A chilling tremor ran through the ground beneath Sibusiso's bare feet, a sensation more felt than heard. It was unusual, this subtle vibration in the usually still earth of Lobamba, especially during the late afternoon quiet.
He straightened from where he'd been tending his small patch of maize, brow furrowed, dark eyes scanning the familiar, rolling hills. The air held the normal scent of dry grass and distant woodsmoke, nothing to suggest any earth-shattering event.
Yet, the tremor, however slight, had seeded a prickle of unease at the base of his spine. He tried to dismiss it, attributing it to fatigue after a long day under the sun. But the feeling persisted, a disquieting whisper in the stillness.
Later, as the sun dipped below the horizon, painting the sky in bruised oranges and purples, Sibusiso sat with his family around the small fire, eating the evening meal of pap and morogo. The usual easy chatter was muted tonight, replaced by a subtle tension that mirrored his own.
His younger sister, Thabile, a girl of ten with eyes too old for her years, finally broke the silence. "Did you feel it today, Bhuti?" she asked, her voice low, almost a hesitation.
Sibusiso nodded, glancing at his parents. They exchanged a look, a silent language he was only beginning to understand – a language of worry.
His father, a man of few words and quieter observations, spoke finally, his voice gravelly from years in the sun. "News from Mbabane is… odd. The radio speaks of strange pronouncements from leaders in faraway places."
"Strange pronouncements?" Sibusiso prompted, setting down his empty bowl.
His mother sighed, stirring the embers of the fire with a stick. "They speak of… shifts. Changes in policies. But the way they speak… it is not like before. It's…" she searched for the right term, "…lighter, somehow. Less serious, though the words are grave."
Sibusiso listened, the unease within him solidifying into something heavier, more defined. It was a dissonance he could not place, a wrong note in the familiar melody of the world.
The following days unfolded in a haze of mounting bewilderment. News trickled in, mostly through the old radio his father cherished, crackling broadcasts that painted a picture increasingly surreal and disturbing.
World leaders, figures previously stern and measured, appeared to be… joking? Their pronouncements, initially dismissed as misinterpretations, grew increasingly bizarre, laced with flippancy and unsettling levity.
"Did you hear what the European Union leader said?" his father asked one morning, tuning the radio with meticulous care. "About the tariffs? He said… he said they'd implement them 'just to see the look on their faces'."
Sibusiso frowned. "Just to… see the look?"
"That's what the radio said," his father confirmed, a deep line etched between his brows. "And the Asian coalition leader responded… laughing. Actually laughing on live television. About the potential economic impact. It is… wrong, Sibusiso."
Wrong. That was the word that resonated. It wasn't just odd or unusual; it was fundamentally, terrifyingly wrong.
The leaders of the world, the supposed bastions of reason and stability, were behaving like… children. But children with the power to unleash unimaginable destruction.
The news broadcasts became a macabre spectacle. Once somber and analytical, they now adopted a tone of breathless, bewildered excitement, like commentators describing some bizarre sporting event.
Reporters struggled to maintain composure as they relayed increasingly unhinged statements from global summits.
Sibusiso heard snippets while working in the fields, the radio his constant, unsettling companion. A North American president declaring new military strategies based on "a hunch" and a desire to "spice things up."
A Pacific Rim leader proposing territorial disputes be settled with "a really good dust-up, winner takes all, for keepsies." The language was jarring, childish, yet delivered with the full weight of global power.
The suspense wasn't a sudden crash; it was a slow, agonizing tightening. It felt like the world was being wound up, coil by coil, to an impossible tension, the snap inevitable, horrific.
One evening, gathered around the radio as always, they heard a broadcast that made the blood run cold in Sibusiso's veins. It was a joint address, a global hook-up of every major world leader.
The static crackled, then, their faces filled the small screen – faces Sibusiso had seen in newspapers, on rare television broadcasts at the local bar, faces of power, now twisted with something utterly alien.
They were smiling. Broad, unsettling, almost manic grins stretched across their features. The first to speak was the premier of a vast eastern nation, a woman known for her icy composure.
But tonight, her eyes glittered with something unsettlingly bright, and a nervous giggle escaped her lips before she began.
"Greetings, world!" she chirped, her voice almost too high-pitched. "We have… exciting news! Truly thrilling! We've decided… well, we've decided things have been dreadfully tedious lately, haven't they?" A chorus of unsettling chuckles echoed from the other leaders on screen.
Sibusiso exchanged a terrified look with his family. His mother gasped, clutching Thabile to her side.
The European president, a man known for his sophisticated pronouncements, leaned forward, his smile unnervingly wide. "Yes, tedious! Utterly, utterly tedious. So, we put our heads together, didn't we, chaps? And we had a jolly good think." He winked at the camera, an action so out of character it was sickening.
"And?" the North American president boomed, clapping his hands together, the sound amplified and booming through the small room, making them all jump.
"What did we decide, huh? What's the cure for tediousness, people?!" He paused for dramatic effect, his grin widening to reveal too many teeth. "Why, a good old-fashioned… shake-up!"
The word hung in the air, heavy with unspoken dread. The African Union representative, usually a somber, thoughtful man, bounced in his seat, practically vibrating with unnatural glee.
"A grand game!" he exclaimed, his voice cracking with excitement. "Think of it! New boundaries! New… opportunities! It will be… magnificent!"
Sibusiso felt a wave of nausea. This was not a joke. This was a terrifying unveiling.
The broadcast continued, descending further into madness. They spoke of "re-drawing maps," of "testing limits," of "seeing what happens." Their words were peppered with giggles, with unsettling winks and nudges, with an undercurrent of gleeful anticipation that was profoundly disturbing.
"Rules are… flexible now," the Asian coalition leader declared, a wild look in his eyes. "Morality? Quaint. The old ways? Utterly boring!"
As the leaders rambled on, disjointed, manic, Sibusiso understood with sickening clarity. This was not policy change. This was a collective descent into something monstrous.
They weren't strategizing; they were reveling in the idea of chaos, of destruction, for their own twisted entertainment. The world's fate was being decided on a whim, for a sick joke.
The broadcast ended abruptly, replaced by static, then a blaring emergency tone. The radio announcer's voice, usually calm and professional, was now trembling, strained. "Unconfirmed… reports… military… movements… border clashes… it appears… it appears to be… widespread."
Sibusiso switched off the radio. The silence in the hut was heavy, suffocating. Outside, the usual sounds of the night – crickets, distant dogs barking – seemed muted, overwhelmed by a profound stillness.
His father stood, his face etched with a sorrow deeper than Sibusiso had ever seen. "We must prepare," he said, his voice barely a whisper. "We must try to… to survive this foolishness."
Prepare. For what? For a world turned upside down, where sanity itself had become a casualty? Sibusiso looked at his family, at their faces etched with fear, and a cold dread washed over him. This was not a war with reason or purpose. This was something far worse. It was madness unleashed.
The next day, the tremors were not subtle anymore. They were violent shudders that rattled the small hut, that made the earth beneath their feet tremble with a constant, ominous thrum. The sky, once a comforting blue, was now smudged with dark plumes of smoke in the distance, growing thicker, closer, with each passing hour.
People began to flee the cities, streams of refugees clogging the roads, their faces etched with panic and despair. Hearsay arrived with them, tales of inexplicable bombardments, of armies clashing with no clear objectives, of a world tearing itself apart at the seams.
"They are fighting… everywhere," a distraught traveler told them, seeking shelter and water. "There is no sense to it. No borders, no targets… just… fighting. Like beasts turned loose."
Sibusiso watched the world disintegrate around him, the familiar landscape warping into something nightmarish.
The war wasn't some distant conflict in faraway lands; it was consuming everything, creeping closer with a chilling, unstoppable tide.
Their small village, once a haven of peace, became a waystation for the displaced, a fragile island of normalcy in a sea of growing insanity. They shared what little they had, offered what comfort they could, but the shadow of dread was lengthening, inescapable.
One evening, as the horizon glowed an unnatural red from distant fires, Thabile asked a question that pierced Sibusiso to the core. "Bhuti," she whispered, her voice small and trembling, "Why are they doing this? Why are they hurting everyone?"
Sibusiso looked at her, at the innocent confusion in her eyes, and the bitter truth choked him. "For nothing, Thabile," he said, his voice hoarse. "They are doing it… for absolutely nothing. Just because they can. Just because they… wanted to."
The brutal senselessness of it all was the ultimate horror. There was no enemy to fight, no ideology to combat, no grand struggle to understand. Just the capricious, insane will of those in power, turning the world into their personal playground of destruction.
Weeks blurred into months. Lobamba, once safe, was no longer untouched. Stray ordnance fell from the sky, explosions ripping through the quiet countryside, shattering the illusion of peace. Refugees kept arriving, bringing with them ever more horrifying stories, stripping away any lingering hope.
One day, a small detachment of soldiers arrived in their village. They were unlike any soldiers Sibusiso had ever seen, their eyes vacant, their movements listless, their uniforms mismatched and ill-fitting.
They moved with a strange, detached manner, like automatons following nonsensical orders.
Their commander, a young man with a haunted look in his eyes, addressed the villagers, his voice flat, devoid of emotion. "By mandate of… well, mandate… you are to evacuate. Relocation protocol… directive seven… something. Doesn't matter. Just… leave."
"Leave where?" Sibusiso's father asked, his voice trembling slightly. "Where are we to go?"
The commander shrugged, his gaze unfocused. "Designated zones… relocation centers… doesn't matter. Just… not here. Orders." He gestured vaguely towards the smoke-choked horizon. "That way, mostly. Or… anywhere, really. Makes no difference now."
There was no anger in his voice, no authority, just a weary, hollow resignation. It was the same vacant madness Sibusiso had seen in the leaders' eyes on the radio, now infecting the ranks, seeping down through the world.
They left Lobamba, their home, with heavy hearts and meager belongings. They joined the endless stream of refugees, walking along dusty roads, under a sky that was perpetually stained with smoke and ash.
Hope, once a distant glimmer, had extinguished entirely, replaced by a numbing acceptance of the inevitable.
Then, one day, it happened. It wasn't a grand, apocalyptic event, not a fiery end of the world movie scene. It was quiet, almost anticlimactic.
They were resting by the side of the road, sharing a scant meal of dried fruit, when a distant, muffled boom echoed through the hills. They barely registered it, used to the constant rumble of distant explosions.
But this time, it was followed by another, closer, then another, and another, growing rapidly in intensity, converging on their location with terrifying speed.
There was no warning, no siren, just a sudden, overwhelming wave of sound and force. The ground erupted, the air tearing apart, the world consumed in a blinding flash of white-hot light and unimaginable pressure.
Sibusiso remembered the heat, searing his skin, the shockwave that threw him through the air like a rag doll, the deafening roar that obliterated all other sound. Then… nothing.
He awoke to silence. A profound, unnatural silence, broken only by the whisper of wind through shattered trees. He was lying on the scorched earth, disoriented, pain lancing through his body. He pushed himself up, his head swimming, vision blurred.
Around him, the world was gone. Their small group, his family, the refugees they had been traveling with… all vanished. The landscape was utterly, irrevocably destroyed, a blackened wasteland stretching to the horizon. The air, thick with dust and the acrid stench of burnt earth, stung his lungs.
He was alone. Utterly, crushingly alone in a world obliterated by madness.
He called out, his voice weak, cracking. "Mama? Baba? Thabile?"
Only silence answered him, a silence heavier, more final than any he had ever known.
He searched for them, driven by a desperate, futile hope, stumbling through the desolation, calling their names until his throat was raw.
But there was nothing. No sign, no sound, just the empty, ravaged earth and the silent, accusing sky.
He was the scar left behind, etched onto the face of a world that had chosen to laugh itself to death. His brutal sadness wasn't just the loss of his family, or his home, or his future. It was the understanding that it had all been for nothing.
The leaders, the world, had descended into madness, and he, Sibusiso, the 23-year-old man from Swaziland, was left to wander the ruins, a solitary testament to a joke that had destroyed everything.
His unique fate was to survive the punchline, to live on in a world where laughter was the sound of apocalypse.