Goodbye,

Over the next year I will be posting work from my creative writing degree, as short snippets to show the varied work I can do. Today we start off with some short pieces of prose, titled goodbye. A missed bus and the worlds end.

Goodbye
I wish I had said goodbye. Such a simple phrase, common, flippant, important. You never know the last goodbye until you ponder, weeks later, when the last time you said it to someone you love.
The worst realisation is knowing you never said it at all. What was it that stopped you? An argument, lack of time or simple expectation that another hello was just around the corner. The questions can become a torture. The questions are nothing. We cannot predict the turn of the earth, the subtle coincidences that cause a life to end. This is not our place. We can just hope, that every goodbye is not the last and that, even if it is unsaid, it is meant.

A missed bus.
For the first time ever, John had missed the bus. He was a punctual man, neat, a man of responsibility. No button was out of place, no second wasted. Well, that was what he was meant to be. A simple switch not pressed, an alarm missed and a rush that made him forget to tuck in his tie. The bus was long gone by the time he arrived at the stop.
Panting he stared at the sign while song birds mocked him from the trees above. Twenty minutes to the next bus. He would arrive on time but no morning coffee. No five minutes schmoozing the boss, greasing the wheels of future progression. What opportunities would these twenty minutes cost him.


The Worlds End.
It was no use pretending. The world was ending. The war was the lost, the last remnants of the army held up in small battlefields, waiting for the final wave to sweep them all away. Oliver waded through fields of ruined machines of war and corpses left to the carrion. Not all were human. The shapes of the alien invaders littered the field also. There victories were in vain. For every beast slain five more seemed to reign from the sky. Oliver dropped to the floor among the dead while a ship soared over head, a scout searching for any sign of life. It swiftly passed and Oliver stood. For another day, he had survived.