The story of Darby O'Hanlon has been in my head for the last eleven years, and through multiple rewrites his character has actually changed very little. I joked the other day that since Darby has been in my head for so long, either he's becoming more like me or I'm becoming more like him.
Anyway, the premise has always been the same: Darby knows the exact moment that the world will end, to the second, and the story has always started on the Monday of the week in which the world will end.
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Monday morning. He hated Monday mornings. They were too cheery for the start of the week. He much preferred Thursdays, but there’s a darn good reason for that. But back to Monday mornings. He was convinced that the local radio stations were involved in a conspiracy to lull people into a false sense of complacency. Every song played on a Monday before lunch time was guaranteed to be happy. This was wrong, and probably evil. People weren’t meant to be lied to in such a way.
He fumbled for a moment in shutting off his alarm and sat up slowly in bed. The bed was about ten years old, but it was rapidly wearing out. Oh well, no point getting a new one now. This is an important week. He glanced at the alarm clock, its green numbers floating in the darkness. 5:00. Time to wake up and get ready.
He reached over and flicked on the lamp on his nightstand. His head swam for a moment, adjusting to the light. He had slept a solid two hours. That was pretty normal, actually. Sleep was harder and harder to come by lately. He had tried counting backward from 100, a trick his mother had taught him at the young age of 7. He had read from the dictionary, which had only fired up his brain even more. He had finally resorted to a half a Vicodin and a shot of vodka. That had done the trick, though. He got two hours of sleep for his troubles.
Turning back to the alarm clock, he saw that it was now 5:10, so he had to get moving. That sunrise wasn’t going to watch itself.
Darby O’Hanlon pushed himself up off the bed. This was a very important week. Especially to him. See, Darby O’Hanlon thought he was the most important creature in the universe. Why, you ask? Well, Darby knows for a certainty that the world will end at 2 hours, 14 minutes, and 13 seconds after noon on this upcoming Thursday.
