By Philip Malazarte
The grand canyon is not just a gash in the ground, and it wasn’t created by some god. That’s just dumb. It’s what happens when you break someone’s heart. When you’re walking around, and you see those cracks in the concrete, or when you drive over a pothole, all these things that you brush off so carelessly, all of them were the product of a broken heart. The very earth breaks apart from the pain. In the start, these cracks were small, other than the grand canyon of course. Then, as more and more hearts get broken, the cracks gets bigger. The pressure rises as relationships crumble, trust is abused, and hearts are taken. More and more cracks sprout up all around the world, grotesque rips within the fabric of our planet. No one knows why the earth reacts this way. Maybe it feels the anguish of its inhabitants, maybe it can relate. Whatever the case, more and more people are dying because of the cracks in the ground. So the world’s governments decide to do something. something horrible, something cruel, something unheard of. They ban love.
At first, people are outraged, and the cracks grow even bigger, threatening to swallow cities. But then they realize how badly they need this, regardless of their feelings. So they concede, grudgingly agreeing to be made devoid of all love. The government releases a drug ironically named “heartache” that will help in this endeavor, because no matter how hard they might try, people can’t just stop feeling. But there are drawbacks. Side effects, breakdowns, people refusing to take it. Then there those who take it, but their hearts have just been broken too many times.. The drug drives them crazy, emptying their bodies of emotion. Not just love, all emotions. They walk around, hollow shells of their past selves. Eventually, people start to call them “The Heartless”, an insensitive reminder of what they’ve lost. The heartless wander the scorched earth, most falling into the cracks, others simply walking until they turn to dust. But the rest of the world returns to relative peace, with everyone learning to accept the fact that they will never love again. Now, when two people have children, they are paired by geneticists to make the strongest babies possible. No one marries anymore, no one dates. After all, what’s the point of such trivial things if the one key component is missing? Gradually, the world becomes more and more slow, The people being lulled into a sort of walking coma by the drug. They still function, do everything they have to do, and they can still have fun, but the word love is no longer in the picture of the lives of humans.
Then, one day, a child is swallowed. A crack about the size of a manhole opened up under her while she was playing outside. Her mother did not weep, and her father did not grieve, for they did not love her. They were simply there as a sort of guide for the future. They had no real attachment to the child. They were sad, because a child was lost, but it never went any deeper than that. It never registered that it was their child. But this incident still concerned the higher-ups. Weren’t the cracks supposed to stop showing up now? What caused them? The silent panic is palpable……….
The earth rumbles. It shakes. People come out of their houses to see what’s going on. Screams can be heard echoing through the night. Pain. Pain everywhere. The ground opens up, one final crack opening up in the ground. But this isn’t just a crack. It’s the earth’s dying breath. It can no longer hold the burden of all these broken souls. People stare in detached horror as our beloved planet splits straight down the middle, tons and tons of magma and rocks spewing forth. What was built over millennia is destroyed in a matter of seconds. This is not Noah’s Ark. There are no survivors. Everything that has ever lived or ever will live on Earth is gone, either blown into space, or burned away by the magma. The Earth is now two halves of a dead rock floating in space. Drowning in the sorrows of the people who once lived upon it.
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