by Ray Bradbury
Ray Douglas Bradbury (1920-2012) was
an American fantasy, science fiction, horror and mystery fiction writer.
He was best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and for
the science fiction and horror stories gathered together as The Martian
Chronicles (1950) and The Illustrated Man (1951). Bradbury was one
of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers. Many of Bradbury's works
have been adapted into comic books, television shows, and films.
This story was originally published
in the February 1951 issue of Esquire magazine
" What would you do if you knew this was the last night of
the world?"
"What would I do; you mean,
seriously?"
"Yes, seriously."
"I don't know — I hadn't thought. She turned the handle of the silver
coffeepot toward him and placed the two cups in their saucers.
He poured some coffee. In the background, the two small girls were playing
blocks on the parlor rug in the light of the green hurricane lamps. There was
an easy, clean aroma of brewed coffee in the evening air.
"Well, better start thinking about it," he said.
"You don't mean it?" said his wife.
He nodded.
"A war?"
He shook his head.
"Not the hydrogen or atom bomb?"
"No."
"Or germ warfare?"
"None of those at all," he said, stirring his coffee slowly and
staring into its black depths. "But just the closing of a book, let's
say."
"I don't think I understand."
"No, nor do I really. It's just a feeling; sometimes it frightens me,
sometimes I'm not frightened at all — but peaceful." He glanced in at the
girls and their yellow hair shining in the bright lamplight, and lowered his
voice. "I didn't say anything to you. It first happened about four nights
ago."
"What?"
"A dream I had. I dreamt that it was all going to be over and a voice
said it was; not any kind of voice I can remember, but a voice anyway, and it
said things would stop here on Earth. I didn't think too much about it when I
awoke the next morning, but then I went to work and the feeling as with me all
day. I caught Stan Willis looking out the window in the middle of the afternoon
and I said, 'Penny for your thoughts, Stan,' and he said, 'I had a dream last
night,' and before he even told me the dream, I knew what it was. I could have
told him, but he told me and I listened to him."
"It was the same dream?"
"Yes. I told Stan I had dreamed it, too. He didn't seem surprised. He
relaxed, in fact. Then we started walking through offices, for the hell of it.
It wasn't planned. We didn't say, let's walk around. We just walked on our own,
and everywhere we saw people looking at their desks or their hands or out the
windows and not seeing what was in front of their eyes. I talked to a few of
them; so did Stan."
"And all of them had dreamed?"
"All of them. The same dream, with no difference."
"Do you believe in the dream?"
"Yes. I've never been more certain."
"And when will it stop? The world, I mean."
"Sometime during the night for us, and then, as the night goes on
around the world, those advancing portions will go, too. It'll take twenty-four
hours for it all to go."
They sat awhile not touching their coffee. Then they lifted it slowly and
drank, looking at each other.
"Do we deserve this?" she said.
"It's not a matter of deserving, it's just that things didn't work out.
I notice you didn't even argue about this. Why not?"
"I guess I have a reason," she said.
"The same reason everyone at the office had?"
She nodded. "I didn't want to say anything. It happened last night. And
the women on the block are talking about it, just among themselves." She
picked up the evening paper and held it toward him. "There's nothing in
the news about it."
"No, everyone knows, so what's the need?" He took the paper and
sat back in his chair, looking at the girls and then at her. "Are you
afraid?"
"No. Not even for the children. I always thought I would be frightened
to death, but I'm not."
"Where's that spirit of self-preservation the scientists talk about so
much?"
"I don't know. You don't get too excited when you feel things are
logical. This is logical. Nothing else but this could have happened from the
way we've lived."
"We haven't been too bad, have we?"
"No, nor enormously good. I suppose that's the trouble. We haven't been
very much of anything except us, while a big part of the world was busy being
lots of quite awful things."
The girls were laughing in the parlor as they waved their hands and tumbled
down their house of blocks.
"I always imagined people would be screaming in the streets at a time like
this."
"I guess not. You don't scream about the real thing."
"Do you know, I won't miss anything but you and the girls. I never
liked cities or autos or factories or my work or anything except you three. I
won't miss a thing except my family and perhaps the change in the weather and a
glass of cool water when the weather's hot, or the luxury of sleeping. Just
little things, really. How can we sit here and talk this way?"
"Because there's nothing else to do."
"That's it, of course, for if there were, we'd be doing it. I suppose
this is the first time in the history of the world that everyone has really
known just what they were going to be doing during the last night."
"I wonder what everyone else will do now, this evening, for the next
few hours."
"Go to a show, listen to the radio, watch the TV, play cards, put the
children to bed, get to bed themselves, like always."
"In a way that's something to be proud of — like always."
"We're not all bad."
They sat a moment and then he poured more coffee. "Why do you suppose
it's tonight?"
"Because."
"Why not some night in the past ten years of in the last century, or
five centuries ago or ten?"
"Maybe it's because it was never February 30, 1951, ever before in
history, and now it is and that's it, because this date means more than any
other date ever meant and because it's the year when things are as they are all
over the world and that's why it's the end."
"There are bombers on their course both ways across the ocean tonight
that'll never see land again."
"That's part of the reason why."
"Well," he said. "What shall it be? Wash the dishes?"
They washed the dishes carefully and stacked them away with especial
neatness. At eight-thirty the girls were put to bed and kissed good night and
the little lights by their beds turned on and the door left a trifle open.
"I wonder," said the husband, coming out and looking back,
standing there with his pipe for a moment."
"What?"
"If the door should be shut all the way or if it should be left just a
little ajar so we can hear them if they call."
"I wonder if the children know — if anyone mentioned anything to
them?"
"No, of course not. They'd have asked us about it."
They sat and read the papers and talked and listened to some radio music and
then sat together by the fireplace looking at the charcoal embers as the clock
struck ten-thirty and eleven and eleven-thirty. They thought of all the other
people in the world who had spent their evening, each in their own special way.
"Well," he said at last. He kissed his wife for a long time.
"We've been good for each other, anyway."
"Do you want to cry?" he asked.
"I don't think so."
They went through the house and turned out the lights and locked the doors,
and went into the bedroom and stood in the night cool darkness undressing. She
took the spread from the bed and folded it carefully over a chair, as always,
and pushed back the covers. "The sheets are so cool and clean and
nice," she said.
"I'm tired."
"We're both tired."
They got into bed and lay back.
"Wait a moment," she said.
He heard her get up and go out into the back of the house, and then he heard
the soft shuffling of a swinging door. A moment later she was back. "I
left the water running in the kitchen," she said. "I turned the
faucet off."
Something about this was so funny that he had to laugh.
She laughed with him, knowing what it was that she had done that was so
funny. They stopped laughing at last and lay in their cool night bed, their
hands clasped, their heads together.
"Good night," he said, after a moment.
"Good night," she said, adding softly, "dear..."
