okay. We’re okay.”

Petr released his seat belt and, bent awkwardly, began to free his son.

“Mom!” the kid yelled as his father assured his grip around his waist.

Petr felt cold water begin to splash his shoes.

“We gon’ make it,” he said to his boy, before realizing the right back door was held tight by the rock wall. “Am gonna have to smash the window so you cover your eyes, okay?” he asked his son, while trying to wipe his tears.

Johann put his tiny arms around his face and bent by the door. Now taking hold of the two front seats, Petr began to kick at the back windshield.

As a teenager, Petr and his buddies had once smashed through the windshield of an abandoned stolen vehicle. It had been his way of ensuring GTA’s vehicle theft was bullshit. What endured from the experience was the knowledge that windshields were hard to break. And when they did break, they didn’t shatter but cracked into a myriad of spiderwebbed pieces that held together. As the heel of his boot smashed through the back window, he thought it weird to reminisce about his teenage years and his group of friends, Alix, Samy, Ior and Ivan. He wondered if they too were now stuck in some cavern trying to free their own sons, the bodies of their wives and daughters seated alongside.

It struck him, what a nightmare it would be if he couldn’t get Johann out.

The father’s energy doubled as he rained down kicks upon the shattered glass. The window tore free.

“Johann, hey, Johann, you’re gonna grip my coat, tightly. Okay, real firm.”

“Firm,” the boy repeated before putting his left index finger in his mouth.

“Yeah, real firm, like big boys do. We’re gonna crawl through the window and Daddy’s gonna climb us out of here, okay?”

“Out here, ‘kay,” the kid repeated.

When he felt assured Johann was gripping him tightly enough, Petr bent down to pass headfirst through the opening. He heard the broken shards catching his son’s head as the protruding glass bit viciously at his own scalp. He thought of himself as a bad dad.

Fuck you, Petr, you gotta get him out of here. Stop the fucking self-hate already.

The father could feel the water rising up through the car. It was a charred coldness.

With his feet planted between the hood and the back of his car, Petr could finally absorb the hopelessness of their situation. The chasm in which they had fallen rose high above them, the car now stuck some twenty meters underground. Petr peered up at the tight sliver of night sky which mostly consisted of rising smoke and yellow lights.

He yelled until he heard his son asking him to calm down.

“You’re right, you’re right,” Petr said while caressing Johann’s head.

In return, the kid got hold of a bit of his father’s auburn hair and pulled on it. Realistically, Petr knew he could never climb out of the hole. But then again it seemed like the night sky was closing in on them. The walls, the crevice all around them was sinking in the sea, he understood.

“Okay, okay, we’re gonna get cold but we’re gonna be fine, okay?”

“‘kay,” answered his kid.

That’s if this fucking rock don’t crush us. Please don’t crush my fucking kid. Petr thought of the tiny leg dangling right beneath their feet, cried some more.

***

Petr taught his surviving child how to do the plank on the unshackled sea. The vast coldness chewed at their legs while making their clothes puffy. Both he and his son had swum as best they could as their homeland dove into the waves.

He would always remember the houses disappearing into the water. Then the telephone poles bent and drowned.

They lay, getting cold. Their hot breath creating less and less fog as they exhaled. Around them, in the dying world, car alarms and horns went off, last melody for Armageddon.

High in the sky, the stars stood uncaring, silent as ever. The father wondered how long he could keep this up, but the real question was: How long would Johann last?

He preferred not to think about it as they drifted, holding hands like otters. He felt the tiny fingers grow colder and colder with each passing minute.

Petr brought the child closer to him in an effort he knew was useless.

Soon, the night sky became populated by commercial planes. Their merry-go-round, a firefly parade onto a black canvas. It made Johann laugh and it felt good to be alive through the end of the world. Even when the planes crashed, sending beautiful shivers across the unmoving ocean, the boy continued to laugh. The explosions were devoured by eternal surf.

He asked the kid to count the boom booms as they rose on the horizon. And the kid counted ‘til his lips became blue and he couldn’t smile anymore.

The father tried to hug his son, but his own flesh was too cold. He gripped the tiny head and gasped at the temperature of his dying child.

For a small moment, he wondered if someone was nearby. His pragmatic mind asserted that even if anyone else was close by, they wouldn’t be able to hear him thanks to the turmoils of the ocean. Petr yelled for help nonetheless, as another Boeing crashed a mere hundred yards away.

“Why you screaming, Daaaad?” the child asked, his speech slurred from exhaustion.

“I love you, Johann, you know that, right?” the dad answered, suddenly realizing he couldn’t feel his own feet.

Petr tried to move his fingers. It hurt.

***

It passed swimming underneath the dying duet. Petr, barely conscious, registered its presence. The rogue wave, generated by its predation, alerted the dead man. Please don’t steal me my kid, he thought, gripping the tiny body as tightly as he could.

It rose from beneath the wave. Its snakelike appearance a black hole in the night sky. Mostly void partially stars. Water dripped in gigantic cascades from its slithery black scales. A creature whose proportions were the size of a country.

The creature shrieked. The power of its jump made it appear as if it could fly before gravity took over.

Petr saw the monster of unimaginable size reach its apex and then fall down.

A comet. A whole world crashing down.

He braced for the impact, gripping his dead kid.

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