“It’s my weekend!” You’ll hear people say, sometimes with enthusiasm, sometimes in a sigh of exhaustion. But who is to say that it’s "their" weekend? And that’s not to say that Saturday and Sunday are always their weekend days. In fact, the days that are often part of someone’s weekend are part of the weekdays.

So tell me, when you say that it’s "your weekend", do you mean to tell me that those two days belong to you? I ask this only because I’ve heard many others say the same about different days of the week (some of them fortunate enough to have a weekend land on Saturday and Sunday).

If each working individual does have two days to themselves that they call their own, I suppose you can say that a weekend can belong to someone, rather than a certain time of the week that everyone shares.

I must say I feel sorry for those that work during your weekend. As you kick back and relax from your laborious week, someone else in the world is saying to themselves, “Today is my Monday”, as they begin a laborious week of their own.

I’ve not heard anyone admit this, but I’m fairly certain that if mentioned, anyone can agree that the possibility of “the end of the world” has become a common subject.

It’s heard of in speeches made by climate change activists. It’s written in bold letters on cardboard signs presented by religious fanatics and conspiracy theorists. It’s a theme in fictional books and movies about the zombie apocalypse or alien invasions.

But in this case, humanity was doomed of extinction when my alarm rang.

As I woke to the overly dramatic wailing sound that my alarm made, I noticed that my room was filled with the brightness of noon. I found this odd. I was fairly certain that I didn’t set the alarm any later than 6 am.

As I turned towards the alarm to turn it off, my hand stopped mid motion when I noticed something.

You expect to see numbers when you look into the screen of an alarm. Sure, you see the abbreviation for the day of the week on the side, but you don’t expect to see the words “SEVEN DAYS” taking up the entire thing in digital text.

I hesitated for a few seconds before finally slapping the button that turned off the alarm. Seven days? Till what? What was going to happen in seven days that my alarm clock had to show me that it was going to happen within that period of time?

I shrugged. I would ignore it for now. I went downstairs and turned on the TV in the living room. The news came on.

I could see the image of a forest fire filling the screen. The anchorwoman reporting the story was announcing how many miles the fire had stretched.

I changed the channel. No unpleasant thoughts today.

“. . . the individuals suspected of the shooting are yet to have been identified. We’ll keep you posted on the. . .”

I changed the channel.

“. . . the plane was said to have crashed in Richdale park, causing about thirteen million dollars in damages. . .”

I switched off the TV.

“SEVEN DAYS.” The image of the words popped up in my head. For some reason, the feeling of dread kicked in. I knew something was going to happen. I could not find any logical reason as to why I knew, or if I knew for sure, but my gut was telling me all the same.

I decided to go outside and maybe go out for a walk. All of this was starting to be too much, and I needed to clear my head before my entire day was shot.

I didn’t even make it past my front door before something else came to my attention.

It wasn’t just the fact that the bright afternoon, which I had cursed silently as I woke, was starting to fade too quickly as I saw everything turn grey from gathering clouds. It was the closed-in feeling of how the clouds pulled together. It felt as if the world had been separated from the sky and caged by the sudden weather.

“SEVEN DAYS”, my thoughts echoed. They were starting to feel like someone else’s rather than my own. Almost as if the thoughts were being enforced on my mind.

I crossed the yard over to the sidewalk and started down the street.

“. . . SEVEN DAYS. . . SEVEN DAYS. . . SEVEN DAYS. . .”

I looked over my shoulder. Nobody followed me. Reassuring as it was, it wasn’t enough to keep me from picking up my walking pace.

“. . . SEVEN DAYS. . . SEVEN DAYS. . .”

I started sprinting down the sidewalk, taking brief glances behind. What sick joke was this? Was I suffering from some kind of mental illnes?

My body slammed into someone else’s and I fell backwards onto the ground. I looked up to see an elderly man looking down at in confusion. He was wearing a dirty trench coat and trousers that appeared to be too large on him. “What you running from?” He asked.

“I-I don know,” I stammered as I struggled to my feet.

He shrugged and glanced over to his right. “Boy, that crash did a doozie to the park.” He said.

I brought my attention over to whatever he was looking at and my jaw dropped. It was the crashed plane that had been mentioned earlier in the news. Firemen were on the scene putting out the fires left behind from the wreck as passengers were being evacuated.

“R. . . Richdale park?” I said.

The old man quirked an eyebrow.

“This doesn’t make any sense,“ I said, “I don’t remember this park being in this neighborhood.”

“Really?” Said the old man. “Learn something new every day, I suppose.”

I grasped the top of my head with my hands. “None of this is right,” I said. I knew deep down that something bad was going to happen.

“Careful, kiddo, you’ll give yourself a heart attack,” Said the man, “it’s bad enough I have to worry about stuff like that.”

I ignored the man. I saw the clouds in the sky drawing closer. The closed-in feeling was increasing.

“Kid, you need to sit down or something.”

“How can I sit down!” I snapped. “Everything is falling apart around us and no one gives a secon thought about it. We need to get somewhere safe! Get to an underground shelter! Something!”

“Woah, woah,” said the man, “back up. You make it sound as if the whole world’s about to end.”

“It very well might be,“ I said. In fact, I was most certain that was the case.

“Where you getting this from?”

I opened my mouth to say something, then closed it. I didn’t have any clue as to how I had drawn to that conclusion. Then I said, “there’s a voice in my head. It keeps saying the words 'Seven Days'.”

It sounded really stupid when those words came out, but the man slowly nodded as if he didn’t pay my stupidity any mind. “So,” he said slowly, “is the world supposed to end in seven days?”

“I dunno,” I said, “maybe.”

“Huh,” he said, and looked out towards the park again. “You say you don’t remember this park being here?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Ah,” he said, “besides there being a voice in your head, has anyone told that something bad enough is going to happen that’ll wipe out all of humanity?

I replied again, “No.”

The man’s face broke into a grin. “It all makes sense,” he said.

“How so?” I said, confused.

“You’ll see,” he said. And walked away.

I was going to call out to him when I heard someone screaming, “Everybody run! Get out!”

I looked over to the plane wreck where people were scattered, running for cover. Then the plane exploded.

The fire leapt out toward me. I closed my eyes as I was ready to accept the warm embrace of flame.

Then came the wailing sound of my alarm clock.

My upper body sprung up in my bed. Breathing heavily, I looked over to my clock, which was showing me that time was 6 am.

Sighing heavily with relief, I flopped backwards into the comfort of my pillow as my clock continued to wail loudly as it always did.

“Is she safe?”

This is the first thought that comes to mind when I wake up. From what, I’m not certain. I don’t recall having gone to sleep in the first place.

I scan my surroundings. I see people on a sidewalk, staring at something past me. They are looking past me at something else, it seems. I see many shocked expressions among them. I can see others pulling out their phones and shouting into them for an ambulance.

I turn around, and am startled when I see the front of a large SUV directly in front of me. Backing away to create distance between me and the vehicle, a body lying on the ground in front of the SUV makes me bite back a scream.

It’s me.

I hear whimpering noises next to me. I turn and notice a girl that looks about twelve. An adult comes by to comfort her, pulling her towards the sidewalk away from the scene.

“What happened?” I hear one person say.

“He saved her,” says another.

I wave of relief suddenly comes over me. Now I remember.

“She’s safe,” I say to myself.

“The Most Successful Book You Ever Read.”

That was the title. I recall seeing it on a display stand at the front window of a small decaying shop called Finders Keepers. The title was written in bold yellow letters that stretched across a plain light blue background color. The cover did not have the name of the author written on it, neither did it have an illustration that might have been a helpful depiction of what the author meant by the word, “Successful.”

That was the word that bothered me, anyway. I would not have been bothered by the unclever title if not for the difference of that one word. Words such as “ingenious” or “astonishing” would have suited the title better. By how much, I wasn’t certain. At least it would have made more sense than what I was looking at now.

Successful. You would think that word would be measured by its own popularity. It seemed to me that the word would have fit a commentary on the book a whole lot better than the title itself. When the book was written, did the author think that the book was going to be so popular that they felt it was safe to give it such a title?

“Maybe they predicted the future,” I thought to myself sarcastically.

I was about to continue strolling down the sidewalk before a precarious thought came to mind: did they?

It was a strange thought, I know. It may have been an idea that was significant to a conspiracy theorist at best. One could say that the book was a sign from some force or being from “beyond the cosmos.”

I looked around. Everyone that passed by me didn’t so much as glance at the book. They just continued along their way as if nothing was out of the ordinary. Which was true, for the most part. Why would anyone waste their time gawking at some book that had an unoriginal title? Still, I thought, since I seemed to be the only person taking any interest in it at all, was this book meant for me to find? Was there something trying to communicate with me?

Soon enough, I found myself leaving the store having spent five dollars and thirty cents with the book in hand. I sat on a nearby bench and opened up to the first page.

There was only a single paragraph written in ink on the page. I would have expected it to have been written in bold text, but I decidedly ignored it since I had already spent a good deal of time judging the abnormality of the title. I started to read.

“Dear unlikely reader,” it said, “I see that you have selected this book despite the discouragement of the unoriginal title. I can see that you were wise enough to consider the endless possibilities instead of ‘judging a book by its cover’, as the saying goes. For this reason, you are one of the most enlightened people that have ever existed. The reason why the title suggests that this book is successful, as you may have wondered, is because it is filled with with many of the greatest inventions and discoveries that you will soon see in the near future.

“To read about them, turn the page.”

I turned the page and continued to read. I was perplexed by the things to come among these pages. Inside, I learned of scientific creations such as interdimensional portals, and of the of the many strange behaviors of the diabetic wiener turtle. (Which, drawn on that page, showed an image that was a description of exactly what that sounded like).

Then I came to the second to last page.

“Now that you have traversed among these many pages, I must tell you something that you can make no mention to anyone. What I will tell you will go beyond the comprehension of anyone who has not already read the through this book. If you are willing to keep a secret, turn the page.”

I turned the page, and my heart sank as soon as I read the first sentence.

“You are literally among the many that procrastinate for a horrendous amount of time,” it said, “once you’re through reading, you will have spent an hour and thirty minutes on something that was conjured up purely for the fun thought that someone might actually buy the load of garbage that I put into this. A word of advice for you: if you want to be happy in life, don’t go trying to figure out the significance of a crappy title.

“P.S. You should have been tipped off by the diabetic wiener turtle.”

Immediately afterward, I pitched the book into a into a dumpster around the corner of the street and made my way home.

Hello, Mr. Writer! I'm glad you decided to introduce me in this story of yours. Tell me, what's my purpose in it?

If I'm the protagonist of the story, please make me someone who is humble and has a miserable life toward the beginning of the story. I'm pretty certain that if you try this, your reader will feel attached to me and the story itself if you do this. We'll both win, in the end.

Now, if you decide that I would make a good antagonist, I'be got something for you that you could really work with: make your reader hate me.

Go ahead, I don't mind being hated. I just want to be memorable. It'll also make your story memorable on top of that. Once again, we'll both win. But remember what I said, make people hate me. Make me steal something. You can even have me murder somebody, if that's what it takes to get some attention!

Sorry. That got a little dark. You know, let's drop that subject for now. There's other things we've got to cover, so let's get down to business. Tell me, what kind of tasty plot do we have ready for the world to see?

If it's one of those fantasy stories, your probably one of those types that like other stories about knights or peasants going on some kind of adventure to find gold or defeat some kind of beast. Speaking of beasts, are you someone that's a fanatic when it comes to dragons? If you are, that's fine. It's pushing the limits a little bit, but I can't expect that much from you. Most beasts or monsters are fine. But I'm warning you, you better NOT put giant spiders into this story. I can definetly name one author that's already done that.

Say you're one of those folks that likes fictional stories that are realistic. You know, like a reality flick. Just without the "flick," if you get what I'm saying. This is literature, different world we're talking about.

Anyway, most settings for those kinds of stories are pretty good. A millionaire that somehow gets bankrupt, a hobo that comes across a stray cat and becomes an unlikely friend that he or she talks to, you decide on your setting. Just one request, though: don't start the story with an overweight government worker who sits in a cubicle and taps away at a typwriter or computer. Seriously, that's already been done way too many times.

You know, all this discussion over plot is starting to tire me out. We could go on for paragraphs! You know, I want to go back to talking about my purpose, again. Because there's something I forgot to consider.

Are you planning on killing me off? There's a lot of writers that do that for suspense or to play with their reader's emotions. But do you plan to do the same thing with me? I know I haven't made things easy on you. But you can't have that much of a grudge on me to just let me die, that would be pushing the edge a little bit.

If you are going to kill me, just make sure it's memorable, all right? That's all that matters, in the end. But you already knew that. You're the brains. You can create anything you want for the world to see. You just have to do a good job at it.

There's no pressure.

Thirteen-year-old Clyde Rawlzer was an odd child, as was understood by the people who lived on board the Wanderer's Destination Station. At least, for those of the people that knew him. Which were, of course, the people who worked and kept the place suitable for the visitors there.

   He was an only child. And only had his mother to raise him, since his father had died during a visit at one of the domed cities on Mars. The air systems had shut down, and his father shared the same fate as the rest of the city.

Fortunately for both he and his mother, she had graduated from Harvard University with a degree in electrical engineering, and had found work here on Wanderer's Destination. And since she was constantly in need, she and Clyde had the privilege of living in one of the rooms in the lower levels of the station. It wasn't nearly as luxurious as the rest of the rental rooms higher above, but Clyde thought it was satisfactory.

   His mother would work ten hours every Earth day cycle, which left her with little time spent with her son. She didn't want to spend the last four hours of every cycle educating him, so she had taught him how to read on his own early on. At first, he would read a lot of the basic subjects that were taught in public schools, and was supposed to write reports as proof that he read those subjects in the first place. Eventually, he no longer had to write those reports since he had the eager desire to tell her excitedly what he learned from each book.

   As he grew older, he would spend some of his free time during his weekends at one of the public computers reading various articles on the sorts of things he hadn't read about in the books his mother had him reading. He would read some on current affairs of the colonized planets, others on culture, and sometimes even on past historical events. 

  Mainly, he read anything that he felt he could glean from. His favorite kinds of articles, however, were the ones that discussed facts about people.

Certainly, Clyde admitted to himself, people could be depressing sometimes. He often came across wealthier travelers visiting Wanderer's Destination who he could tell, just by reading the expressions on their faces, disapproved of him. He had grown used to that, and he had learned to cope with the idea that he couldn't be accepted by everyone. So he never revealed any vexation of those unfortunate encounters.

  There was one other thing, though, about people that bothered him with some significance: their hidden secrets.

Yes, secrets. As a matter of fact, there were moments he was easily paranoid by the fact that any person he talked to could bear information that was being suppressed for unknown reasons. Why did people keep secrets, he always wondered. Were most secrets too dangerous to tell?

  Sometimes, he drifted too far into those suspicions. And sometimes, he would talk to his mother about those suspicions. Since she was the only person that he could carry a long conversation with. But sometimes, she would tell him that those suspicions of his could get him in trouble, if he were to ever let his suspicions take control.

  And unfortunately, according to the reality of curious children, that sort of thing would happen eventually.

It was a Saturday, and to Clyde's disappointment, the systems to the public computers weren't functional. So, he thought he might as well take a walk throughout the station and, if he was lucky, maybe meet a merchant trader and hear stories about odd customers that came from different cultures.

On that enthusiastic note, Clyde slipped into his tall leather boots, fit on his corduroy jacket and left his room.

  Casually, he strolled through the long, carpeted hallway and towards the lobby. To his left, there were either elevator doors or doors that led to the lower-leveled compartments of Wanderer's Destination, possibly where his mother was right now. To his right, there was the view of space outside through a window as long as the hallway. He stopped, taking in the view of the stars. And then, as he walked closer to the window, he could see Mars from below. It was odd to him that this station hovered over this planet where his father had died. He supposed that his mother still wanted a sort of memory of him.

  Just as he was about to turn towards the lobby, he felt a large mass of weight plummet straight into him. Finding himself flat on his back, he felt something moist move around his face. Clyde looked up to find the long-nosed face of a dog standing over him. Smiling, he gave it a friendly scratch behind its left ear and stood up slowly. "Now who'd you run from?" He said good naturedly.

  "Hey, there! Grab hold of him!" Said a small voice. Clyde turned to see a young girl of maybe twelve years running towards him with a leash in hand. She had short blond hair that curled at the ends, a slightly pudgy face that made the smallness of her nose seem significant to the skeptic's eye (Clyde counted himself as a skeptic, at least), and greenish eyes that were certainly full of character, which was a mystery to Clyde, who had only heard her utter six words to him.

  Of course, he obeyed those six little words. But he very gently held the dog by the collar, since it was already quietly staying put. She quickly stooped down to hook the leash to the collar and stood up, a tired expression on her face. "Thanks," she said, "I'm sorry he knocked you over."

  "That's fine," he said as he let go of the dog's collar, "what's his name?"

  "Jasper," she said. "My daddy named him after a fellow soldier he knew."

  "That's neat," Clyde said automatically, "especially since Jasper here is a German Sheppard. These kinds of dogs were helpful during wars, you know."

  "Yes!" She said delightedly, "That's what my daddy tells me. I just keep forgetting what Jasper's breed is. What did you say he was?"

  "A German Sheppard."

  "That's the name. Thank you for the reminder!"

  "No problem," he said, looking up from the dog to face the girl. And he stopped himself short of whatever he was going to say next. Instead, he only stared.

She was wearing a pink summer dress that went down to the knees, and long boots that mostly covered everything else the dress hadn't. She also wore a straw hat that was pulled slightly forward. The hat, of course, was what he paid the most attention to.

"Um. . ." he stammered, "your hat."

  "What about my hat?" She responded, a frown creasing her forehead.

  "It's tilted in a weird direction." He said in his usual automatic tone.

  "It is?" She said. Then she put her hands to her hips, but still held fast to Jasper's leash. "You know," she said, "I don't know you very well. But if you're one of those superficial boys. . ."

  "No," said Clyde, "most people say I have rather serious idiosyncrasies."

  "Idio. . . What?"

  "It's nothing superficial," Clyde assured her, "I tend to pay attention to small details. I won't assume, but you're dressed in a way as if you've visited a part of a planet with a warm climate."

  "I have," she said, "and I prefer to look that way."

  "Well, I'd like to help you succeed in doing that. Just tilt your hat slightly to the right."

 

  "Why the right?"

  "To be honest, I don't know. I've never seen anyone do otherwise."

  "Well," she said haughtily, "I've always ignored critics." And she let the comment hang in the air for about five seconds. Then, her hand reached towards her hat. "How far to the right?" She asked.

   But Clyde wasn't paying attention. Instead, he looked past her. There were plenty of people walking through this hallway, but his eye caught sight of one particular person who moved towards his direction.

  The man that he looked at was maybe five foot six, which was merely Clyde's estimation. The man wore a long trench coat, buttoned up only slightly past the waist. Those details didn't bother Clyde all that much. There was something else a lot more significant about him.

  The man's feet didn't exactly move the same way everyone else did. Certainly, everyone had the right to walk their own way, but this was different. His feet would sometimes walk at a steady pace. And then, every few seconds, they would turn slightly, as if they were uncertain of where to go. The odd thing was that whenever the man turned his feet, it was toward the doors that lead towards the lower levels of the Wanderer's Destination. They always tilted to the right at those moments. All of this wouldn't have been odd if the man was an employee, since the lower levels were where most of the employees had gotten their tools and equipment. If he was lost, why hadn't he asked the lady at the desk where his room was?

  "Yes," said the girl, "you've already told me to tilt it to the right. But how far?"

  Embarrassed, Clyde realized that he had quietly voiced the words "tilting to the right." He glanced at her, and saw that she had moved the hat to the right. "Uh. . . Perfect!" He stammered. And walked quickly past her when he saw the man enter one of the doors that lead to the lower levels of the station.

The man in the trench coat moved down a slim hallway, hoping that he was headed the right direction. He had to meet with the others on time. At this moment, though, that was going to be difficult. Now that he noticed the kid that was following him.

&nbsp; He swore under his breath. <em>Can't have this rascal follow me</em>, he thought to himself.

He turned a left corner. And, at this turn, he could see that the hallway turned right up ahead. At that point he was doubting that he was going the right way.

&nbsp; Nervously, he shifted his weight, feeling the shoulder holster to his pistol rub up against him. At that moment, he remembered the fact that he had a weapon, thought about it, then discarded the random idea he had in mind. <em>Nah</em>, he thought to himself, <em>I won't go that far</em>.

&nbsp; He turned around, expecting to see the young boy walking towards him. He was correct, of course, and decided not to show hesitation. "Are you lost, kid?" He asked.

The boy, who looked as if he was maybe twelve or thirteen, still walked towards him.

&nbsp; "Actually," the boy said in an even tone, "I was about to ask you that."

The kid continued to walk toward him.

&nbsp; "As a matter of fact," the man said, "I take it it's easy to get lost here."

&nbsp;&nbsp;That was a terrible response, the man thought to himself. And he could see in the boy's expression that he had thought the same thing. The boy was now directly in front of him.

&nbsp; "Well," said the boy, seeming to ignore the oddness in the whole situation, "where do you need to go? I live here, so I'm sure I can help direct you."

&nbsp; That was the problem. He couldn't tell this kid where he wanted to go, he would blow his cover. The man shifted his coat uneasily, and knew by the kid's expression that that movement was a terrible mistake.

&nbsp; The boy took a glance at the handle of the pistol that revealed itself from behind the coat. Without thinking, the man reached for the weapon. But to his surprise, the boy had already reached for it and pulled it out.

&nbsp;&nbsp;The boy now held it sideways in both his hands. Quickly the man reached for it, grabbing hold with both hands as well. They both struggled for the gun, pulling at it so hard the man thought it might accidentally fire. Then, the boy quickly lifted his leg and pushed against the man's stomach.

&nbsp;&nbsp;Both of them fell flat on the ground, with the man succeeding in retrieving his weapon. The boy quickly stood up and bolted back up to the hallway, surely to warn the people that there was an intruder on Wanderer's Destination.

It didn't matter what happened now, his cover was blown. Quickly getting up, he aimed his pistol towards the child and switched the setting from "safety" to "fire."

&nbsp; He pulled the trigger.

&nbsp;<em>Click</em>, came the response.

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<em>What?</em> He thought, frantically pulling the trigger over and over only to receive the same response. He examined his pistol, and his breath stopped when he realized in horror why it wouldn't blast. <em>The kid's got my magazine</em>.

&nbsp;&nbsp; Not knowing what he was doing, he started to run, hoping he could catch up with the little nuisance before he warned the others on this station.