This month’s prompt word for #blogbattle is eschaton, which I admit I had to look up. This is a definition
the final event in the divine plan; the end of the world.
The End, But Not As We Imagine It
‘So, peeps, this is it. The Finale. The Last Curtain. The End of Ends…’
Ray Ning-Supreme yawned and hoped no one saw. As with all the other guests, he’d saved enough for this final mother of a blowout and he knew he shouldn’t be anything other than as excited as Mine Host, the oleaginous peacock of a presenter, Sparkle Tripleply. That non-gendered excuse for a human should have been sent ahead to enjoy whatever was coming, rather than the rest of the world having to suffer his incontinent babbling.
Ray looked at the enormous clock that had been beamed onto the moon’s face. Twelve more minutes…
‘What do you think will happen, Ray?’
Zit Wideboy, Ray’s gopher leant over his shoulder. Why he had agreed to let the unctuous piece of toad crap join in would remain a mystery for the rest of…. eleven minutes and forty-one seconds.
‘Did you bet on it, Zit?’ Ray wondered if the boy was really as stupid as he made out.
‘Yes! Seven to two it’s the sun exploding. Kind of like going full circle. The Big Dog starts off with the sun so it would be poetic if that’s how it ended.’
Ray squeezed his eyes shut. It could only be the madness brought on by the end of the world, the end of everything that one as congenitally dull as Zit would find poetry in oblivion. ‘How will you collect?’
‘Oh the bookie said he’d cancel all the bets if there was no end.’
‘That doesn’t…’ Ray stopped. Nine minutes to eschaton and he really didn’t need to be indulging a philosophical discussion on the cretinous betting practices of Zit. He’d thought a lot about what he’d do at the very end. Pretty much everyone had indulged in that speculation. Eat the ultimate truffle pasta, climax with whatever mammal you preferred, finish War and Peace… one contributor indicated they’d be flossing at the end, just in case there was a hereafter and she kept her teeth. For his part, he thought one final single malt, but now it was… he looked up – Seven minutes away – even that didn’t seem to be enough to cap a life, even if well lived, then not as long as he had hoped.
Zit had taken the seat on Ray’s left. His spouse had disappeared, presumably to change her outfit. That was always going to be Cilla’s dilemma: what to wear at the very end. ‘Somehow it seems necessary to make a show of it,’ she’d said after the science community had confirmed that, indeed, the messages everyone had received from the self proclaimed ‘GodDude’ were consistent with the biblical timeline that placed 17th February as the last day of everything.
Zit was wittering. Ray couldn’t really blame him. He’d been promised a raise come April and it didn’t looked likely he’d collect. But if Zit wittering was understandable, Ray wasn’t going listen. Oh no, no more Mr Polite Guy.
He stood, dropped his napkin on his dessert plate – no point complaining the waiting staff hadn’t cleared away, given the circs – picked up his tumbler of scotch and headed for the railing to stare out of the time bubble across the abyss. The moon clock sat above the edge of the bubble. One other person, a man of indeterminate years wearing a leprechaun outfit leant against the railings. He glanced at Ray and lifted his own glass. ‘sláinte.’ Ray nodded and turned his gaze to the future.
It wasn’t really surprising that few of the punters wanted to take advantage of the clever piece of technology that allowed them to see into the very near future, when it was confidently predicted that future would contain absolutely nothing. But Ray had a hankering to see how it was going to end. He was prepared to risk the spoiler and the disappointment. He may even have time to find Zit and tell him if he’d won or lost his bet.
Ray let his eyes adjust. The clock said two minutes and the time bubble gave you two minutes of prior notice. He was conscious his companion was focused on the skin of the bubble too.
As they watched, the impenetrable blackness of the sky began to fill with a cavernous opening, some sort of ridged black hole, only this one was evidentially brown. It had a sort of superficial familiarity to it which Ray couldn’t quite place… He became conscious that his companion was laughing; silently and impassively but the shaking shoulders and tears definitely connoted laughter.
He turned to Ray. ‘Do you see? Do you get it?’
Ray shook his head.
The leprechaun held his sides. ‘It’s a giant anus and… Yes!’
Ray looked back at the bubble. It was all now clear. He turned back to the room. With less than a minute to go, couples were copulating, consuming and crying but none were laughing. None apart from his Irish colleague got the joke.
A green arm snaked round Ray’s shoulders. ‘It proves one thing,’ the man said. ‘God has to be a Catholic. Geez which other Supreme Being would tell you how everything would end and no one work it out.’
Ray nodded and looked at the huge sign over the dance floor.
ESCHATON
That is exactly what was about to happen and history, if there was any, would record we were warned. When asked how did it all end, there it was….
E shat on bloody everything.
TanGental 
I think, for this supremely magnificent account, you should be awarded a prize befitting the occasion. Since the garden will require a helping hand to get back to its normal splendour here is your reward.
💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩
I love “oleaginous” by the way!
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Oh I’ve pooper-scooped the turd lottery!!
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It happens!
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I shall build a special shelf for them…
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I can’t imagine what you will name the shelf!
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Probably best not go there
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I’ll leave you to do the dusting!
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Yes probably wise
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Brilliant?!
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I take time to come read your posts and you reward me with this awful buildup to a crappy pun? 😄
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You asked who liked a good pun and since all mine are cheesy and shallow I didn’t feel I could answer honestly. Though admit it, it is good to remember why you took a break when this is the sort of rubbish you’ve been reading. Good to have you back with your cheer leading, positive affirmation and constructive 😇
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That’s me: a beacon of encouragement!
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Worthy of Muir and Norden in ‘My Word’ . . . and in my view that is a serious compliment.
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Indeed they were nearly peerless. Did they script Round the Horne?
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No, not them. The origan ‘Beyond our Ken’ was written by Eric Merriman, and ‘Round the Horne’ was Barry Took and Marty Feldman,
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Ah of course. Such geniuses… geniae?.. clever sods anyway…
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Like Zit, I’m withering…
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I bet… 100F plus yet?
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As soon as I saw eschaton, even though I didn’t know its pronunciation I just knew you would do something with it. And you made us wait. Well done
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Are there no bounds to your abilities to eek out puns from the prompt words Geoff? I will assume you are of vocabularic expertise that reaching for, what I imagine a few will resort to, a dictionary of WTF does that one mean?
Out of interest is this intended to be a galactic end or just one toiletary arm of the universe…namely earth? If just Earth then perhaps a quirky reference to Tesla stock or some future entrepreneur watching from Mars might have found some mirth at observing the worlds end…which I think occurred in Letchworth…at least when I had my car serviced there it’s what the tourist info stated. Odd really as I could swear one of the pubs was merely a small book shop.
I digress… bravo once again at eking out mirth in the face of… well I think the puns upon that aspect have already been used up…
Of course it could all be alien conspiracy theory. According to Georgio et al. Civilisations have been trounced many times through intergalactic visitors. Of course there’s always the Vogon route too….
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I suspect there are a few garages which are portals to the end of all known civilizations. I must saw the idea that we’d go and that man Musk would still be enjoying a kale and ego smoothie is beyond galling. Though there probably isn’t a stables, Augean or otherwise that is capable of generating the sh*t needed to cover his self satisfactory smirking.
Perhaps therefore expiring while in a state of rapture having listened to a Vogon epic sonnet on the joys of the experiencing the annual acne harvest would be best… thank you for providing me with the opportunity to utterly ruin a delightful word, one which I will find uses for in future contributions to literature.
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I’m sure somewhere in the Vastness of Creation Robert Sheckley is nodding approval on this clever and comical piece.
The concept that there would be bets running even on this, that still has me chuckling.
(And lots of ‘Why didn’t think of something like that’ moments- which paradoxically- is why I never read submission until after the due date)
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Thank you… goodness knows where these come from but I’m glad they turn up, looking for a home.
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Always welcome in those ideas and notions that drift in and decide to settle.
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Definitely not an end I ever imagined. Zit was sort of the anchor of realism in this story – probably everybody knows somebody like him. And for some reason the February 17th date brought to mind the December 21st date of whatever year that was when some people thought the Mayan calendar was predicting the end. Thus I wondered if the end in this story was also going to prove to be false, but turned out it was actually up in the sky getting ready to dump on the characters. Of course an Irishman would find that amusing…!
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If only you can find an Irishperson when you need one! Thanks
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