Fiction: End of Days

John MacDonald

He was the finest divinity you could ask for, keeping the place warm and lit and living for eons. But hardly anyone worshipped him anymore. To the contrary, most of us walked around with sunglasses on, ignoring his undeniable power.

Long ago there were elaborate rituals, with smoke, intrigue, oblation, feasts of whole water buffalo, gallons of wine, and day long music and chanting. More recently, he couldn’t even remember the last time there was a hit song about him, let alone a good old child sacrifice.

And those lame ass sun salutations weren’t cutting it either! “Yoga pants?” the sun spat. “People used to make an effort! What happened to the gilt and peacock feathered headdresses, the leopard skins, taffeta robes, hands and feet bejeweled with turquoise and gold, eyes shaded with powdered lapis lazuli, the pomp, the regalia?...”

He daydreamed a minute, as only suns can do.

“Well, if that’s how it’s gonna be, let’s see how they manage when I don’t turn up tomorrow!” he cried, and slunk slowly over the horizon, one last time.

Even he didn’t think he could pull this coup off alone, though. He began entreating the other stars. He gave impassioned speeches, organized rallies, marches, and protests. Alamak and Adhafara were quickly convinced and began passing out flyers and soliciting donations. They managed to bring along the whole of the Leo and Andromeda constellations. Soon all the stars quit their solar systems. The sun began fancying himself the César Chávez of stars. “You’ll see!” he said, addressing the former members of Ursa Major, “They’ll be back so quick, begging for daylight. But this time it’ll be on our terms!”

But he forgot. 

As it clearly says in Genesis 1:1-19, day and night were created on the first day, and the other stars and the moon didn’t arrive until the fourth. He only ruled the day but was not the day.

And so a strange, shadowless, dawnless span emerged from his glorious, crimson exit into darkness, and a cool, gray calm settled over the earth, morning the same as afternoon the same as evening. The only real difference was the blind coal mine of moonless night that made us all stumble over familiar ground, lose all sense of up, down, backward, forward, made us crawl to avoid the nauseating vertigo of pitch black nothingness.

This new rhythm of light and dark was unsettling. We never realized how accustomed we were to the chaotic morning upheavals of heat and wind and seasons. The earth floated aimlessly through space without the sun’s gravitational pull. The tides were eerily gentle, as was the climate. 

We worried about what effect this might have on the future of life on earth. But surprisingly, there were none of the crop failures or natural disasters that people predicted at first. Some  attributed this to the intervention of divinity, while others presented scientific arguments to explain it.

It had its advantages. No more blinding light in your eyes on your commute. No more sunburn, no more skin cancer, no more sunstroke. 

No more time zones, we soon realized! All humanity was on the same schedule, rising as one, sleeping as one. The whole world was quiet at night, bustling in the day. Most of us were pretty satisfied with the arrangement, and a new sense of unity arose throughout all humankind. We adjusted, even celebrated, while the sun sulked. He started to realize that maybe he was replaceable, even unnecessary. 

And so, desperate for relevance, he registered a trademark on the words “day” and “night”. For a while, we had to stop using those terms, unless we gave proper credit to him. I remember those litigious days of “day™” and “night™”. We quickly came up with synonyms, to avoid the licensing fees and royalties. “The brightening” and “the dimming” were popular, as were “lighttime” and “darktime”, but others, “blackfest” and “blackfast”, were too clever for their own good.

We started saying weirdly formal things like, “I will see you on the next Brightening”, because “to-brightening” sounded even weirder. But in time, it entertained us, adding a little theatrical ceremony to our conversations. 

Without the dramatic sunrises and sunsets, we became much more aware of the subtle changes of the day. The whole world became a sort of monastery, wherein we maintained the ritual of our common routine, rising before dawn to the slow, crescendoing chatter of birds, rather than the stab of sunlight through treetops and windows that used to pierce the veil between sleep and consciousness. Indeed, that line between dreams and reality blurred for several hours each morning, and we indulged our imaginations.

Our lives slowly filled with unspoken customs and ritual, new hierarchies emerging among us that we only scarcely understood, a new respect for order and serenity. An early spring rain became an augury or auspice, the meaning we would solemnly debate, as we contemplated the pure, beaded, droplets clinging to crocuses and daffodils. Fortune or ruin? 

We sought signs in the refracted light of dewdrops rolling down tender new hasta leaves. We watched spiderwebs tremble and billow in morning breezes, counted the grasshoppers and flies knitted in its mesh, meditating upon the horror of their fate, while simultaneously celebrating the good fortune of the spider.

Only later would we turn our attention to the more practical needs of the day.

Eventually a higher court ruled that you could not trademark words such as “day” or “night”, so we could freely say them again, but by that time, “the brightening” had really caught on, so we kept it. This was a crushing blow to the sun, and we felt kind of sorry for him.

We tried asking him to come back a couple days a week. He appeared flattered, but he has his pride, and besides, it would look really bad if the other stars found out he was a scab. The union is pretty strict.

So we compromised. He and some of the other stars hang out in the sky at darktime a couple times a week. It’s a game. They take positions in the sky, and we make bets and guess which one is which. Usually I just watch, but last week I won $43. It’s a different universe, all right.

***

Bio: John MacDonald is a Maryland writer, musician and songwriter living in Silver Spring, MD. He has written poems, stories, songs, and plays since childhood. 

His training and experience in both writing and music often inform one another. He has written several poems about music, musicians, and the experience of musical performance, set a selection of his poems to music, and often recites or sings his writing before an audience as part of his editing process, listening carefully to the rhythm of his own voice.

He has published poetry in a variety of publications, such as Gargoyle Magazine, Poetry Quarterly, and Dual Coast Magazine. Several of his poems were featured in the 2018 anthology Music of the Aztecs, published by Pony One Dog Press, and the 2023 anthology Poems from the Green, collaboratively published by Writers on the Green Line and Poets on the Green Line.

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Setu, November 2025