The Worst Ending to a Story

Corwyn Green (1998)

to Kilgore Trout, of course

There were unicorns in the street. They were as beautiful as a supermodels, as sparkling as the infamous a cubic zirconia, and as white as a newborn star. Another mythical creature flew overhead: the blackest dragon in the universe. The scales were so black they were invisible in the dark, and so polished they could reflect a supernova without diminishing its brilliance..

The unicorns, which had materialized in the middle of a busy street, were causing many traffic accidents, which, for some odd reason, weren't fatal. A thin, attractive woman shrieked: “I'll sue! My lawyer will prosecute every damn one of those wizards responsible!” Mercifully, the dragon took a dump on her.

Alane woke up breathing hard. She drank in the small, grey room. This was the room where she lived and worked. All her needs and wants were cared for by machines built into the very walls of the room. The room had no door. Instead, she had virtual reality. For once, she found comfort in it sameness, even as she wished to return to the fantastic land of her dreams. She didn't like dreams that strange.

Alane wondered if her dreams showed some mental disturbance. She seemed to be creating strange worlds to compensate for the normalcy of her own. She would go to the psychiatric computer and have her brain re-aligned tomorrow morning, but for now, she just made herself a cup of coffee. The room was grey, the cup was grey, and the coffee was…piss?

Alane woke up, in a room surrounded by photographs. She has slept with all the boys that had posed for her camera, and she kept their pictures like trophies, all to prove that she wasn't that creature called a “looser”. She didn't know that the reason she got bored with men so quickly was that she was incapable of having any real relationship. She couldn't disclose what was in her soul because she didn't know what it was, and she even more blind to other people.

The idea that she preferred the grey-room of her dream drifted across the surface of her mind. She thought it would be interesting to live in a small world that was all grey.

She was so bored with her life that she actually wanted to live in a small world that was all grey.

Alane woke up – this time it was because her radio alarm-clock starting up. She wished she could wake up just one without an alarm – lazily, like she had dreamed she woke up. Her clock/radio was playing “life is but a dream”. Odd–it should have been playing pop music…

Alane woke up, and she was dreaming with God.

Alane woke up, and there was nothing in the world except the whiteness of a blank page…

Alane woke up and there was nothing…

And Alane woke up.