After the Apocalypse happened I felt bored and disappointed. I was expecting a more glamorous and exciting aftermath, in which the sky would resound with Gabriel’s trumpet and black horsemen might arc across the endless night. The reality was much more prosaic and I began to wonder if it had actually occurred.

Sure the wailing dregs of humanity crawled on all fours gibbering with fear, but it was ever thus on a world drenched in infamy. Flames licked my hand and the acrid smoke stung my nostrils as I staggered through the remains of the city. Nothing much had really changed except the poor had got poorer and the dogs howled louder.

I fell to my knees before the terrifying ambiguity of my emotions. The shriek of war birds filled my ears and I held my hands tight over them to block it out, along with the ambient screaming around me.

I was still the same failure before and after, a scarecrow dressed in lies and illusions. The destruction of the world was a mere backdrop to a more profound internal catastrophe. The seconds ticked by, each an eternity for the disillusioned, each dragging me closer to a damaged future populated with the orphans of my memories.