We never knew it would end like this. When I was a child, people predicted that it would be a violent end. We were told that Mankind would show itself to be ultimately savage, with brother fighting brother till the very end. They said we'd blow ourselves up. But it didn't happen that way; there was hardly a whimper and there was dancing. There was just a lot of dancing and shit.
My town of St. Odilia was a thriving, busy place as I remember it as a child. Huge trucks roaring with cut timber and juggernauts loaded with crude oil made the whole place vibrate with industry. The paper mill and the chicken hatchery employed thousands. It was well far from the hell that it is now. They say that most of the buildings were rock and metal back then, not the cardboard and rotting wood used nowadays. I just remember the sprawling acres of businesses with their around-the-clock bright lights as you traveled down the highway. When I go down the main road today, it feels more like a Hollywood set from a disaster movie than a real town. The older buildings made with their rusted and rotting materials contrast greatly with the buildings constructed of whatever solid debris that could be found, including old twisted signage and sections of other ruined buildings of the past. Since nobody cares enough to create new materials, people have gone to using whatever can be found and salvaged for shelter and everything else. Nothing looks clean and shiny new like I remember. Everything has a stain of the past on it. Burned edges and scorch marks are taken as everyday beauty marks now. I say "beauty mark", more like a mole that everyone notices but no one wants to talk about.
Everybody just waits nowadays. Nobody really works anymore; the lush economy tanked years ago. What is there to work for? Pride? Garbage? For a brief period there were those few that had always been that go-getter-type walking around collecting bottles and cans, or trying to form committees to fix or change something, but how do you fix junk? I myself called it crazy. They seemed to have the attitude that if they stop, everything will really end - too late, you idiots. We, those who just wait, watch them twitter about talking to themselves, ignoring the reality of what is the truth. Eventually, they gave up too.
The only ones nowadays that seem to have any true direction are the members of the Dancing Tribe - young and youngish men and women, traveling around acting like what my mother used to call "heathens". Most only wear loose brightly-patterned pants tied around their waists, usually baring their naked chests to the world. With all that long hair tossed about or blowing in the wind, I can hardly tell any difference between boys and girls, except for the big titties. They just dance together or alone out in the open or down the old streets, usually in something like a trance. Even now, people still laugh while saying things like, "they just don't give a fuck about propriety".
I remember when it started, and that young guy announced that he and his youthful friends would "dance while the world around us falls or until changes were made, whichever comes first. But something has to be done." Nothing else had worked up to that point. People had protested. People had gotten angry. People had risen up. People had died. But the Powers That Were had already secured our future and by doing so, they dismissed it all. By this point, no one really seemed to care anymore...except for the Dancing Tribe.
They had started as a way to get people's attention about what was happening around us. This guy and his buddies had tapped into the communications grid and sent messages for groups to meet and to protest. They pleaded, they tried to coax. When no one listened to them, that's when they started to just simply dance. Some thought it was the most ridiculous thing ever conceived. It was ridiculed as new-age hippie Mother Nature nonsense. Some called it sinful, demonic even. When they started to dance across the land, they began to have some people join them. There was nothing else that could be done, it was actually too late. Just silliness, the world thought.
Back when the Powers That Were announced that The End was finally here, nobody cried. They just gathered up and made do until their time came. Oh, occasionally there were those who would scream and bellow, shouting prayers to the poetic ominous grey clouds. Or those who would go on a rampage killing whomever or whatever in their path. Or those who quietly thought they knew the answer and then vanished into the mist never to be seen again. Most of those who acted out or gnashed their teeth were those who had done nothing when they had a real chance of changing things. They weren't mourned.
Now just these dancing beautiful young people travel the countryside, dancing among the last remnants of our civilization. They used to make me mad. I don't know if it was jealousy or grief; but nowadays, I always give a little clap when I see a roving band dance into town. The beauty of their beautiful half-naked sweaty bodies, their silly wide grins. To me, they were the only beautiful things left in this dying world. Mrs. Green usually thumped my head when I did my little cheer. She was visited by a young woman with fiery red hair wearing brightly-colored pants and a loose-hanging shawl the last time this Tribe danced into town; now she's long gone and regulated to the past.
The last time they danced down the street, they only talked to a few of the sickest older folks. "Dance on," I yelled to them inside my head, as I pulled my old blanket tighter to me.
This time, a young long-haired guy caught me looking at him and smiled at me. God, he was so beautiful with his tight muscled body, his loose pants falling low on his tight hips. He walked toward me with a big wide smile, pushing back a curly lock to get a better look. He cocked his curly head to the side, and started to reach into a pocket of his pants. He leaned toward me.
