Dear Diary,

  Have you ever wondered where you’ll be when the world ends? Annabell Smith knew exactly where she was: in her room, eating cookies, and dreaming of wealth that would almost certainly remain hypothetical. It wasn’t quite the heroic stance one might hope to strike when the apocalypse came calling, but then again, Annabell wasn’t exactly hero material. Heroes, after all, tended to do their laundry.

  ***

  Annabell’s single-bedroom apartment was not a large one—not so much a home as an extended storage solution with plumbing—and every inch of it was entirely, unapologetically hers. Her dominion was marked by the banners of her people: posters of handsome game characters with brooding stares, hung alongside pop idols grinning so cheerfully it bordered on sinister. Below this pantheon of glossy perfection lay a floor that had, at some point, become an archaeological dig site.

  Here, a layer of laundry—clean or otherwise—spanned an ancient half-eaten bag of snacks. (The sort of thing future historians would one day carbon-date to better understand early 21st-century diets.) There, a cityscape of takeaway boxes indicated a civilization that had worshipped the gods of delivery apps. (Or perhaps snack-deities like “Moritos,” revered for their strange, radioactive-orange dust.) Others were inscribed with esoteric glyphs like “Reheat Before Eating” and “Best Before Last Week.”

  Her chair, much like her life, was an ecosystem unto itself. Beneath a strata of socks (some bunny-eared), t-shirts (mostly pink), and an assortment of things Annabell couldn’t identify without risking a tetanus shot, the chair’s original surface was rumored to exist (though this has yet to be confirmed). On top lay her favorite hoodie, conducting a valiant mutiny against the laundry hamper, and what could have been the missing half of a takeout order from two weeks ago. Possibly three.

  The bed was no better: a cratered landscape of pillows, blankets, and suspiciously sticky spots where sodas had met their untimely ends. It was more nest than bed, a stronghold that could withstand both winter and existential crises—the kind of place one might curl up to hibernate through life while periodically emerging to doom-scroll.

  The entire place had a distinct lack of sunlight, which Annabell claimed was a feature, not a bug.

  Tonight, however, she was restless. She paced back and forth, navigating the narrow aisles of her own making. Midnight had struck, and with it came a crisis of unimaginable proportions. Her life-size body pillow—ordered three days ago with great anticipation—had not arrived. Somewhere, a faceless bureaucrat had rejected her payment, and the betrayal cut deep. Worse yet, she was broke, and tomorrow heralded the release of the Wafu-Wafu Chibi earrings, items of such cultural significance (to her) that to be without them was simply unthinkable.

  “Okay, Wallace,” she muttered aloud, addressing the plushie on her bed. “We’re in a tight spot. Real tight. The plan is… I mean, it has to be…” She swallowed hard, her voice lowering to a conspiratorial whisper. “...to start earning money.”

  Wallace—a stuffed bulldog toy with a chin far too big to be anatomically feasible—did not respond.

  “Yes, Wallace, I know!” Annabell gasped. “It’s come to that. The system wants to break me, to make me a cog in its horrible, grinding machinery of capitalism. But what choice do I have? I need those Wafu-wafu Chibi earrings dropping tomorrow. Need, Wallace, not want.”

  The mountain of unopened packages in the hallway loomed ominously, as if silently mocking her sudden financial epiphany. It wasn’t just a stack of deliveries; it was a shrine to her past indulgences, a testament to a lifestyle built on whims and a Wi-Fi connection. It was the sort of obstacle that might one day be discovered by urban explorers, who would describe it as a tragic testament to consumerism in hushed tones before posting it on their socials.

  Annabell Smith, however, classified by critics and professionals as a NEET, Hikkikomori, and possibly a hoarder (the last one was still under debate), had her own word for it: success. She had carved out her own little kingdom—a fortress of cardboard and plastic that ensured the outside world would never sneak up on her uninvited—complete with a throne of junk food and a crown of anime merchandise. And if the world was ending (which it was, she just hadn’t gotten the memo yet), she’d face it the same way she faced everything else: with a cookie in one hand and a vague plan she’d probably forget halfway through.

  For now, however, a far more tangible battle lay at her feet.

  She spun dramatically to address Wallace, her loyal and utterly silent confidant, perched atop her throne of crumpled blankets.

  “I’m going to have to start a business,” Annabell declared, voice thick with grim determination.

  She paused dramatically, waiting for Wallace to agree with her. As usual, Wallace stared ahead, embodying the stoic indifference of a sage or a particularly stubborn doorstop.

  “What do you mean, what kind of business will I do?” Annabell snorted. “I’ll do business-business, of course. You know, business! I’ll get a suit, hire some people, let them work while I earn money. It’s foolproof!”

  She threw back her head and unleashed a cackle that might have terrified a lesser bulldog. But Wallace remained steadfastly unimpressed, his silence more eloquent than words.

  “You don’t think I can afford a suit?” Annabell arched an eyebrow. “Well, read it and weep, faithless heathen.”

  With a grand flourish, she reached under her mattress, fingers scrabbling among the relics of yesteryear (and also last Tuesday). Then, with the flair of a magician about to reveal a dove, she pulled out her garish wallet.

  Instead of any bird, however, what fluttered out as she flipped it open was a somewhat disoriented moth, doing a loop-the-loop before making a break for freedom. Annabell stared at the wallet, shook it vigorously, and was rewarded with a single coin, sliding out of the leather.

  “Aha!” she cried, snatching it midair. “Riches be mine! A penny for your time! Give me a dollar, and I’ll conquer the world.”

  Wallace, now toppled over from the seismic activity of her rummaging, remained silent. His beady, unblinking eyes seemed to be contemplating the existential weight of his life choices.

  “You don’t think this will be enough?” Annabell asked, the picture of misplaced confidence. “Tails says you’re wrong.”

  She tossed the coin with all the precision of an over-enthusiastic, under-stimulated toddler, leaving the metal to soar across the room. Annabell scrambled after it, intent on catching her fortune. Unfortunately, her foot betrayed her, caught in a rogue laundry pile, and she went down with all the grace of a collapsing bookshelf.

  Her face met the floor with a muffled thud, and Wallace, now observing her from the safe distance of the bed’s edge, embodied the quiet dignity of one who had seen this all before.

  The coin, meanwhile, had vanished into the shadowy folds of the chair, lost to the void from which no item—neither sock nor snack wrapper—had ever returned.

  ***

  Ten minutes of sniffling face down into her mattress later, feeling the crushing weight of the world, Annabell raised a triumphant finger into the air. "Defeated is she who stays down," she proclaimed, her voice muffled but valiant, like a commander rallying troops from the depths of a very squishy trench. “I know! I’ll simply invest in stocks and—”

  At that exact moment, as if the universe had been waiting for her hubris to ripen, the wallet moth landed delicately on the tip of her raised finger, a silent and devastating rebuttal to her financial aspirations.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  ***

  Twenty minutes of snack-fueled despair later, Annabell was huddled under her fortress of blankets, clutching a bag of chocolate-chip cookies like it was the only thing tethering her to sanity. Crumbs scattered across her bed like the aftermath of a very localized, very sugary blizzard.

  “Your negativity is helping no one, Wallace,” she declared, gesturing emphatically with a cookie at the stuffed bulldog sitting impassively nearby. “I could still become an influencer. Or marry rich. I was hot commodity back in high school, I’ll have you know.”

  Wallace’s silence was deafening, as usual, but Annabell pressed on, undeterred. “The boys were practically fighting over me every day,” she continued, waving her cookie around as though it were a sword of truth. “They were just… respectful enough to keep it subtle. Behind the scenes. Where I couldn’t see it. But they were always snickering and glancing at me. What is that, if not love?”

  To punctuate her point, she rolled over and rummaged under her mattress once more, eventually emerging with a high-school photo. The picture featured thirty-four bright-eyed students, all grinning and posing in neat rows. Thirty-five, if you squinted hard enough and knew exactly what to look for. Behind the two girls seated in the front-right corner, a small, blurry figure on her tiptoes was valiantly attempting to be part of the scene.

  “Damn, sister,” Annabell said, holding the photo aloft and giving a solemn thumbs-up to the barely visible portion of her head. “You looked A-OK back then.”

  Wallace’s continued silence pressed in from the side, unrelenting in its plush judgment. Annabell turned to glare at him. “Listen, mister, there’s nothing stopping me from tossing you into the trash bin, you know that, right?” she huffed. “Just because the admission letter to my dream university—or any of the other ten I applied to—hasn’t arrived yet doesn’t mean it won’t. Sometimes the postal service is just... slow. Months slow. That’s perfectly normal.”

  She nodded firmly, as though the weight of her logic might impress even the universe. “Just like it isn’t unusual that none of my forty-some get-paid-a-lot-while-staying-at-home applications have called back yet. They’re probably busy pleading with management, trying to allocate the budget for exactly the kind of salary I deserve. I could fundamentally revolutionize the way they—”

  Her voice faded as someone bumped into her bedroom wall from the other side. Once, twice, three times, accompanied by muffled screams filtering through the concrete like a particularly distressed ghost.

  Her neighbor. Loud, as usual.

  Annabell frowned, swung a leg out from under her blanket cocoon, and thumped her heel against the wall in retaliation. “Hey! Some of us are trying to contemplate world conquest in peace here!”

  The noise didn’t stop. It didn’t even hesitate. The rhythmic thudding escalated into a symphony of crashes, cracks, and what sounded suspiciously like furniture being broken over someone’s—or some thing’s—head.

  Annabell sighed, rolling her eyes. “Gee, people have no respect anymore. What are they even doing in there, getting murdered?”

  She snorted at her own joke, nudging Wallace with her elbow. “Am I right?” she added, waggling her eyebrows at him for emphasis.

  The noise, now spreading beyond her neighbor’s flat and into the street, refused to take the hint. Screams mingled with the sound of breaking glass and something suspiciously like a firework display gone wrong. Or maybe cars crashing. Into buildings.

  Annabell clicked her tongue, heaved herself off the bed with all the enthusiasm of a sloth on a rainy day, and waddled over to the window. Flames flickered and licked at the edges of her view, mingling with bright flashes of light and what might have been smoke. The symphony of chaos below was reaching a crescendo.

  Annabell, however, was a solid five-foot-nothing in her fluffy socks (when standing on her tiptoes), and her view of the apocalypse was thoroughly obstructed by her unfortunate lack of height. She craned her neck, squinting, before finally giving up with an exasperated huff.

  “Yeah, yeah, I get it,” she muttered, yanking the curtains shut with an air of dramatic finality. “All of you are having a party, and I’m not invited. Too bad! I didn’t want to go anyway. Ha-ha-haaa…” Her laugh was cut short as she stubbed her toe walking back, her kingdom enveloped in complete and utter darkness once more.

  “Dang it,” she winced as she, jumping on one foot, grabbed her earphones, picked up her phone, and plugged into her loudest playlist.

  With that, she flopped dramatically onto her fortress of blankets and began violently scrolling through her phone, searching for her next great scheme as, somewhere outside the depths of her cluttered realm, the wheels of destiny had begun to turn.

  With her hand having already located a half-eaten bag of chips from the nightstand, however, Annabell simply swung her feet in the air and hummed along to the music, crunching away with the air of someone who had firmly decided the world could end without her input.

  “Rich, rich, I’ll get rich soon,” she sang, inventing lyrics as she went. “My life is gonna be so great, you haters just wait and see. Nothing about my situation is a mess, and PMA will save the day, yay~”

  And outside, the world continued to burn.

  ***

  As her world ended, Annabell Smith was taking a nap. It was not just any nap—it was a deep, drool-inducing slumber, the kind that only an unholy union of an unhealthy amount of snacks and blasting death metal could summon. Somewhere in her dreams, Wallace the bulldog plush was wearing a suit, and the cookies were infinite.

  Meanwhile, in what could technically be described as "reality," several loud pings echoed through her apartment. Holographic screens popped into existence above her head, each one frantically flashing warnings like "WARNING: PLANETARY INTEGRITY COMPROMISED!" and "UNAUTHORIZED DUNGEONIZATION IN PROGRESS!". If these messages hoped to alert Annabell, they were sorely mistaken. She giggled softly in her sleep, murmuring something about Wallace looking very silly in pinstripes.

  By the time Annabell stirred, the room was quiet again. Her playlist had long since run out, leaving only the soft hum of a world in the process of being forcibly repurposed. She blinked groggily, stretched like a cat waking from an afternoon of indolence, and let out a series of noises that could be roughly translated as “Aaa!” followed by “Euuugh,” and perhaps one or two “Ouh”s for good measure.

  Her hand flopped across the mattress, conducting a lazy search for the half-eaten bag of chips that logic dictated should have been there. It wasn’t. What her hand did find, however, was a puddle of drool on her pillow.

  “Crapsies,” Annabell muttered, sitting up with the enthusiasm of independent youth faced with an early morning meeting. She rubbed at her eyes, glanced at her phone—4:12 AM—and gave Wallace a bleary look. “What do you say, Wallace? A morning walk down to the convenience store for a convenient snack?”

  Wallace offered no opinion, being both a stuffed animal and unimpressed with her financial decisions. Annabell, however, pushed on, “Don’t worry about the money.” She gave a grin that was equal parts mischievous and reckless, pulling out a shiny new credit card from underneath her pillow. It had arrived in the post just yesterday, yet she’d already found time to jot down “SNACKS ONLY” with a permanent marker on its surface. “The holy solution #4 hasn’t been pushed to its limits yet.”

  In one smooth motion—more luck than skill—she swung her legs over the bed and landed directly into her boots (military grade for any and all adventures, never laced once in her entire life). A moment later, she wrangled her favorite oversized hoodie over her head, its floppy pink ears giving her the appearance of a very determined marshmallow. The black tights she was already wearing stayed on, because why bother changing when the hoodie doubled as both a sweater and a skirt? Efficiency was important, after all.

  Testing her outfit with a few tentative hops toward the door, just in case it gave her any new superpowers today, Annabell found herself disappointed. Still, she shrugged it off and unlocked her front door.

  What greeted her outside was a peculiar kind of silence. The kind that wasn’t just the absence of sound but the deliberate hush of a world holding its breath. Even at 4 AM, there should’ve been something—the distant rumble of a late-night car, the hum of neon signs, or the faint murmur of other night-owl neighbors whose definition of “bedtime” was even looser than hers.

  Not that Annabell noticed. Her playlist was on its second loop, blasting cheerfully in her ears. What did catch her eye, however, was the bloodied handprint streaked down the wall of the stairwell.

  “Oh neat,” she said, pausing to inspect it with the detached curiosity of someone admiring graffiti. “Always thought these walls were a bit dull. Adds character. Very… primal. Like cave art.”

  She held her own palm up to the mark, comparing sizes, before quickly tucking it back into her hoodie pouch. “Nope, not me. Too big,” she declared, satisfied with her analysis.

  There was a man lying underneath the handprint, sprawled in a position that might generously be described as “collapsed heap.” Annabell tilted her head at him, mildly curious, but when it became clear he wasn’t going to acknowledge her presence, she shrugged and moved past him.

  “Must’ve been partying really hard,” she whispered conspiratorially to Wallace, wedged snugly into the front of her hoodie. “Falling asleep in the stairwell. Tsk. Adults, am I right?” She tutted a few times, hopping down every third step in a rhythm she invented on the spot.

  Behind her, the body began to twitch. A leg jerked. Then an arm. And with a ragged, wheezing groan, the man lurched to his feet. His movements were slow, deliberate, and utterly wrong—like a marionette controlled by a puppeteer who’d skipped rehearsals.

  Annabell, of course, noticed none of this. She was halfway down the stairs, completely absorbed in humming an impromptu tune to herself:

  “Snack, snack, morning snack~ Hacky, wacky, tasty snacky~”

  The figure behind her took a shuffling step, a guttural growl rumbling from deep within its throat.

  Annabell, oblivious, adjusted Wallace in her pouch and paused briefly at the bottom of the stairs. “Do I want chips or chocolate?” she wondered aloud. “Or why not both? You only live once!”

  And with that, she pushed open the lobby door, leaving the shambling figure behind along with any care for a world at the brink of destruction.