Year of the Poppies / Mileva Anastasiadou

In the beginning, there was the prophecy. A year would come when poppies would blossom everywhere, even at places where they had never been seen before. The year of the poppies would also mean the end of the world. The prophecy was not clear as to how the world would end; some believed that there would be a big war, others imagined a huge meteorite crashing upon earth. Christians expected the Rapture, activists imagined a huge ecological disaster, and lately, new prophets connected the end of the existing political system to the end of the world.

People with no imagination, thought the young man on the bus, who still thought a better world possible, perhaps thanks to his young age. That evening, on his way back home, he noticed a poppy on the pavement. There had never been a poppy there before. But he was young and his testimony could not be taken seriously. The young man remembered the prophecy, smiled, then he forgot. It was barely by the end of winter when the news mentioned a strange and rare phenomenon; poppies were to be found everywhere, growing rapidly in number. Whole meadows of blood red poppies appeared out of nowhere, in places they had never grown before.

A few days before Easter, a sharp increase in suicides was mentioned by the media. Since the first cases took place in countries struggling economically, it was initially attributed to financial problems of the deceased. There were long debates with specialists wondering; either the political system was killing the people, or some people who had acted recklessly could not deal with the consequences of their actions.

On Easter, the young man was on the bus again, sitting beside an old man. Deep inside his mind lay the fear that this would be the year of the poppies, and that he wouldn’t have enough time to live all he had ever dreamed of. When people started talking about the prophecy in schools, coffee shops, at the market, the fear kind of subsided, like everything was under control as long as people kept talking. In front of real danger, silence always prevails.

A loud, abrupt sound interrupted his daydreaming. Time stopped and the young man was certain that the bus lost its way, hit a wall, or another car, or a tree. He felt sure he was dying, not because of the prophecy, but due to a stupid accident. He didn’t want to die that way. At least not yet. Blood on his face, his hands sticky, his clothes bloody red, but strangely enough, he felt no pain. He remembered reading about it, about how the pain disappears moments before death. It took him some time to realize he wasn’t the one dying, it was the man beside him that had just blown his brains out. The young man sighed with relief at first, before terror overwhelmed him.

There were doctors who claimed that thanks to the wide use of antidepressants, depressed patients managed to survive and reproduce, causing the responsible genes to become more and more common in the community. A few among them even stated their clear opposition to any kind of rescue efforts, so that the gene might disappear once and for all. Under the pretext of the economic crisis which did not allow wasting resources on efforts with no tangible long-term effects, some considered best for humankind to sacrifice some vulnerable members for the common good. This particular view was not welcomed by humanists. It is our duty to fight for life regardless of cost or final result, claimed the most optimistic among them.

By June, the official diagnosis was presented. Some scientists attributed the disease to a virus. Some others however, still insisted that the cause was to be found in the expanding economic crisis; people, accustomed to a satisfactory standard of living, had to abruptly change their habits. But things got worse, when suicide attempts multiplied at places where peace and prosperity still existed and soon the epidemic turned into a pandemic.

Some scientists accepted the defeat of science altogether and surrendered. Many resorted to religion and prayers. In a desperate attempt to avoid the fulfillment of the prophecy, some of them almost approached madness, proposing unorthodox methods, losing all scientific objectivity, as they even suggested massive voluntary movements over poppies' eradication. Thousands of citizens went on the streets and manically eradicated all poppies found. The poppies then lost some battles, but it was more than certain that they would win the war.

A few days after his mother's suicide, the young man received a call from the neighbors. His father had a stroke. Funny how humans retreat to themselves when sick, as if the body is some kind of shell or cocoon, in order to heal their wounds, focusing all their strength and effort on one and only target, thought the young man moments before his father passed away. He kept holding his hand up to the last minute. He needed to believe that his father was fighting for his life, but after he finally passed away, the young man wasn’t sure if his father had fought at all.

Most victims left notes behind, with this simple explanation: “All is vain.” As if they woke up one day and realized the futility of existence. Scientists started to wonder about the pattern, making speculations on what made those people face futility so suddenly. As the first efforts to isolate a single responsible virus proved fruitless, most of them started to doubt the assumption that this was a disease at all. Thousands of self help books got published in a month. Desperate people spent fortunes and all of their time buying and reading books, in a last attempt to avoid the inevitable and regain the lost meaning. In the meantime, things out there got worse, faster than anyone could ever predict. Even for those who accepted from the beginning the fact that this would be the year of the poppies, the pace was so fast and so painfully slow at the same time, that they wished a meteorite had hit the planet instead.

The young man made an effort to defy the inner voice which he did not recognize as his own but felt more and more familiar with time, the voice screaming inside his head that all is futile. He visited a specialist. It takes up all of my energy to wear this white coat, the doctor said. The young man bowed his head, then shrugged. He left in despair. He didn’t even turn around when he heard the familiar abrupt sound, the bang behind the door.

Our finite existence restricts any desire for more achievements and discoveries, a young scientist said, before blowing his brains out, on the last live show, just before television stopped transmitting for good, since there were no presenters, producers, sound engineers, or directors.

A young girl stepped closer. We could be the last humans on earth, he said. The girl shrugged. There was no way for them to know, but they were indeed the last humans alive. All I want, before I die, is fall in love, she said. They kissed and made love with the kind of passion that goes with the first, but also the last time. Some people consider love, instead of life, as the opposite of death, and love certainly feels like the opposite of despair. For a very short while they felt like nothing else mattered. The wheel of time almost stopped. The poppies almost withered. Even the prophecy almost gained consciousness and decided to cancel itself and this story could end here, it could leave a sweet taste of hope, but it isn’t about hope at all, it’s about the inevitable, about the end, it’s about what comes after all happy endings. The poppies would still blossom after they held hands and jumped into the void, the birds would still fly, and time would still fly too, like time flies, on and on and on.

Mileva Anastasiadou is a neurologist, from Athens, Greece and the author of "We Fade With Time" and "Christmas People" by Alien Buddha Press. Her work has been selected for the Best Microfiction anthology and Wigleaf Top 50 and can be found in many journals, such as the Forge, Necessary Fiction, Passages North, and others. She's the flash fiction editor of Blood+Honey and the Argyle journals.