Somber

Weeks passed before we finally realized that we were alone.

When dust and ash settled on the cracked asphalt streets and the molten lakes solidified into purple obsidian, and when the rich summer air, light and warm, turned into cold blades that sliced at the skin with every breath of toxic air. From our haven below an apartment building, the small rectangular windows high up on the walls revealed to us the empty world. A world dead and unrevivable, too far gone that nobody could bring back what once was. Our lives torn apart from us by a maelstrom of political rage and error.

It’s just me and Hunter, now. Living in the basement of a hollow complex that creaks in the night and howls when the winds blow through its gaping windows and holes like a haunting flute. We’ve known each other for a few days now, having been thrown together by, more or less, fate. As if it was part of the Universe’s design for Earth to fall victim to greedy government fallacies and imperialism, as if a God that is or isn’t there threw us in the midst of the great blast that rocked our Solar System and eradicated all human life but two lonely seventeen year olds.

We always wore scarves over our faces. It has been a long while from when I first saw Hunter’s mouth and teeth. Thin lips pulled up in a smile that told me “We’re alive, thank God, we’re alive”.  Like being alive was a gift. Life isn’t a gift, as these last few months of media coverage on continental tensions and chaos around the globe have shown us. Humankind deserved to die. But Hunter doesn’t think like that. He laments memories blown away with the cinders above our heads. He doesn’t cry, but instead, he holds my hand when he remembers the past and ponders the future.

‘I remember when...’

‘Do you think if we...’

‘What if...’

‘My mom used to...’

I just squeeze his hands, let him talk it out.

My mind is the static of a lost channel, the sound of a vacuum and silence all at once that twists my brain and thoughts into weird shapes and angles that I can’t make out. And then I squeeze his hands. Hunter’s hands. And I know that I’m still okay, that I’m not entirely insane. Unfortunately, at the cost of checking in on my sanity, I check in on the rest of my bodily vitals, and my stomach gnaws itself in gut-wrenching pangs that remind me of food. That I need to eat, but we have nothing but the empty, rotten cans of our last meal days before.

Today is a new day, I think. It could very well be yesterday, still. Time is lost in the remnants of space. The temporal realm severed by the space in which mass and physics and gravity exist. Because the bombs were just so big and destructive. They ripped a glitch into the space and time continuum that cannot be repaired because, perhaps, if God were real, the bombs wiped him out too. There is nobody here for me or Hunter. Not even time, not even space, not even God. Just each other and our hidden faces.

I mark the wall idly. A collection of messy tally marks on the brick wall that holds the windows to the dead world beyond. Five, ten, fifteen... it has been a month or so. Hunter walks up behind me and places a hand on the blade of my protruding shoulder. I pull away, stepping forward and stifling a gasp that forces its way up my throat. The voice of my hurting soul wanting to be heard, but I will not let it be heard. I cannot be the one to break because Hunter doesn’t. If we are both strong, we can both pull throw...

‘Come here, Jordan,’ Hunter says, and the ruffling of his clothes tells me that he has his arms open.

I shake my head, looking down into the dark, dank corners that are fetid with moistened mould. A month, and when I’m about to surrender he embraces my emaciated frame and keeps me there.