E : END OF ALL TIME

               THE END OF ALL TIME

   The sky roiled and rumbled. People gathered in the streets to watch. Some turned their heads away, knowing their own doom and unable to watch.
   Suddenly a loud clap preceeded the outpouring of demons from the dark clouds. People ran for cover, as the demons tore into the crowd, rending the bodies into piles of rotting meat, attended by flies.
   People banded together for protection, hoping the crowd would protect the individual.
   Opposing forces met to discuss strategy, but secretly they were gathering information on the other's firepower to use it against them.
   Babies were killed for making any sound that might attract the demons-- but they never actually went for innocent babes.
Motherswailed their misery and were then destroyed in the frenzy of the maddened crowd. Old people and children were thrown in the open to appease the beasts, but died of starvation and cruelty of their own kind before becoming more dead flesh.
   Still the demons came. People kept running in mass exodus from where they'd last congregated, leaving the weak to be devoured.
   Finally someone suggested that the demons were attracted to violence, and all became quiet. They tried to become kindly, which confused the demons and hid the humans from their radar for a short while.
   But such a thing could not last. A random cruelty set off a chain reaction and it led to the full destruction of the family of man. Husbands and wives divorced in the night and cleaved to another. Siblings could not contain their rivalry; long held prejudices bloomed into hate.
   The demons scoured the earth for any stragglers but were met by silence everywhere they went. Finally they flew back into the dark clouds to rest into the eternity of peace. Man would no longer disturb them with their turmoil.
   Humans had bonded together in the selfish hope that the group strength would protect their own individual selves-- but all they had to do was be kind to each other to remain unseen by the demons, who were drawn to their own kind. Unfortunately, man no longer had the milk of human kindness in their hearts.
   The earth wept many tears to clean the debris left in the wake of man's race to escape the Garden of Eden. Then it rested.
   God turned his head and wept.
                         THE END
     -- Shayla Kwiatkowski, 2012

     This very short story was available on Amazon for awhile, but I have removed it to put it on my blog. It was written as a short kamikaze commercial break for people to stop and think.