"Hey Timmy," my mom greeted me. "Happy birthday." I saw my mom cooking up a hearty breakfast for all of us when I went downstairs to eat my breakfast. She made a good batch of perfectly-cooked sunny side up eggs, bacon, sausage, and rice. To chug it all down, I poured a glass of store-bought orange juice.
Dad turned around while he was watching the morning news. "Happy birthday, son." He sipped his morning coffee from his favorite mug, a black mug with a caricature of the moon from the silent film A Trip to the Moon by Georges Méliès. Mom got him that mug for his birthday a few years back and he never stopped using it after his old one broke. He liked his coffee with two teaspoons of sugar and creamer.
"Thanks dad," I replied. "Any gifts for me on my birthday?"
He stood up, told me to wait for him on the sofa, and walked straight to his room. He wasn't long gone before he got back. "Follow me."
The sunlight was warm when it touched my skin. I saw my neighbors' kids are out in the street playing their silly children's game. From what I've heard from their discussion, it was a cross between cops and robbers and some Star Wars roleplay.
We stood in front of the garage, the white roll up door still locked shut. I felt a sudden rush of excitement when we got there. I looked at my dad and smiled. "No way..."
He smiled back before he pressed the remote, rolling up the door, and revealing an old but still in good condition blue 1990 soft top Mazda MX-5. "Sorry if I only got you an old 2nd hand car. I got this for sale and the guy that sold me this was really in a hurry to get rid of it. Anyway, since you've been good and your grades have been higher than the junkie who lived in the alley a few blocks down, I got you this one for your birthday." He got a stick of cigarette from his shirt pocket and lit it beside me. He knows that I don't smoke so he puffs the smoke away from me. "Why don't you take it out for a spin?" He gave me the keys and we drove around the neighborhood, blasting Outta Space by Van Halen and Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon on the old radio.
We got back home after nearly an hour of wandering and picking up some groceries. I parked it in front of the house. We were about to bring the grocery bags when we heard a loud crash from inside the house. We rushed inside to find Mom looking at the television screen with horror on her face and pieces of broken china on the floor. What we heard rocked our world and our lives forever. The news brought us news of our doom.
An asteroid larger than the dwarf planet Ceres is in a collision course towards Earth and it's estimated to hit the planet within 365 days, on my next birthday. Great, the universe's gift for my 21st birthday is the end of the world. Of course, you would expect that people would start panicking and wrecking havoc. You would also expect everyone to suddenly dress in all leather in the style of Mad Max, but you would be wrong. We were all going to die anyway, so what's the point. We all went silent, the whole world did. Billions of souls silenced and billions of hearts were broken on that fateful day. My family tried to live out the rest of our 365 days of being alive in peace and silence.
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We embraced together as a whole family when the asteroid struck earth.