Sudden Prose Reprints: "This Is the End" by Suzannah Evans

This Is the End   

It's 1999 and we're rehearsing the school play – a devised piece set at the end of the world, in a motel run by the devil. Surely some revelation is at hand shouts Mr Maxwell, millennial prophet and head of Theatre Studies. We shout back Surely the second coming is at hand. Because this is the West Midlands we pronounce it Shirley.

The performance date is after the predicted apocalypse so no-one's made much effort with their lines. Mr M makes us sit in the gym with the lights off and listen to The End by the Doors. Theatre doesn't last forever, he says, like life. We sit cross-legged on the polished floor while he paces between us, grinning in the dark.

            *

In the early hours of New Years' Day, unsteady with alcopops, we watch the firework display from the bridge and make our elaborate plans for the year ahead.

The play gets mixed reviews from both staff and students and Lucifer goes back to his life as a sixth-former named Gareth. We patch and cut the costumes into something else, ready for next term's Midsummer Night's Dream.  

Sometimes now I hear that song and remember how it felt to live under that weight of danger, how I carried those words with me all winter, as ice laced itself over the pavements, as I walked home under the viaduct and the sky lowered itself over everything.


Suzannah Evans
Near Future (Nine Arches, 2018)