The Last Testament

"Imagine a day like any other. The children are fighting, the refrigerator is humming. Highways are jammed, playgrounds are filled. Everything is perfectly normal... For the very last time. It happened in an instant. The televisions went blank, the radios went silent. The cities were gone, the future abandoned. And the only thing they have left to hold onto, is the people they love. They never had a chance to see their children grow up. To watch each other grow old. To fix up the house, to take that vacation. Because it only took an instant to shatter their dreams." Originally published in 1981, this short story was adapted into the 1983 motion picture "Testament". This upload is from a 1987 reprint of the story in Ellery Queen.