“We are currently getting word that the death ray has completely wiped out all life in Sydney! Repeat, all of Sydney is gone! If the pattern continues, the aliens will now reposition to target another population centre. The only thing we can do now is hug our loved ones and pray for salvation. We at Channel 12 will keep broadcasting to the very end. Reporting to you live, I’m Michael Pancake.”

The five people all stared at the TV screen. You’d think that the world ending would bring greater commotion: screaming, wailing, weeping—but the living room was silent, save for the soft noise of quickened breathing. The shock had left every member of the board game group frozen. They watched as the TV replayed terrifying scenes of annihilation, their faces unrecognisably contorted by the mix of horror and disbelief. Cal covered his agape mouth with his hands as Susan rubbed his leg. Halle, eyes still fixed on the news, slowly tilted her head onto Deron’s shoulder.

Looking around and seeing the two couples comforting each other sent a pang of sadness through Barry’s body. He ached for someone that he could lean against in these final moments, cry with as they took their last breaths, just hold once more before the end.

Barry’s wife, Liv, had left him for a contortionist almost a year ago.

He hadn’t recovered from the separation. It wasn’t necessarily the loss of his wife but  more the jealousy that she was happy and he wasn’t. She was the cheater, she fucked up, and yet she goes home every night to be wined and dined by a bendy Frenchman, while Barry spends his nights eating bulk-bought party pies and pretending he’s only crying because it’s an emotional episode of SVU. Then again, after Liv left him, the couple moved to Sydney together, so maybe it evened out.

Barry hadn’t felt like leaving his house in a while, but had forced himself to attend game night. It had been the first one he’d gone to in a while. He and his wife had always gone together, and, honestly, they were more Liv’s friends than his. But everybody there was too polite to rescind his standing invite, or tell him it was more ‘couples night’ than ‘game night’.

He was looking sadly into the almost empty bowl of chips when everybody’s cellphones started beeping. It was an emergency alert, instructing everyone to take cover and remain calm. That ‘calm’ was short-lived when someone turned the TV on to see every station reporting our extinction, the last tragedy of our species. Humans had brutally conquered the world and used our intelligence to kill, subjugate, or bend every living thing to our will; perhaps we should’ve expected that when we encountered beings greater than us, they would be equally merciless.

“Jesus Christ,” Susan said, piercing the stunned silence the group had been sitting in. As if her voice had been a switch, everybody started to unfreeze, finally reacting to the gravity of the situation.

“This isn’t real, there’s no way, it can’t be…” Deron trailed off. As he held Halle, who softly cried into his chest.

Cal paced around the room, “Oh my God, I need to call my sister.” His shaky hands struggled to dial the number.

Barry struggled to get breath into his chest, his mind raced, and his eyes welled up with tears. At first, he hadn’t let himself believe it; it must have been some hoax, an elaborate prank. But seeing the terror on his friends’ faces had rendered his denial pointless, and continuing to watch his friends now only worsened the panic. Halle ran her hands through her hair, trying in vain to soothe herself, Cal’s voice wavering, talking to his sister, Susan’s chin quivering, her attention still on the TV, Deron, who—Wait, what’s that on Susan’s face…?

Right on the corner of her mouth was some gross little green splotch thing. Ew, what was that?

“We’re all going to die! We’re dead!” Cal wailed, standing beside Barry now that his phone had lost signal.

“Yeah man, totally,” Barry absentmindedly replied, squinting to get a better view of the thing on Susan’s mouth. Eugh, it was disgusting. It must’ve been some dip from earlier. Barry wasn’t surprised she got dip on her face the way she was gulping down those corn chips. At the time he did think: damn Susan, there’s really not enough corn chips for you to pound them like that.

Everybody else must’ve noticed it, right? It was really obvious, like a little wet slug was slithering into her mouth. This was so weird, why hadn’t anybody said anything?

“Oh my God, all of Europe’s wiped out!” Deron yelled from somewhere.

Barry figured he should say something, right? I mean, if this were his last moment, he’d not want dip slathered all over him. Then again, what if him pointing this out embarrassed her? No, that wouldn’t do. This situation required subtlety, a delicate hand.

“Hey, here’s a thinker for the room,” Barry announced.

“Please God, why?” Deron was on his knees, tears and mucus streaming down his face.

“What’s everyone’s favourite flavour of dip? Remember how we were all eating dip?” A wry smile crept onto Barry’s face as he asked the question. This was a really good strategy.

“What?” asked Cal, the only one who reacted.

“Remember the dip we had earlier? Remember that?” Barry said loud enough so Susan would still be able to register it (if she ever looked up from the TV, I swear we are all just on screens so much, like missing all the beauty of life).

Halle ran to the bathroom to vomit. Okay, this wasn’t working. Barry needed to be more explicit.

“What are you talking about? Everyone we know is dead; how can you be talking about dip when everything is so horrible?” Cal raised his voice.

“So horrible, soo horrible,” Barry said, staring at Susan while slowly rubbing the side of his mouth, hoping she would catch on. “Yeah, all those people dying…just horrible. My goodness, yeah, it just makes you want to put your—your hands to your mouth in disbelief.”

“Obviou—” Cal started.

“Susan? Right? Just like a total hands to mouth, disbelief type…deal, right?”

Susan turned her head to make eye contact with Barry, a confused look on her face. “Uh, yeah, I don’t… I guess.”

Rapidly becoming frustrated, Barry decided to become slightly more overt with his hints.

“Christ, Susan, you have a giant glob of dip on your face, and we all find it disgusting and super distracting. Get it off your face so we can focus!” Barry screamed. His voice cracked, and he was really hoping Deron didn’t notice.

Susan finally wiped it off.

After a moment of silence, Halle, chin covered in vomit, started talking again. “What are you talking about, Barry?”

“Don’t lie Halle. Everyone thought that mouth thing was super gross, and I was the only one who said it. First she eats all the snacks, then smears them all over her face.”

“Why are you talking about snacks right now?” Deron asked. 

“Oh my God, don’t get me started on the snacks,” Barry said, finger quoting the word snacks. “Who invites people over for the whole night and gets one—one bag of corn chips? I mean, really, Deron, you have like a whole house for your car and—”

“A garage?”

“And you won’t even pay for two bags of chips and a soda?”

“Well, to be fair, you ate a lot of them, Barry,” Cal interjected.

“You shut the fuck up, Cal! Nobody asked you; I ate just as much as anybody else; yes I did.” Barry shouted him down, fearing he may be losing popular support.

“Jesus, can you just stop, Barry?” Halle yelled.

“It’s a new thing of dip, an unopened bag of chips. You were clearly at the store, preparing for tonight, and thought that one bag of chips was all we needed. I mean, honestly, it—it’s just poor manners, you—”

“Poor manners?” Halle repeated, incredulously.

“Yes, it is poor manners, actually,” Barry continued, “when people come to a whole-night hang sesh, everybody expects the hosts to provide enough food, and this was not enough food, obviously.”

In the background, another, presumably terrifying, report had just concluded.

“What are you—”

“Guys!” Susan interrupted, “Look, this is an emotional time, but—”

ZAP!

Suddenly, a blinding flash of light pierced the house, so sharp it drowned out everything. Nothing mattered anymore. There was no argument or escape, no pleading or crying. It was too quick to react, to gasp, even to know what had happened. But inevitably, the death ray struck them, and they simply, quietly…ceased.

Barry, in his final millisecond of life, was left with one, unshakeable thought that followed him as he slipped into the inky black void of death;

Wait, did that news reporter say his name was Michael Pancake?