I am afraid.

There is nothing left around me. No house, no car, no human being. Here, all that remains are the memories of the empires that once stood here, until the last of us disappear in turn. Then there will be nothing left but emptiness. Like here. Here, there is emptiness.

Nothing can be named as it once was, nothing means anything anymore. We were an organised society, sharing space with nature. Now, we are nothing.

Almost everyone dreamed of setting foot on our soil, of living our crazy life, of sharing our traditions, our secrets, the momentum of our utopias, our knowledge, the image of luxury, tranquillity and dreams that the country distilled.

None of it exists anymore.

There is no longer a hurried businessman here, nor a worker on a bicycle, nor a prostitute with a sensual nape; here, the sun does not even rise anymore.

Here, there is nothing left.

It is a desert of water that has swept away our peaceful future.

We drowned ourselves by defying nature.

The hope of the past.

The landscapes of decay.

Nature is sublime, without intention. If man takes hold of it and transforms it in order to make himself nature’s equal, everything that comes out of it is nothing but waste. Waste that we may like or dislike, but waste all the same, because it is intentional, moulded by ambition.

Failures!

A tree growing, a flower, a mountain, a wave, volcanoes, earthquakes, tidal waves — all of this is sublime, but without man. It happens and that is all. That is simply how it is.

But man arrives and makes his work, his achievement, his due; everything becomes ugly.

I am ashamed to be a human being and to blame nature. It is not her fault.

If only we knew how to accept. To accept things as they are.

But we think only of ourselves.

That is how it is.

And I am alone in this empire of ruins where the sun will never rise again.

Ruins, always and forever.

It seems as though it will never end.

I am on a deserted island, made virgin again by the seas, an island-landscape of decay.

Everything here resembles a road accident whose forgotten bodies lie there without help, their limbs torn apart and exposed.

I am still alive, but I feel like this landscape, an injured landscape lying there with its torn limbs exposed, never to receive help again.

Besides, it is too late.

No one will come anymore.

And even if someone did come, it would already be too late.

This land is cursed.

It is cursed — cursed in the eyes of man, not because of Providence, but because man does not respect the rules of the game.

Because man is a bad loser.

You never win at the game of life.

In any case, you die.

I am afraid, and I am a body on the verge of decay in a decaying landscape.

Everything is torn-off limbs, screams, tears, blood. They even find the dead beneath the rubble.

Nothing.

There is nothing left.

It is chaos.

The apocalypse.

I am ashamed to be alone. I am ashamed to still be here, while all my friends, my family, have gone.

At least they did not suffer?

Because perhaps the hardest thing, in the fear of the inevitable, in the fear of death, is not dying, but being the last survivor.

Alone.

Everyone else already dead.

And having no other purpose than to let yourself die.

To wait, forgotten by fate, until someone finally comes to collect you.

Until someone finally comes to collect us, so that we do not have to see this.

To tell us it was only a dream and that it never happened.

That life was only a dream and that nothing matters.

That whether one person dies or no one lives…

Is this only a dream?

A nightmare?

An illusion?

Everything I see here is a nightmare, and I am as though struck down, a helpless spectator: I can do nothing.

And I am trapped in a present that wants only to remember the past because there is no future.

And that makes me suffer even more.

I am afraid.

Around me there is nothing but horror.

I wanted to linger a little longer.

To watch the sun set.

To watch night fall.

It never rose again.

I no longer sleep. It is night all the time, and I no longer sleep.

I wait for the sun to rise again so that I can fall asleep.

So that I can finally find sleep.

Before, I used to fall asleep.

Before, I also had a roof over my head, and I did not appreciate it.

Not enough.

We never appreciate life enough.

I thank God.

I am alive.

Thanks to God.

I have lost my loved ones, my entire family.

All around me there is nothing but a field of ruins.

Nothing.

Not even enough to rebuild.

Only dust.

Worse than emptiness.

Clutter…

So many things that are of no use to us and that prevent us from living.

Living, even if we breathe.

Sometimes it is called living, but it is not living.

It is being clutter upon the earth.

We are alone.

We are not even dust, and we would like to be a mole and burrow into the ground.

We would like to be a cloud and rise up.

Anything other than earth, the earth where there is nothing left that can be named except chaos.

Beneath us, it is no longer earth.

It is not even dust.

Above us, there are not even clouds.

It is denser than that.

It is no longer even dust.

It is a slab of concrete.

In this state of chaos, we are buried alive, and it serves no purpose.

We are less than alive.

We have less than what is needed to live.

In my lungs, is it still air?

I have been told stories of people transformed into monsters because they breathed something other than air.

Anyway, tomorrow I will find nothing to eat.

No more than today.

No more than the day after tomorrow.

And we must forget yesterday.

Anyway, eating is no longer any use.

Nothing is of any use anymore.

And in this chaos, there is not even an object with which to kill myself.

Not even enough to choose one's own death.

It was almost emptiness.

Well, not quite.

A notion of emptiness.

Things disappearing and never reappearing.

But there is still some of it left, not much, but enough for it not to be emptiness.

The sound of broken glass.

Glass exploding.

Everything shattering.

It was what, not long ago, we would have called “the sparkle of glass”.

But now there is no glass left.

Everything is broken.

Only the sounds remain, like echoes.

And then I was afraid.

I ran.

I fled.

There were too many sounds in the silence.

A deaf silence.

Deafening.

The babble of a thousand conversations at once, a crowded street with nothing before my eyes.

They were there, invisible.

Perhaps there.

How would I know?

And then the white, the green, the red and the blue had been swallowed up in a whirlpool that I had not seen, so preoccupied were my ears.

I had not seen emptiness settling in.

Almost settling in.

But not yet.

We are infinity.

(whisper from stage left)

— The end of the world is us!

(whisper from stage right)

— The end of the world is us!

— There is nothing left, nothing but the end…

— Hunger in the world.

— The anachronism of the groaning belly…

— The sound of the wind in our ears.

— A tornado. It is a tornado you can hear. At least, that is what I think it is called.

— We are not really sure of anything anymore.

— Besides, is there anything left?

— Do you think it will begin again?

— Like the olive trees?

— No. I don't think we'll be here to see it. It's too far away, on another planet, or in another time. For us, it's as though it didn't exist.

— And yet it could exist?

— Perhaps, if you want to believe in it without wanting anything in return.

— What interest would I have in that?

— Some people sometimes make the wager of believing.

— But there are things you must not gamble with.

— …or cannot.

— I bet that all of this was a dream, and that when I open my eyes again, there will be no more tornado, no more grey deserts of dust, no more landscapes of desolation and apocalypse. I bet I will be in my bed and wake up as I would after a bad dream.

— You cannot make a bet with things like that.

— The end of the world is us.

— The end of the world is also you!

— The end of the world is nothingness!

— Let us take stock of the end of the world!

— Nothing left to buy, nothing left to sell, everyone equal before the end of the world!