Godspeed: A Short Story by Paula G. Akinwole
A “Poets in Outer Space” Project

With 15 mins left on the clock, a woman finds that the only safe space left is a small corner in the children’s section of a Barnes & Nobles Bookstore. There’s nothing but seconds and thoughts determining if life is worth living at all or if the life she is living behind matters.

Recorded dramatization with sound effects above. Written words below.

Godspeed: A Short Story by Paula G. Akinwole

Two minutes ago, I received a notification on my phone. It says that the world is about to end and Godspeed to us all. I wonder two things. 1. Who is it that controls the system that pushed the button to alert all of humanity that the world is about to end? And 2. What does godspeed even mean? It’s what people say to sailors or men on death row, GOD SPEED. Much different than a cheerful “Bon Voyage”. Godspeed is like a dramatic version of good-luck. Is God’s speed slow? Are we going down in a day or two meaning I have plenty of time to embrace every earthly thing I ever wanted to do like- ride the rail of an escalator or bag groceries like a cashier. Or is God speed fast and by the time I’ve read the end of the text, it’s over.

It’s been 30 minutes since the first message and much of nothing has happened. The people in the mall that I am in are still shopping, Some are making phone calls, but most responded to this message no differently than an amber alert or a weather warning. It barely feels real. It’s not until minute thirty one that a clock begin to appear in the right-hand corner of every electronic device. On the TVs, the digital display of radios, and even my personal cell phones. 15 minutes in the top right-hand corner, a countdown. 4 red numbers in a spot on my phone that previously showed how much battery I had left and the temperature. Now, a timer. This must be our Godspeed. Now people are panicking. They’ve started to run and scream. Two people have just jumped from the balcony a few feet away from me. The world ends in 15 minutes and for some, that’s 13 minutes too long. 

I’ve found a spot in the children’s book section of Barnes and Nobles bookstores. Years ago, after watching some low budget movie on Netflix, I decided that if the world was ever to end, I’d end right along with it. I was and am not interested in trying to survive. I would rather go with everyone else. I don’t want to stay here if I have to eat cans of corn to live or am forced to repopulate the earth with someone random person like my high school janitor or an actor from  tv show I didn’t watch but is fucking me like I should say thank you. If we’re all dying then we’re all going to the next place together. So I’m gonna die too.

The Barnes and Nobles is empty now. I heard the last employees run out and somebody shut the lights off shortly after. Habit probably. The world’s ending but turn off the lights! Just me, my old faithful green crossbody bag that I got on Amazon, my cellphone and the skirt in a Rue 21 bag  I bought a few hours ago that I was planning to wear to a festival later this week…. in a bookstore. The countdown clock says 8 minutes and 43 seconds. Not enough time to call anyone and if I think logically in this most illogical time, there’s not much I could say that would make the end of the world any more significant. 

Cause even the famous people won’t be famous when this is all over. There will be nobody to remember Beyonce or Maya Angelou. The greatest works of all time won’t matter once time ceases to exist. I wish I had painted a masterpiece or wrote a book. So maybe when whatever becomes of our planet comes, IceJJFish’s mixtape won’t be all left of humanity. When the Aliens or angels salvage the wreckage, they won’t know that we all faced forward on elevators to avoid interacting or that you’re not allowed to ask women over 30 how old they are or that we preferred to kill our planet slowly. For them, we’ll just be a pile of garbage, white bones all with a cell phone in our hands. Our height, weight, and beauty won’t matter anymore. Each of us damn near exactly the same. What a waste it’s all been. 

The clock read’s 6 mins 28 seconds. My mom has called 3 times. I text her back, “I’m okay. I love you. See ya soon.” My eyes are tearing at that last line. She tries calling again but I send her to voicemail. I hope she isn’t spending her last moments angry with me.

 I open Facebook instead. 

Kelly James- This is it. The end of the actual world. It’s been real ya’ll!

Lasey “More to Love” Fleming- Ya’ll got 12 mins to get right with God. I want to see all of you in heaven. Just ask for forgiveness of your sins right now.

Steve Washingston- I love you guys! Godspeed or whatever

I’m not gonna post a status. My last status will forever be, “Ugh, I left my coupon at home.” But people die everyday without time to leave a lasting impression status on FB.. 90% of deaths don’t get a chance to say the perfect last thing. We just die. Car accidents, sicknesses we didn’t know we had, freak accidents we didn’t even have time to realize was happening. Here and then gone. Alive and then not. It would be nice if there was a heaven. No big judgment line though and no hell. Those who were shitty just don’t exist there and the rest of us,…Life part II but with no cancer, no cholesterol, no mental illness, no bigotry or prejudice. No romance either, no overwhelming desire to be loved by anyone but just content with everyone. No sex. No sexual frustration or sexual appetite. Nothing to pervert. No boy or girl. No young or old. No rich and no poor. No fashion, no beauty, no physical differences. No hunger. No boobs. Let’s keep music though, all the instruments and one’s we hadn’t imagined yet, no voices or words. I’ll miss poetry but she’s too complicated. And let’s keep color and the feeling of sun on skin. 

3 mins 8 secs. If there’s anything else I would love to be doing right now, it’d probably be the night I found a small open mic being held in a fully lit back alley of a 5 star restaurant. After the restaurant closed, once a month on Thursdays, the chef would make pizza or spaghetti and all the staff would hang around for poetry and music and the occasional rapper. I had learned the chef was equally as passionate about singing. He was this older black man with a deep raspy voice. There wasn’t a mic or a DJ or even a host. There was just a space where the floor seemed to be perfectly white, always. Nobody really introduced themselves either and nobody felt more somebody than anybody. People would just walk up to that clean spot on the floor and free themselves. The chef would sing, the waitress would do poems or rap and one played a flute. Random strangers from the street were invited too. The first time I went, there was no standing room. I barely got in the door and when I asked someone what this event was called, they shrugged. So in my head, I nicknamed it Chef’s and later, I changed it to Mine’s. I also didn’t know his name. And at one time, I struck up a fling with the Jamaican busboy but that just fizzled away. I never got on stage or shared anything until one time, I got drunk and I got brave. I decided to recite my favorite poem by Nikki Giovanni called “I ate a good omelette.” I was crying by the end of it. Not because I was sad but because, as I said drunkenly from the mic “I’d really love an omelet like that!” That moment was probably one of the most honest in my life. That was just last year. 

And now it ends with everything else. I wonder what Chef is doing with the last one minute and 29 seconds of his life. Hopefully he called his daughter after not speaking to her for 9 years. That was always sad to me. The older generation who refused to speak to their queer children because they were queer. As if that person hadn’t been birthed from their physical being. What a waste of anger. Hopefully she answered and they say they love each other. But not I’m sorry. Hopefully people are not spending the last 91 seconds of their life saying sorry to people. Sorry is just a useless sentiment. Almost like “my bad.” Why be sorry when you can be different or better. I’m rarely sorry for things. I apologize or I regret things and then I make vows……. I apologize, I should have loved harder. I regret not trying things just once or giving people a chance cause now, with the last minute on earth, I am alone in a mall’s Barnes and Nobles. They don’t even have a black authors section anymore so I’m under the large plastic display of a cartoon tyrannosaurus rex. Maybe there’s hope after this then.…… Whatever is coming is here now. I can feel it in the massive heat around me and the way the earth is rumbling. I hope this doesn’t hurt. Life has been a lot of hurt and scar healing and readjusting. The end should be merciful, right? 

For some reason, this feels like suicide. I know it isn’t but being helpless and waiting just feels like suicide. The whole earth, two feet on the ledge of a highway’s overpass, arms behind us holding on to the rails, looking at the water ahead of us, hearing the cars swerve behind us, someone is screaming that it doesn’t have to end like this but knowing that we are too embarrassed to go back now. The only option is to let go ….Godspeed

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The story “Godspeed” is an original written and recorded work by Paula G. Akinwole. It is available for publication with the author’s expressed permission and shall not be used or duplicated without permission by the author.