Too Many Musings of the Apocalypse

It's been a long three weeks! As someone who devoured dystopian novels circa 2010-2012, Vocal's Doomsday Diary challenges—in partnership with Unbound—seemed right up my alley. I managed to scour my ideas and write 20 short stories of varying apocalyptic scenarios. (And, yes, I had to call back a few for edits because I forget to include the heart-shaped locket, the key detail required for all entries.)

While dystopias may not be your thing, I hope you find something on this list to read and enjoy. I did cater to my own personal tastes when it comes to dystopias, but you still may find something that calls to your reader's heart.

The good thing? At least we're not living any of these scenarios ourselves...at least not yet.

1. "Kissing Her at the End of the World"

Which sub-genre? Dystopian

Why did I write it? I wanted to capture the feeling of the dystopian YA boom from the early 2010's, even without making an intricate society to justify what was happening to these two teens and their futures. There's the impression here that, many times, things happen out of our control, whether we like it or not, and we just have to "roll with the punches," as the saying goes.

2. "In the Cage of a Dream's Lament"

Which sub-genre? Science fiction

Why did I write it? One of the best premises I've ever come across was The Matrix, though I don't care for the movie as a whole itself. I like the idea of realities within realities, to the point that we don't know if we're living true lives or just a dream implanted in our brains. What if everything you thought you knew was a lie? And so I went from there.

3. "Save Your Last Breath"

Which sub-genre? Post-apocalyptic

Why did I write it? I like reading pseudo-historical accounts in dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction (the ending of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale is one example). While I'm far from an academic, I wondered if people in the future will be studying things like social media posts and the like in classroom settings. Here, the writings being studied are from a girl who lived while the earth was dying and people were fleeing on spacecraft for new homes. Oddly enough, the story comes away being far less depressing than some of my other entries were...

4. "All Your Promises Meant Nothing"

Which sub-genre? Post-apocalyptic

Why did I write it? I love the film I Am Legend, starring Will Smith. To me, it's just a really well-done post-apocalyptic story that tugs at all the right heartstrings. My goal with this story was to see if I could capture some of those same beats in a tale about a girl who lives in a bunker and dreads going out into a world overcome by zombies. Though the ending leaves her story unfinished—with a new beginning to traverse—I think what I most wanted to capture was the heroine's resilience in the face of so many tragedies.

5. "Say Goodbye to Happy Endings"

Which sub-genre? Science fiction

Why did I write it? There's a science fiction franchise called Appleseed where the heroine's boyfriend becomes a cyborg—yet I never really understood how the emotional turmoil wasn't a real gripping part of the story. Wouldn't the woman be traumatized to see her significant other in such a state? Wouldn't she view that person in a different light? What real emotional responses would there be in such a situation? Thus, this story was born.

6. "Acid Rain"

Which sub-genre? Dystopian

Why did I write it? This was born of too many moments wondering how couples fared during the pandemic lockdowns when you could only leave your home for necessities. I didn't want to tackle a pandemic—not in this story, at least—but I figured an influx of toxic acid rain would make it where you couldn't go outside easily. Even so, I wanted to imbue some humor into a bad situation, and that's how this story came to be.

7. "Bow Down to Your New Feline Overlords"

Which sub-genre? Dystopian

Why did I write it? You mean cats haven't taken over the world yet? But they're everywhere...and they go viral more than people do. If that's not a sign of world domination, I don't know what is.

8. "In Full Suspension"

Which sub-genre? Science fiction

Why did I write it? I had this image of a girl suspended in a tube of plasma, her eyes closed and sensors attached all over her body. I wanted to know her story, at least a portion of it, even though there wasn't enough word space to get into all the details surrounding her journey. There are still a lot of unanswered questions, but I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. The book isn't closed yet on this one.

9. "The Grave Mistress"

Which sub-genre? Post-apocalyptic

Why did I write it? I wanted a "quiet" zombie story that felt a step away from a fantasy world. I also like the idea of "security" staked out at graveyards to take down any undead threats before they have a chance to go out into the world and cause chaos. It would be an interesting role to have, I think, especially with all the nuances that come with the burden of it.

10. "The World That No Longer Glitters"

Which sub-genre? Post-apocalyptic

Why did I write it? This is one of my fears: that, one day, I will be left behind on a dying planet earth as the few who can afford it go off into space for new lives to lead. Writing from that kind of mind-set, I found it far too easy to delve into the melancholy of such a situation. And there's no escape, no hope, just the observation of spaceships leaving without you—leaving you to an end you don't want to experience.

11. "Bury Me in the Garden Where Roses Once Bloomed"

Which sub-genre? Post-apocalyptic

Why did I write it? Of course I had to write a pandemic story. We all experienced our own "doomsday" worries in 2020, and I had to let that vein bleed in this story. Though the sickness here is vague, you do get glimpses of how it has affected everyday life. I also wanted to write a love story without outright explaining or alluding that it was one. Thaniel and Quent deserved better than to live during an apocalypse.

12. "Our Secret Hideaway"

Which sub-genre? Dystopian

Why did I write it? At first, I wanted to write about an abandoned art gallery where two lovers meet to hide their affair from the dying world outside—but, as I started writing, I was introduced to little Baroque that is just a town people pass through as they migrate from worse-off areas. Cadence and Malachi have a long road ahead of them, and I wonder what would happen if they did decide to depart Baroque once and for all...

13. "Paradigm"

Which sub-genre? Post-apocalyptic

Why did I write it? I wanted to write about a zombie girl without that fact being revealed until the very end. It's quiet story, as most of mine are, but I wanted to convey a sense of loneliness edged with desperation. Isolde's story is another that's not really over, and I imagine she has many more adventures ahead of her than she thinks.

14. "The Only One Left Standing"

Which sub-genre? Post-apocalyptic

Why did I write it? I know there are so many stories about men left at the end of the world, but I wanted to try my hand at one. Thus came Gene and his little farmhouse. I still wonder what happened to the chickens at the beginning. Gene didn't know, and so I didn't either. One of life's mysteries, I guess.

15. "Unplugged"

Which sub-genre? Science fiction

Why did I write it? This was actually another take on ideas I originally had for a story I wrote months ago called "The Seventh Sense"—though I explored from a different angle the idea of being "plugged into" an experience through your mind alone. I thought the "dystopic" part came from the fact that people couldn't pull themselves away from the virtual reality to live out what remained of their real lives. I see some shades of that in our own current world with the internet and social media.

16. "The Aftermath"

Which sub-genre? Post-apocalyptic

Why did I write it? I wondered about a world where "tech" was seen as the true perversion of the human race, and thus I got to explore Reeve's world seen through the gaze of a "mech" eye that left her apart from her mother and sister. But I think she gets a pretty happy ending for a post-apocalyptic world, all things considered.

17. "The Girl in the Machine"

Which sub-genre? Science fiction

Why did I write it? I loved movies like Bicentennial Man and A.I. Artificial Intelligence, so this was my take on what my version of an "A.I. robot" would be. She so wants to be a human that she hoards personality chips to make the humans like her, but in this case...it backfires on her. And you see both negative and positive aspects of what it might mean for robots to be more human than not.

18. "All Your Heroes Are Dead"

Which sub-genre? Post-apocalyptic

Why did I write it? I wanted to write about a man who was regretting things, some things he had control over and some he did not, after a traumatic experience. I wrote this in such a way that I wanted it to be a letter found by someone in the future, not knowing quite then that they had found someone's last words on a dying planet. It's sad, no doubt about it, but it's also real in the sense that this could very well happen to some degree in the future.

19. "Pretend It's Just Another Day"

Which sub-genre? Post-apocalyptic

Why did I write it? This started off as a riff off some elements of The Road by Cormac McCarthy—but it's a mother and daughter instead of a father and son. The island is both a sanctuary and a prison. The mystery of the bombs is an eerie element that makes you wonder just how long the mother and daughter can survive in their microcosmic world. I left it open-ended on purpose so that you could take up the story thread yourself and decide what happened after that last bomb fall.

20. "A Matter of Affinity"

Which sub-genre? Dystopian

Why did I write it? I actually don't think this story is too far off from reality. We expect our high school graduates to know what they want to do with their lives, and they then undergo four (or more) years of "training"—only to realize that it is likely not enough to secure a career right out of the gate. So many expectations fall on young people, and anxiety and depression plague them as they go through these trials of academics for a reward that may not come by the end. In this story, Amara is the perfect student, but that doesn't mean it's as simple as being assigned her Affinity and going on with her life. It's a lot more complicated than that.

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And there you have it! Those are my twenty entries to the Doomsday Diary challenge. If you found any of these stories interesting, feel free to leave a heart on the ones you liked.

Good luck to everyone else who wrote their wildest dystopian/post-apocalyptic scenarios for this challenge! I'll be reading more for sure myself, and let's hope the next Vocal fiction challenge is just as immersive and fun for all of us!