The piece of fiction submitted by Yuliya Klochan was one of the best I have read in this magazine. “The Last Symphony” is about how, when the Armageddon has come, a group of humans decide to die: they choose to go out to Beethoven’s fifth symphony. Her writing is exquisite, containing just the right amount of details for you to feel sad but not too sad, to actually feel connected to the people who might imagine themselves somewhere else, or would sacrifice themselves to save the lives of the others if they were able to.

Throughout the story, there are little tidbits of information given to you about the characters that make you feel as if you know them yourself—the thoughts of a College Graduate, the smiles shared between a Bushy Man and the Mother of two Daughters, the screams of an unidentified person in the hall that no one turns to look at, the silent countdown everybody is making in their head, and all the while the sounds of the storm growing stronger and that wondrous symphony that had seemed overplayed and unnecessary until the last moments of their lives were becoming ever louder in the background.