The Final Count Down

Cellophane stretches across the sun. The glow of gold sullies to gloomy green, blanching the ocean's aura. Breath is stifled to a whisper as the breeze stills to silence above the folding sea. Life stutters, sighs into complacency and sleeps ...

Beneath ...

Tumult reigns, feeding, dividing, multiplying...and always, always, monitoring the passage of time ...

The cellophane crisped by ultra-violet cracks. Tiny fissures appear and expand, minute by minute. Each fissure leaks gold, each sliver shifts a breath until, ruffled by the breeze, the complacent begin to snore ...

Beneath ...

The snores reverberate, quaking the earth, speaking prophecies of time. The irrevocable must occur; preparations are almost complete ...


Cellophane-specks now litter the wind, caught by spray, flung to bob then drown in the palpitating ocean. The sleepers agitate, curdling in the revolving light, raked by rushing air. They awaken, rankled and irritable ... too late.

Beneath ...

They sit in circular silence counting down ... ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five ...