THE APOCALYPSE

Shadows fast fowarded over me as the sun rose and set while I stood within the deserted atrium of the restaurant.  The number of dead inside the television grew larger with each passing day.  My work, my trade, the only thing I knew how to do- was reduced to rubble because of a perverse fear of dying that permeated the air outside.  People were afraid to eat out anymore, and for what?  They might be blown up or something?  That could happen while I, of all things, watched television.  I could pack up my wife and son, and take them to a place I believed was safe, but where might that be?  Even if I found a place boasting shelter from the swirling, unpleasant expectations of danger floating about, I suspected there were only a few people free from the anxiety of it all.  I suspected finding sanity among any patrons for my own peace of mind would be like finding needles embedded in shag carpets.  At the restaurant, there were no more parties to take control of, and even no one to scold for bringing in the fear of living life to my tables.  There was just no one at all.  I stood apart and alone, in perfect uniform, with arms folded behind me in the middle of my section for no one to see and for no one to hear.  I stood silent all the days that the sun passed over me, and when dusk settled on the parched horizon each night, I sat down to fold a small number of napkins while listening to soft music being piped in overhead.  Night after solemn night, I watched very few people hurrying about on the streets.  I saw an uncertainty on blurred faces yearning for a sign that said it was okay to go back to living in a vacuum.  There was a time when the air I breathed was only that of the business, and as I stood encased within walls I myself constructed to hide from the outside world and to keep people away, dread filled me because I knew nothing would or could ever stay the same.  As days passed, I recognized how I had felt so safe being oblivious to the world outside any establishment I labored in at the time, that exact same world which showed so much apprehension toward me as I walked the streets to my car only to get home.  All at once, I realized how I had lived for years with no friends and no enemies, standing in a solitary place carved out for me by the business itself.  After Samantha, I had even tried for a time never to be hurt in love by not getting into it- though I knew somehow pain was inevitable as I would in time have to at least like my own self before running after someone else, and up until then, he was someone I had met only in passing.

Gone in a flash were the salad days when a full dining room was expected each night- even Potomac Knolls had its moments.   Gone were times when joyous people were the norm- drinking, laughing and celebrating their friends.  It amused and sometimes bored me in those days to see the wistful loudmouths occupying my tables who came to believe their idle chatter would eventually save the world after drinking bottles of Pinot Grigio.  Oh what I would not have given to have those arrogant types at my tables again with their pockets full, spewing out their myopic views of why might made right.