Time flies when you're being flayed alive

Has it already been a year since our last normal day before the Mayan Apocalypse? How time flies when you’re being flayed alive by demons as lava bubbles up from the poisoned Earth below you.

How I remember that last day of normalcy. With the sun hugging the horizon, I went about my business blissfully. I went to work. I cooked dinner. I watched TV. And how I scoffed at those who were making their final preparations before the world went to hell. Oh, how I scoffed. I mean, how could the end of a calendar from thousands of years ago prophesy anything? How could we possibly read “Apocalypse” into any of that? But I learned a hard lesson the next day.

The image will be forever burned in my mind. We were driving to Ohio for the family Christmas party. All of a sudden, dead ahead of us, the eastern sun turned black. The earth shuddered and cracked, leaving the Pennsylvania Turnpike a charred and smoking mess. I could hear them all around: the flapping of wings and screeching coming from a million horrors thought long dead, once again walking the Earth.

Then I saw it: the advancing army of zombies, the reanimated corpses of the ancient Mayans come to destroy all those who laughed off their prophecy. Idiots like me who thought 2012 was just a disaster movie. A year ago tomorrow, Dec. 21, 2012, nothing was left of Christmas joy except the torn wrapping paper and scorched wreaths of how we once lived.

Oh, I guess it isn’t so bad now. I’ve grown accustomed to our new Mayan overlords and the beatings don’t really even hurt anymore. But I can’t help but look back one year ago at the society we were and wish I’d appreciated what we had a little more. I will never scoff at an Apocalypse prediction again.