Steaming Conciousness
2006-03-09 - 10:28 p.m.

When the glass broke, we both smiled. George almost laughed out loud, but stifled it into his mitten. We pushed the sharpest bits out of the window frame and crawled through, our twelve-year-old bodies shaking in anticipation and fear. We were breaking the rules.

I went in first. The room was dark and cold.

We sat in the well for hours. Once, my hand found hers, and she clenched it as tight as she could. She started whispering. Her words echoed along the damp stone walls, and I could barely make them out. She was talking about her dad, and something they did together when she was younger. A few murky sentences later, she laid her head on my shoulder, and within moments, she was alseep.

I could still smell the citrus scent of her shampoo from the day before, although the damp, loamy smell surounding us was making it weaker. I imagined that I could see it floating through the air, a scarlet mist of orange and red. I saw myself breathing it in, feeling its scent filling my lungs. I imagined myself breathing it out, out, out, until there was more than there was to begin with. The mist began to feel smothering. There was no more air. It was only fruit, and colors, and desperate gasps...

I awoke with a start. Julie lolled her head slightly and mumbled something indecipherable, but she didn't wake up. The air was still here. It was transparent. It was breathable. We were alive.

I squeezed her hand, and she didn't move. I turned my body to see her sleeping form, and her head slumped down from my shoulder to my forearm. I looked at her chest, watched it moving slowly up and down. I could almost see the weave of her shirt breathing and constricting, oxygen in, oxygen out, oxygen in.

I laid my head back against the rough stone and tried to fall back asleep, but everytime I drifted off, my dreams awoke me.

Finally, Julie stirred. She sat up slowly, uncomprehendingly. Her eyes were blank as she stared around the circumfrence of our prison. She stood slowly and turned all the way around twice. Her rotation was eeriely machinelike. She was a pulley, turned by a belt, turned by a gear, turned by an engine, powered by fire. After the second turn, realization lit her eyes, and she sat back down beside me. She did not reach for my hand, and I did not reach for hers.

One day, when the sun burns out and all of humanity dies, there will be one person who lives slightly longer than all the others. In those last moments, he will realize that his planet is dead. He will realize that there is no tomorrow, and he will realize that he is the last man on earth, and there is no one to share it with.

He is standing in the dark. He could not see his hand if it were in front of his face instead of tied behind his back. He is waiting, waiting, waiting. Around him, he can hear the bustle of the crowd outside the walls. There are screaming children, chiding mothers, harsh fathers. He is waiting for one word. He will not move until he hears one word. It is the only thing in the world that will change his position.

It is spoken. Short. Clipped.

Fire!

And then he is lying in the dark.

On the night the moon exploded, I was lying out on my front lawn, arms outstretched, making snow angels in the dark. My last thought was, “Who will add the halo?”

Gabriel laughed, then he opened the pearly gates.

She descends the stairs, a vision in jean and chiffon. He just stares. His eyes go up, then down, then again. He can barely close his mouth. When he tries, the stupid muzzle gets in the way.

Once it went over the fence, we all knew that we'd seen the last of that ball.

“I'll go get it!” Jimmy said, trying to act brave. Jimmy's dad was a police officer, and Jimmy was a cocky little kid. I suspected that he interperted the ball's act of flying over the fence as a personal offense to his impending manhood. He walked to the fence slowly, confidently. He was the bravest ten-year-old any of us had ever seen.

“Oh, Jimmy, don't do it!” Mary screamed. Mary was a bit of a drama queen, but we were all used to it. Jimmy didn't even flinch. He set his face and scaled the fence quickly, scurrying up the weather boards as if they had rungs.

He hopped over to the other side, and there were a couple minutes of silence. Then, the sound of triumph.

“I found it guys!”

The ball came flying back over the fence, and Albert caught it. Natural athlete, that Albert.

We heard Jimmy running back toward the fence, heard him begin scaling the other side, and then... silence.

We stood by the fence for twenty five minutes, and nothing came over. We never saw Jimmy again.