My daughter coos from her carseat as I drive into a sky full of fire. It’s most noticeable at sunset, this phenomenon. This funeral. This end of the world. At sunset, the solar flares look closer, demonic. 
     Softly, softly, my daughter sings “Hey, Jude.” She gets the words wrong but has the melody right. I glance briefly in the mirror. Her song is muffled by the paper breathing mask that covers her mouth and nose. They say one deep, unprotected breath is akin to smoking seventy cigarettes. What does it matter anymore? If we inhale fumes and smoke and our burning atmosphere? In case we all survive. In case we aren’t devoured. In case.
     I glance back again. She’s gently twisting a toy around and around in her hands. Some lump of multi-colored plastic that will be cast into the furnace of the sun, soon, to become nothing but a brief noxious smell among many. To be perceived by no one, because we’ll all be burning, too.
     We’re five minutes from home. Five minutes. 
     I shift beneath my seatbelt, and wonder if it's necessary anymore. Safety belts for worst case scenarios, and aren’t we already living the worst case scenario? In case, in case.
     I turn on the radio—something I hadn’t listened to much since my childhood, and it’s set to an AM station to boot.  The radio has become an ever present figure in our lives. It speaks truths and it fear-mongers. It feeds information and it drowns out the constant screaming in my head.
     “—at the International Summit, today. Scientists believe they are closer to understanding the cause of the phenomenon but no closer to proposing a solution of significance. 
     “Dr. Brutka-Ostrovsky, of Russia’s Roscosmos State Corporation for Space Activities, has one theory that may hold some water, if seemingly outlandish. ‘These extreme solar flares,’ Dr Brutka-Ostrovsky explains, ‘are a deviant result of—’”
     I kill the radio. I don’t kill it; I quell it. I’m remiss to use the hyperbolic extremist phrases I’ve been accustomed to saying my whole life. The roads are dead/the roads are empty. The other day, my husband used the phrase, “Blood is thicker than water,” and it made my skin crawl. I don’t want to think about blood. I think of blood, and I think of the blood in my daughter’s veins, the little blue vines up her arms. I think of blood, and I picture it evaporating and her body combusting and her eyes wide with terror and then cooked. Cooked in her own head like a goddamn microwave. I want none of this. No blood. No death. No solar flares. No thank you. The screaming in my head returns.
     In the back seat, she mumbles the part she likes best over and over: “Nah nah nah nah nah...”
     The sun in the sky is no longer a sphere. It looks like Jupiter—wide with flaming rings and spots visible to our human eyes. Every now and then, it erupts, like a volcano without gravity, and the world shakes, and the sky hisses. And on the ground, we scream.
     I pull into our driveway, like any other day. Like no other day. I park the hatchback in the garage. If I leave it in the driveway, it will get covered in black ash so thick, I’ll have to take snow-scraper to the windshield and devote several minutes to the task. Minutes are valuable in the end. Perhaps they were always valuable, but I’m aware of their currency now. 
     I park next to my husband’s truck, get out, and unbuckle the little one.
     “Momma,” she says pointing out to the street because the garage door is still open. “Look.” The sky snows, snows. Ash and burning bits of paper and shit.
     “I see it,” I say and I stroke her little head as I cradle her to me. 
     Inside, my husband’s typing on his computer.
     “Hey,” he calls as we walk in. “That was fast.” 
     I set our daughter down, and she toddles off singing, “Nah nah nah nah,” over and over.
     “We couldn’t go.”
     “Why?” He closes his laptop and rubs his eyes.
     “The Gymboree teacher committed suicide. So… no Gymboree class.”
     “Jesus.”
     “Were you working?”
     “Yeah.”
     “What could people possibly be calling you about?”
     “Not their warranties, that’s for damn sure. Evidently customer service in the end times equates to dial-a-therapist.” He shrugs.
     I curl up next to him on the couch and put my head on his shoulder. I breathe in his scent, all man and adrenaline.
     He can’t fix this. Nobody can.
     Our daughter brings us one of her toys, a little plastic thing that sings and talks and makes educational sounds. She pushes a button, and the speakers squeal like a firework. I take the cursed thing and throw it at the wall. It bursts into pieces.
     “What the hell?” my husband asks.
     Our daughter looks at me with broken, distrusting eyes.
     “I can’t. I can’t.” I fight the urge to hyperventilate. No fire. No fireworks. No explosions.
She cries, and I pick her up and put her between us. I apologize and stroke her head and he kisses her big baby cheeks.  
     I’m broken. We’re all broken. We’re all broken and waiting, waiting. 
     That’s the thing they didn’t tell us about the end of the world: it doesn’t come easy, doesn’t come fast. We have to wait as our fate is dangled before us like a terrible, rotten carrot. We go to work, because we still need money to feed ourselves and our families, and damn the sky full of fire and the bleeding clouds and the slow suicides of everyone we know. Nine to five, nine to five. All the minutes—hundreds of minutes—wasted away from the only things I care about.
     We drive our safe vehicles down streets of looted storefronts and order our necessities online, praying they will still get delivered. Sometimes they do. The man who drives the delivery truck has a family at home he, too, needs to feed.
     And the Gymboree teacher. She was fit and virile, and I envied her energy in my two-years past postpartum body. But she was weak, in the end, and couldn’t face the fear. Perhaps she was stronger than I am, braver to end it all quickly and quietly and by her own hand. I am weak and waiting.
     I am weak and I work and I wait.
     And the UPS driver delivers my goods.
     And my daughter sings “Hey, Jude” and “Octopus’s Garden” and “Yellow Submarine.”
     And my husband talks to customers on the phone about everything but their warranties.
     Outside, the sky screams and somewhere, something crashes and rumbles the earth.
     We wince and brace ourselves. Every time, every time is the last. There’s a panic stricken moment, every time. We dare to breathe. We tremble with the earth. He looks at me over our daughter’s little head. His eyes are mirrors. We are waiting and tearful, and so, so afraid.
     There is no peace. There is no God. No rapture. Just the screaming in my head and the minutes I count.
     “Hey, Jude” and Amazon delivered fruit cups.
     Him and her and the space we try to rid between us.