That evening was a strange evening- it's a very strange feeling, knowing it's the last night of your life. I spent a while watching the sunset, knowing it was the last time I ever would, and indeed maybe the last time anyone would. Thousands upon thousands of years of human history and civilisation, literature and art, wartimes and peacetimes, atrocities and miracles, religions and philosophies, all coming to a close in my own lifetime. In a way it's oddly fulfilling, and even makes me feel a little important- that I was one of the last of us alive, that my earthly peers were the ones to see everything through to the end, but it's only a fleeting reassurance before I remember just how much will be lost in such premature death and untimely destruction. A part of me still believes that the bricks and steel that make up our cities and the flesh and blood that makes us up is indestructible and permanent, still clinging in denial to the status quo that's long dead even now, still expecting to wake up as normal on the day after tomorrow. I may get lucky and still be alive in thirty-six hours, but alive in name only, really, and probably wishing I wasn't. I'd never been able to answer the question of what I'd do if I had twenty-four hours to live, and to be honest, I hardly know what to do in such limited time even now. I do know that I want to see my friends again and have a proper goodbye, which I think is why I find myself attending a party at the end of the world.

You could say I'm worried about nothing, if you see things the same way I do- more specifically, an overwhelming amount of nothing. I call death "nothing" because I've never really believed in an afterlife, but recently I've been hoping I'm wrong and praying that something does happen after everything else stops, and that I'll still exist somewhere else. Maybe I'll get a chance to do the things I ran out of time to do before I died, see everyone again and maybe even throw another party to celebrate our posthumous reunion. If there is a somewhere else, I hope it's nice, and that I can live happily there, grow old and get married, get my chance all the familiar trappings of life on Earth that I took for granted before fate tore it away from me. It's a nice comforting thought, but it's hard to convince myself that I'll find anything but oblivion when I go. I'm more convinced that I'll be completely lost in an endless sleep devoid of dreaming, unaware that I'm dead or even that I ever lived in the first place. It's not death itself being nothing that I fear- it's the idea that I will become nothing. My eighteen and a half years of living, every feeling I've ever felt, thought I've ever thought, word I've ever said- all swept away in the blink of an eye.

I suppose I should explain why I'm staring down the emptiness of death. Tomorrow, on the thirteenth of May, an asteroid about nine miles wide will strike the Earth somewhere in northern Africa, with roughly the same force as two billion nuclear weapons. Everything within a two hundred and fifty mile radius will be wiped out almost immediately- and in my opinion, they're the lucky ones. The rest of us have a wide array of other lovely natural disasters to look forward to- from earthquakes approaching 10 on the Richter scale along tectonic borders and fault lines to tsunamis of record-breaking heights sweeping away coastal towns and cities. Coastal towns and cities such as the one I currently live in. Anyone who'll survive the next few weeks will spend the remainder of their lives in grim conditions similar to a nuclear winter- suffering in bitter cold conditions under dense clouds of ash and debris that smother the sunlight, with almost no food to go around. Eighty percent of us are projected to be dead in a month's time, and ninety-nine percent of all humans currently alive won't make it to the anniversary of tomorrow.

All things considered, however, it was a gorgeous evening for a party. The glow of the early summer sunset put me at ease, somewhat, as I walked down familiar streets in alien circumstances. My friend's house was in a neighbourhood on the north side of town, on a suburban hill that overlooked the town centre from a distance, and as I turned the corner down the street I stopped for a second to look over it. At first glance you'd still think it was how it had always been from this distance, but then you notice the plumes of smoke from burning shopfronts, ignited by rioters and neglected by emergency services that had collapsed, or maybe you spot some mangled cars twisted and abandoned like old unwanted toys, and reality kicks right back in. I stood there for a while as black wisps poured into the sky, hiding the distracting sunset behind the stark reminder of the times we lived in. Suddenly, there was a bang. It could have been a gunshot, or a car crash, or I suppose it could have been something harmless, but I didn't want to know, so I turned around and headed for my friend Steven Mulcahy's house, walking a little bit faster than I'd been walking before.

"Five from the end of the road..." I muttered to myself as I strolled by one homogenous brick home after the other. It was a little mantra I'd come up with years ago to remember which house was Steven's, and even though I've been there countless times and know exactly what house he lives in, it's become a habit for me to repeat that little phrase to myself as I approach it. Even if I didn't know it, I would probably have been able to guess considering that music was blaring onto the road from the fifth house from the end of the road. It was still a little distant, so I could only really make out the bass, but I still smiled in anticipation. He'd promised, as he put it, "one last hell of a night before our first night in hell", and if there was one thing I knew about Steven, it's that he never broke a promise, apart from the few times he had, but this didn't seem to be one of those times.

I walked into the driveway as whatever song had been playing faded out, so I never quite managed to figure out what it was. I could see swarms of people in the living room through the window, drinking and laughing and having fun, and a few were making out, and I smiled a bit. I wanted to ignore what fate had in store for me and enjoy myself like someone my age deserved to. I had something else I wanted to do that night, but I think I've always been one to rush things, so I wanted to at least have some fun before then. I saw Steven standing near the window, and he turned around and saw me. We grinned at each other, and he walked towards the front door, disappearing from the window. By the time I reached it, it was already open, beckoning me inside.

Steven slapped me on the back and passed me a can of lager as I walked into the hallway. I cracked it open and took my first sip of alcohol of the night. Another song suddenly started playing- it was Hell of a Life, by Kanye West. Steven had asked me to create a playlist for this party, and I had been more than happy to oblige. This was as good a song as any to make an entrance to.

"And there's Mark! How've you been man? Haven't seen you since school." He asked as we walked towards the kitchen, where most of his guests seemed to be. I synced up my steps to the buzzing synth that the song opened with, just because it felt right to me.

"It's been alright, considering. My neighbourhood's quiet, so thankfully none of the horror stories happened there. Couple of neighbours committed suicide, but no one I knew very well. Been lucky, I guess." I answered, "You been alright?"

Steven took a breath and bit his lip- he always did that when he was upset. "Lonely, really. Been a bit depressing, to say the least. Not much trouble here, thank god. " he answered. I heard glass shatter somewhere in the room, but even if it was something valuable I didn't think it mattered anymore.

"You hear about what happened in town?" I asked him, and he nodded with a grimace. "What was it, two hundred dead? Mad. " I sighed. "And we're by no means the worst for it. I'd hate to be in Dublin right now. They're saying it went to hell on day one."

"Didn't someone hijack the Luas? I heard they took it for a joyride and ended up derailing it," he asked. I hadn't heard it- I'd stopped paying attention to the news on any scale wider than our own town. Too depressing. Too many riots, murders, cult suicides and projections of the future that lay ahead.

"Thankfully, there weren't a lot of people on it, because, you know, who hears the world is ending and immediately hops on the Luas? Still, horrible to hear it."

"You'd wonder about the mindset of whoever did that." I commented, but Steven didn't quite seem to get my point straight away. "Like, did the whole end of the world thing drive them mad, or were they always psycho enough to do that and only had the chance to do it now?" I explained.

Steven shrugged his shoulders- he was never one to dwell on details. "Doesn't matter now, they're dead," he said, and sipped his drink. I chuckled a bit and sipped mine too. "Yeah, I suppose you're right."

Steven lead me to the corner of the room where the rest of our friends were standing around drinking- Ryan Conway, Michael O'Connell and David Costello. The five of us had been friends since we'd began primary school, and we could hardly imagine life without each other. We'd been through every single milestone together, and had enough stories about each other to fill a library with humiliating tales.

"We were wondering when you'd get here. The boys back together one last time, huh? Sorta thing you'd see on TV, or in a movie or something." said my friend, Ryan Conway. Everyone in the group had a drink, so we did a group toast to each other, and to the good times gone by, and we drained our drinks.

"I'd have DiCaprio play me, I reckon. He's got the looks, and it'd finally get him that Oscar," piped up Michael O'Connell.

"He already got one, didn't he? For The Revenant?" I asked. "I mean, if he only gets Oscars for playing characters who look terrible by the end of the movie then yeah, I could see him winning one for playing you," I added with a grin.

"Well there's no actors even ugly enough to play you, Mark, so I guess you're being left out of the movie anyway." He joked back, grinning.

"Nah, nah, Jake Gyllenhaal for me, or maybe Brad Pitt."

"Really? I can't see either of them getting wheeled home in a trolley after blacking out," said David. "Remember that? Actually, I'm sure you don't."

I laughed it off, a little embarrassed. That hadn't been my proudest moment by any means.

"So, who's directing this movie of ours?" I asked, hoping to pivot the conversation away from that story. "I like Edgar Wright's movies, wouldn't mind being in one of them. I always loved Baby Driver, or Scott Pilgrim."

"Nah, I'd want Tarantino directing." Ryan added, and all my friends but me groaned a little. We'd been there for his hardcore Tarantino phase, when you couldn't say "milkshake" or "suitcase" without him beginning a lecture about Pulp Fiction. I enjoyed these discussions- I was the one who got him into his movies in the first place- but no one else in the group did.

"Well, we're all dying horribly at the end of this one, so I can kinda see it." I mused. "But I think Ryan's just waiting for some girls to take their shoes off."

The group all laughed, except for Ryan of course. He'd always said that that inside joke had long run it's course, but it was still funny to the rest of us.

"I suppose this'd be our Tarantino dialogue scene, right?" I said to the group.

"What do you mean, dialogue scene? Every scene has dialogue in it." Michael asked, looking confused. The rest of the group didn't get it either, aside from Ryan, who nodded his head in agreement with me.

"You know, we all talk about pop culture and it expresses our personalities and foreshadows everything else that happens?" I explained, but they all seemed a bit lost.

"Like the opening scene in Reservoir Dogs, where they're all talking about Madonna and tipping, and Mr..." I trailed off, "Ah, I forget his name, but it was Steve Buscemi's character, and he starts getting annoyed that he has to tip with everybody else. Shows how he's frugal and obsessed with money at other people's expense, while everybody else just follows what their boss says, then at the end he just slips away with all the money while everyone else kills each other."

Ryan grinned. "His name was Mr Pink," he added.

"Well, thanks for spoiling the entire movie for the rest of us." Steven sighed.

"Weirdos," snorted Michael.

"Look, I do not want to hear another word about Quentin Tarantino for the rest of the night. Tonight is for remembering the good times we spent together, not the movies we like." Ryan and I had to agree with him on that, so we promised to shut up.

"We've gotta put some work into our bucket lists. Anyone got anyone lined up?" said Michael, with an encouraging look in his eye. I got a little nervous, and grabbed another can of lager to avoid making eye contact with anyone.

"I will take anyone I can get, honestly. Just want one last bit of fun before we die. I hear they're a bit harsh on it in heaven," answered David, as he looked around the crowd, as if he were scouting it for potential partners.

"Oh, Dave, that reminds me. I saw Ethan Kelly here a while ago. Think he was on his own, too." Michael suggested, nudging him on the arm.

"Oh yeah, he was asking me about you a while ago. Ages ago, actually, even before the announcement, but I reckon he'd still be interested. Told me not to tell you, but I suppose we've gone past the need for secrecy." I added. David grabbed another can, cracked it open and took a sip, then grinned.

"Thanks for the tip boys. First round's on me in heaven, if any of us make it there." he announced. "It's been a pleasure." He then made his way towards the hallway where I'd come in, before seemingly being swallowed by the crowd.

"Rest of us, any ideas?" asked Steven. "I've invited basically every single person we know, so there's no excuse."

I froze up for a moment and hesitated. If I said what I wanted to say right now, I'd almost be obligating myself to follow through with it, though could that be a good thing? I figured that allowing myself to get pressured into doing what I came here to do might just prevent me from getting cold feet. I sighed, as if to prepare myself for the social fallout, and opened my mouth to speak.

"Is Emma O'Reilly here yet?" I asked.

In hindsight, saying that was probably a bad idea, another in a long list of bad decisions I've made that I'll blame on alcohol. The entire group immediately fell silent, and turned to stare at me. They looked at me as though I'd proudly announced I had killed someone.

"You're joking." Steven said, breaking the pause. I said nothing, and just paid attention to the music. Hell of a Life was beginning to fade out now.

"Seriously? Emma O'Reilly?" Michael asked me. "Jesus, how long has it been? I'd nearly forgotten that even happened."

"Wasn't it nearly two years ago? You're joking. I have never seen you as upset as you were then. We'll find you someone else, but we are not letting you do that to yourself. I hear Maya Burke is interested in you." Ryan said in disbelief. I still didn't answer. I just grabbed another drink, another can of lager this time. The next song began to play- See You Again, by Tyler the Creator. It's a far more lowkey song than the last one, so I could hear everyone a little bit better now.

Steven sighed. "I did invite her, but I haven't seen her yet. I've seen a few of her friends around though, so maybe she'll come." He paused, and sighed again. "Look, Mark, if you really want to do it, go ahead. It's your funeral." The rest of the group shook their heads but said nothing for a second. The room was incredibly loud, from the chorus of people singing along, frenzied chatter and several people crying, but through the volume I could almost hear my friend's thoughts, and they weren't kind.

Steven broke the lull in conversation by asking the others about who they hoped to get with, but I wasn't listening to them anymore. I was thinking about her. Was Ryan right to try and stop me? I'd gone out with Emma O'Reilly, or Eeyore as I'd called her back then thanks to how her initials sounded phonetically, in the summertime three years ago, and we lasted a little less than three months. The signs of an impending breakup had been there a few weeks in advance, but I ignored them, hoping I was just a little paranoid. I'd been right. I'd fallen headfirst in love, while she'd simply tested the waters and found it didn't appeal to her. Or, more accurately, I didn't appeal to her. That had been it for her, but not for me. I'd been with plenty of other girls in the time since, and I'd genuinely liked them, but Emma was the only one I could ever say I loved. There was always a nagging reminder of Emma in the back of my mind, a reminder that I wasn't with her, and there was always a part of me constantly hoping she'd be jealous of whoever I was with. My plan had been to just get on with things and eventually forget her with enough time and distance, and maybe someone else to replace the way she made me feel.

Then, on April the eleventh of this year, that plan was dashed. I would not be getting on with things, but on the plus side I would be forgetting her soon enough- along with everything else, as I'd soon be dead. That was the day that the Taoiseach, at the same time every other world leader that wasn't North Korean, had announced to a shocked nation that an asteroid known as 8752-Azura would collide with the Earth. I remember reading about it several months prior- it had been discovered quite a while earlier, but it's path had been different back then. The headlines had seemed almost inflammatory at the time, but were now unfortunately prophetic- "Devastating asteroid to pass near Earth," they professed. By "near Earth," they meant three and a half million miles away, which I suppose is near in a cosmic scale. I'd scanned the articles and shrugged them off- it wasn't that uncommon for asteroids to fly past Earth, after all. Months later, the world's astrophysicists discovered the that the unthinkable had happened. Another smaller asteroid had gotten itself caught in the gravitational pull of the planet Jupiter and was ripped from it's anticipated path. It smashed into Azura, knocking thousands of tonnes of debris from the rock and sending it hurtling on a new path- directly towards Earth. I don't even want to know how small the odds of such an event were- a cosmic game of apocalyptic snooker, with a stake of billions of lives. Alarmed scientists calculated its new trajectory when they noticed something was amiss. Sometimes I wonder how many times they redid the equations, hoping to find a mistake. There was no mistake. They were the first to know what awaited us.

We watched the announcement in school. The moment after the projector screen turned off, the classroom became filled with a profound, almost smothering silence as dozens of teenagers processed what they'd just heard. Someone let out a choked sob and chaos filled the vacuum that hung above the room. Some broke down into inconsolable tears, howling in a mixture of grief for what would be lost and terror of what was to come. Some just went mad straight away- school books and stationary were hurled across the room, bags crashed through windows and some opportunistic students took the chance to throw punches at whoever they felt deserved one- as if to rebel against our cruel fate. Personally, I just shut down- I was silent and expressionless, slouched in my seat as normal, trying to process what I'd just learned and what it meant as the classroom descended into mayhem. I think the memory's become a little repressed, because I don't ever remember leaving the building, but the next thing I knew we were all outside. Some were running, some were still causing chaos, but a few of us just stood and watched our school as it burned. A student in a woodwork classroom, who'd happened to have a lighter on his person, had decided a bonfire was a suitable method to express his feelings on the announcement. In the chaos it had grew out of control, and engulfed the classroom, and we'd quickly had to evacuate.

I remember just standing there and staring as my school, and any semblance of my normal life or hope for the future, burned away to nothing. I also remember only having one thing on my mind, despite everything- Emma O'Reilly.

I snapped back to reality as I heard my friends start laughing, and instinctively joined in to try and show I'd been paying attention. Their gazes were fixed on something behind me, so I turned to look at whatever it was. Someone had tripped over someone else and was currently sprawled over the floor, right where someone else had vomited earlier. The whole room was laughing, and even my own laughter was genuine now. A lot of things have changed, but slapstick comedy isn't one of them. Angrily, he stood up and grabbed an empty bottle, and for a brief moment I recognised him as someone from my year, and he turned again and smashed it into the temple of the other boy he'd tripped over. Shattered glass shot across the room, and people screamed at the sight of violence and blood. The poor victim dropped like a stone, landing in the same patch of puke that his assailant had risen from. The crowd surged forward and grabbed the boy with the bottle, restraining him and stopping him from striking again, and my friends and I downed the last of our drinks quickly and went to help the boy on the ground.

"Get him out, get him outside!" Steven yelled, and the crowd seperated for us. We carried the injured boy out through a sliding glass door that someone had kindly slid open for us and propped him up against the pebbledash wall of the house. He wasn't moving, and for a moment I feared the worst as blood from his wound flowed down his head and dyed the shoulders of his rugby jersey a dark red.

"Jesus, is he dead?" Michael asked, dropping down to check his pulse and breathing. I glanced back inside to make sure that the guy with the bottle wasn't following us out- and then suddenly there she was, standing near the back of the crowd, looking a bit confused. Emma O'Reilly was here. My stomach tied itself into a knot of stress at the sight of her. I felt like I was about to choke on my own breath, and almost forgot about the injured person for a moment before I reminded myself to focus. Despite my feelings, there were more important matters to attend to.

Michael stood up and told us that, thankfully, he was breathing alright and would probably come to soon enough, most likely with a serious concussion. I excused myself and stepped back inside, but I couldn't see her anymore, and I wondered had I been mistaken. I've never really been good with remembering faces, but as my friends came back into the room and we all grabbed another, I spotted her again and knew for sure it was her. She was surrounded by her friends for now, so I decided to wait a while until I could speak to her alone. In the meantime, my friends and I continued to drink and chatter away. I found my eyes constantly flickering across the room to look at her.

She was about a half an inch or so shorter than me, but I'm not particularly tall, so I'm not sure if I can say she's tall or not. Her hair was black, and while it was usually quite curly and wavy, tonight it was straight. I felt happy for her- she'd always talked about how she wanted to straighten her hair but said she'd felt nervous about doing it, so it was nice that she'd finally gotten the chance to try that out.

One thing I was almost certain of was her eye colour. I didn't really remember what they looked like, but I knew they were brown. I remember a time, years ago now, when we sat out together on the grass by the riverbank on a gorgeous afternoon in August. We had a Bluetooth speaker, and the song Brown Eyed Girl came on, and I remember her laughing about something, and I remember feeling complete in that moment. I felt loved, and I loved equally and infinitely in return, and the future felt as bright and joyous as the blue summer sky above us. Like the song proclaimed, she was my Brown Eyed Girl, and I felt as though Van Morrison had foreseen the two of us as far back as 1967 and wrote the song for that moment, there and then, forever.

A week later, she told me that she felt strange about us and didn't want to continue going out, and that was that. In hindsight, I think that day had been my last chance to win her over. We never really spoke after that day, aside from a few pleasantries and wishing happy birthdays, and eventually my feelings for her somewhat faded, to an extent, but I felt as though something kept drawing me back to thinking of her time and time again, no matter how much I tried to remove her from my thoughts.

As I peeped over at her, she laughed at something that one of her friends said, and then noticed her drink was empty. She started towards the counter to get another one, so I quickly drained most of what remained in my can and plunked it down on a coffee table that happened to be nearby.

"Wish me luck, boys." I mumbled, lips beginning to feel numb from intoxication, and before their sighs and mutters could register I started heading towards her. My heart felt like it would beat itself right out of my chest. I felt acutely aware of every sensation, of the weight of my limbs and how I moved them, as I approached where she was standing, fiddling with a slightly complicated bottle opener.

I stood at the counter next to her for a few seconds, pretending I didn't notice her standing there as my stomach performed an intricate somersault routine. I tried to play it cool, so I started bobbing my head and mouthing the words to the song. I grabbed another drink, and turned over my right shoulder to face her at last.

"Oh, hey Emma! How've you been?" I asked her, a little louder than I normally spoke thanks to the alcohol and the loud music, as the song as it began to reach it's end with an instrumental.

she answered, giving me a polite smile, and suddenly my presence felt invasive. There was nothing in her words or tone that made me uneasy, but I could tell from her smile that something was wrong, and that something was likely me. There was nothing in her eyes- it was an obligate smile, a smile that would never exist if it were acceptable to be honest about your displeasure, and suddenly I just felt wrong to be here, wasting the last night of my life chasing a girl from years ago with no interest in even speaking to me.

"I've gotta get back to the lads, but it's nice to know you're safe. Seeya, Emma." I said after a pause that lasted maybe a beat too long to be comfortable, looking her in the eyes and nodding a little to try and let her know I harboured no ill will, and I understood whatever reason she had for not wanting to speak to me. Something felt wrong as I looked at her, but I only realised it when I was halfway back across the room.

Emma O'Reilly had blue eyes.

Such a tiny, trivial revelation, but it weighed on me. When I thought of Emma, I thought of her as the girl from that August afternoon when the world felt right, when the sun was shining and music was playing, but now that idea began to crash down around me. One thing I knew was that she wasn't, and never really had been, that Brown Eyed Girl who'd taken up permanent residence in my thoughts for so long, but what I didn't know was who Emma O'Reilly actually was at all. I felt like a long and gorgeous dream had suddenly soured on me, and I didn't know what to feel or think.

"Great effort there man, whole two seconds of conversation." Steven said to me as I opened the can I'd brought over. I was beginning to lose count of how many I'd drank at this point.

"You know what? I went over there, said hi, and then I just decided I wasn't bothered. It's a waste of time, tonight's about saying goodbye to people, might as well spend it with my real friends." I exclaimed, trying to play it cool as though I wasn't in a tempest of reflection inside my own head, and held up my drink for a toast. We put our drinks together and drank more bitter lager, as I became lost in my own thoughts.