365 Creative Writing Prompts: Smoke, Fog, and Haze

I thought the world would end with a bright light and a loud explosion. I thought the streets would fill with blood and the seas would heave over their shores and bullets would rain from the sky. I thought the horsemen of the apocalypse would trample the panicked masses. War. Conquest. Famine. Death. I read about it all in the Bible.

It didn't mention what would happen first.

First the bees disappeared. One by one, barely noticed, killed by pesticides and deforestation. Then the flowers shriveled up and the grass refused to turn green. Spring never came, but March stormed in like a lion anyway. Dry, rainless storms hounded the brittle landscape. Lightning ignited fires. The world sat in smoke and the wind stopped blowing.

We didn't see the horsemen when they arrived. They rode about on empty streets, cutting paths through the listless haze and crying out for terror. No one responded. No one was afraid.

We had already died. Slowly.