25th December 2023
Cold air darts through my nostrils and push through my windpipe causing my body to express an involuntarily cringe as it arrives my lungs.
I come alive with a desperate gasp for air and my eyelids unshut beneath an intense beam of white light shining with a brightness that pierces through the openings of my pupil and causes a sharp headache at the center of my skull. My eyes surprisingly do not squint, flintch, or itch through the electrifying energy of the light rays.
I gradually sit up and begin to look around. I find myself on a flat metal board at the center of an empty room with bright radioactive light surrounding me. My memory is blank, I do not remember a thing, not even the incidents that precede this moment.
The four walls of the empty room are cast with silver plated metal and there are vents between them which spit clouds of cold air.
I see a digital thermometer fixed on the wall facing me, it reads 'minus hundred degrees celcius' and I am amazed because if it is true then why do I not feel cold although I am shirtless?
"What is your name?" A voice booms from an unseen loud speaker and I jerk because the sound is too loud that it resonates through the hollows of my bones.
I place my hands tightly over my ears, covering them with my palms, but still I hear even the slightest of sounds from the speaker like the volume has been abnormally magnified.
"Your name is Zach Orji and you are sixteen years old!" The voice booms again and I shut my eyes and ears tighter so I can stop hearing the sounds because it's magnitude disorganizes the entire balance of my system.
"Stop" I manage to whimp.
"You must not cry son because you are radioactive!" The voice booms again.
"And this is how my story begins; Zack Orji, the name my father gave me, an end of discussion, a tragedy waiting to be unleashed on the world.
"Today is the future we have all been waiting for– 12th of December 2038, the year when it all begins, yes, the end of the world. That scary story we were told as kids to scare us to sleep has come alive.
"Now imagine you were me, Imagine you were us, imagine you were here in this very moment, at the very end of the world..."
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APPRECIATION
I would like to appreciate all those who make me believe that I can write, and all my readers who keep reading my works irrespective.
Thank you.
A big thank you to my parents also who raised me to be a dreamer who writes.
"...For it is not enough to be a dreamer alone but it is a gift to be able to express these dreams in writings which travel to the ends of the earth and even onto generations after...'
