What if the World Ended? - Episode 2

What If the World Ended, But You Slept Through It?

One moment, you're napping. The next, you're the last one left.

It starts like any other lazy morning.
You overslept. No big deal. You roll over, grab your phone, and frown when the screen stays black. You tap the power button. Nothing. No glowing icons. No buzzing notifications. Not even the time.

Weird.

You shuffle out of bed, wander into the kitchen, try the lights. Dead. The fridge hum is gone. The clock on the oven is blank. Outside, there’s no traffic. No kids walking to school. No dogs barking. No planes overhead.

Just silence.

Not the peaceful kind. The wrong kind.

You Weren’t Meant to Sleep Through the End

There’s no explosion. No earthquake. No epic showdown. Just... absence. No notes. No fires. No blood. Just a still world that feels like it exhaled and never breathed in again.

You step outside. Your neighborhood looks exactly the same—except for one thing. No people. No movement. Not even wind in the trees.

The world ended.
And you missed it.

What Now?

You’re not even sure what “ended” means anymore. There’s no wreckage. No mushroom clouds. Maybe something biological. Maybe something cosmic. Maybe something no one understood.

You check houses. Cars. Gas stations. Everyone’s gone, or they were never there to begin with. You call out. Nothing answers. The only thing alive is the ache in your chest and the question ringing through your skull:

Why you?

The Loneliness Isn’t Immediate—It Creeps In

At first, it’s surreal. You half-expect a camera crew to jump out. You wait for a rescue team. For a neighbor to step outside rubbing their eyes, asking what the hell is going on.

But no one comes.
The quiet becomes deafening. The silence stretches into hours, then days.

You stop checking your phone. Stop shouting. You talk to yourself just to hear another voice. You start writing in notebooks because it feels like you should do something. Even if no one will ever read it.

Grief Without a Target

There’s no closure. No graves. No answers. You’re grieving a world that didn’t say goodbye. You didn’t get to tell your parents you loved them. You didn’t get to hug your best friend. You didn’t even get to panic with everyone else.

You slept through it.
And now you live in the after.

A Strange Kind of Freedom

After a while, the pain shifts. You learn to drive a different car every day just because you can. You raid bookstores. You read by candlelight. You sleep on rooftops. You make playlists in your head. You talk out loud to ghosts.

Some days, you cry for hours.
Other days, you laugh at nothing.

There’s no one to judge you. No clock to obey. No system to follow. The world, for all its emptiness, is yours now.

Would You Want to Wake Up?

If it happened to you—if the world ended and you slept through it—would it feel like a punishment? Or a second chance?

Would you search for survivors, or would you stop hoping?

Would you carry the weight of memory?
Or start fresh, unburdened?

In a strange way, the quiet holds a mirror up. In it, you see what really mattered—who you wish you had held tighter, called sooner, forgiven faster.

Because if the world ends while you're sleeping, all you're left with is who you were before.

And who you'll become after.

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