The Chosen One

The rain was pounding hard on the window. It hadn’t stopped for weeks, and even the sewers couldn’t keep up, leaving the streets flooded. I sat there, dry in the comfort of my own home, watching the unsuspecting passersby. A mother holding hands with her child as they crossed the road, a man carrying a briefcase to a meeting. They were so innocent, so clueless. Poor souls had no idea what was coming to them.

That morning, I had woken up knowing the world was going to end in seven days. Whether it was a message from God Himself, a incident of random psychic intuition, or pure luck, I had no idea. Personally, I consider it my fate. I think I was always destined to know when the world would end, so that I could be prepared, just like God prepared Noah before He wiped mankind off the face of the Earth.

They liked to say I was crazy, those nosy people out there. Sure, I lived alone in this dusty old house, and I never married or had children like the rest of them, but who was to say that made me crazy? Truthfully, I found it draining, practically exhausting to be around other people for more than ten minutes at a time. I was the only one I could stand. That may make me different, yes . . . but I was always different. Mother told me so from a very young age. But different how?

Finally, I knew the answer from that very morning. Different as in I would be the last surviving human being on the planet, because I had the brains and wit to do it. I was the Chosen One this time. Goddamnit, I was the Chosen One, and no one, not even Johnny from basketball practice, could tell me otherwise. Definitely not Sarah, who rejected me twice when I asked her to the Snowflake Ball. They would see soon what they did to me all those years ago. Oh, would they see what was coming to them in seven dreary days!

I would save myself and no one else. That was how powerful I was, because I had the ability to put myself first, unlike those weaklings that prowled the streets. Soon, there would be only me, but before it happened, I had to tell Mother. She would be so proud of me when she found out that I was being chosen by Divine Intervention to be the only man on Earth to know when doomsday was coming.

I opened the door to the closet and peered inside. I held my nose - Mother needed a bath real bad. She hadn’t had one since that day she wouldn’t stop nagging me about something so unneccessary and boring. What was that word she kept saying? Pills? Luckily, she’s been quiet ever since, just how I like them. They would all be like that in seven days.