literature

Left Unsaid

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The asteroid was hurtling straight for Greasy Bob's Midnight Flapjack Shack.  Thirty minutes from now, it would be nothing more than the center of a crater that would take out half the world.

Not that anyone would miss it.  "Greasy Bob" dipped everything that he cooked in pure bubbling grease before serving it to the general public.  Think McDonalds without the addictive taste and good advertisement.  I'm pretty sure lawsuits have been filed.

But of course, the place was empty now.  The lights were out, but the doors hung open, half-off their hinges, as if something inside had already exploded.  Napkins and empty plastic cups were scattered everywhere.  It was pretty easy to imagine that the red stains on the walls and the pavement were puddles of blood, but really it was just ketchup.  It was incredible how two hours could turn someplace into a total apocalypse zone.

Slightly bemused by the fact that everyone had tried to run, I turned from the restaurant and continued down the street.  It looked like zombies had shambled their way through and left—the avenues were completely deserted.  Some cars were wrapped around telephone poles or flipped over completely—many people hadn't paid enough attention to the road, trying to rush for safety.  Only the stupid ones (that is to say, most everyone within a hundred miles), had tried to escape.  There wasn't a safe place anymore.

According to the news that had aired two hours ago, a giant space rock roughly the size of Virginia would come hurtling into earth's atmosphere, colliding with the surface and turning most of northern America into a giant crater.  The government had known about it for weeks, but hadn't released the news due to the (accurately) expected widespread panic that it would cause the general public.  Scientists knew everything about the asteroid—they knew it was eighty-percent iron and twenty percent other materials, such is nickel, iridium, palladium, platinum, and even a bit of gold.  They knew that it was traveling at a speed of approximately 30 kilometers per second, but it would slow down just a bit when it caught fire entering the atmosphere.  They knew that it would hit the ground at exactly 4:16 pm, give or take 30 seconds.  They knew that the crater it would make would stretch into Canada and as far south as Missouri.  They seemed to know everything about it but how mankind was going to survive the impact.

Stupid fools, I thought bitterly, kicking a chipped piece of gravel.  It skittered across the ground with a small clattering sound, which resounded off the empty buildings, making much more commotion than necessary.  A woman in a shawl, who had been huddled on the curve with her face in her knees, looked up with hollow eyes.  A little girl who might have been her daughter clung to her arm with a solemn face as she watched the sky.  I got the sense that, as young as she was, she knew what was going to happen.  She seemed more at peace with it than her mother was.

For some reason, the woman irritated me.  I turned abruptly and walked away, my shoulders tight, my short hair that I had dyed black swishing dramatically about my face.  For some reason, I was mad at her for staying here—for not trying to run with her little girl, and find safety somewhere.  Why was I angry?  Wasn't I staying to wait for the inevitable, same as her?

My cell phone vibrated in my pocket—a motion that made me jump at first.  It was a bizarre thing, really, to look around at the near-empty streets and crashed cars, the possessions scattered across the pavement, and know that electricity, running water, internet, and cell phones still worked.  It was like a self-inflicted post-apocalyptic scene.  Digging it out of my pocket, I looked at the caller ID.  Mama Duck, it read—she had chosen the Id for herself, and I'd never bothered to change it.  It struck me just then how stupid it sounded.  I flipped it open after a moment's hesitation.  "Hello?"

"Isabelle Chrystler Craft!"  My mother's angry voice crackled through my ear.  My cell phone always distorted any voice that was talking to loud.  What a piece of junk.  I should have gone to a store and picked up an iPhone, just for the heck of it.  

Instead, I winced at my mother's tone.  She was in Florida—as safe a place as any, considering she wasn't about to become a crater.  But she sounded like she had been drinking.  I didn't blame her—I had tried to find a bottle myself half an hour before, but the rest of the town had beaten me to it.  No wonder there were so many crashed cars.

"What?"  I snapped back.  Not the lovey-dovey good-byes that most people would be having in the last few moments of their life, but I hate it when my mom calls me Isabelle Chrystler Craft.  If she didn't want a hot rebuke, she would call me Isabear, or another one of her stupid but tolerable nicknames.  "I'm not running, Mom!"

She had called me at least twelve times in the past two hours, but I had only answered the first one.  She had begged me to get in a car and start driving, but I knew there wasn't anywhere I could reach that would be safe from the impact.  Even if I somehow managed to clear the explosion zone, it would only just be a whole lot of waiting until the rest of the earth went up in flames.

"You get in your car right now, do you hear me?  Right—"

"Oh yeah?  Which direction can I drive that will get me to safety, Mom?"  

"You should have gotten in the car earlier, you stupid…" she launched into a tirade of cussing that she would have washed out my mouth for.  I had to hold the phone a foot away from my ear so I wouldn't go deaf.

"What a nice way to talk to your daughter, right before she dies," I said.  My voice was low, empty.  It had a nice effect, and my mother cut off mid-swear.  My phone beeper again, and I pulled it away from my ear for a moment to check it.  An empty battery sign flashed on and off where my mom's name had been a second before.  "My phone's about to die, mom.  I've got to go."  I almost smiled when I said it out loud—something I had made peace with.  My anger faded.  "I'll see you soon.  I love you."

Silence met me on the other end, and for a moment fear gripped my stomach.  She wasn't going to answer.  "Oh Izzie," she sighed, audibly holding back tears.  "I love you t—" my phone went dead, the screen blacking out.  I could imagine her face, sitting frozen, perhaps crying.  I imagined her calling again and again, only to hear the stupid robot lady saying over and over again… "The number you have dialed is busy… please leave a message.  The number you have dialed…"

I touched my cheeks and, to my surprise, found them to be wet.  My heavy black eyeliner came away with my fingers, leaving a black smudge that looked sort of like a bird.  I let the phone drop from my fingers.  The screen cracked when it hit the pavement, just like it would in one of the old corny apocalypse movies.  I almost chuckled myself at the irony as I continued walking, casting all my troublesome thoughts aside.

I looked into the empty houses around me as I continued down the street.  My dorm was on the other side of town—I didn't feel like being back there, without my friends or roommate.  They had long gone—scattered like seeds in the wind at the news of impending doom.  Like the rest of Wisconsin, and the surrounding states as well.

People could be sitting comfortably in their living rooms with the people that they loved, watching reruns of their favorite show and eating something they were deathly allergic to, just so they could have done it in the last few minutes of their life without worrying about the consequences.  But instead, they were either sitting on the streets with blank stares or wailing prayers of forgiveness from God, or in a futile race against fate.  They could go to the dealership and drive that car around that they had always wanted—I doubted that the dealers would mind at a time like this.  They could cheat on their diets.  They could be at their best friend's house, telling him how much they cared…

I stopped abruptly in my tracks, emotion flickering across my face for just a moment before I settled down again.  Of course.  I should be following my own advice.

I changed direction then, setting out west.  There was no sign of the asteroid in the sky, but I knew it would only be a matter of time.  I could still feel the grass under my bare feet—they were cut from stepping on the broken glass that covered most of the street, but I didn't care.  I felt like being barefoot, so I was going barefoot.

I walked into a deserted grocery store, wandering around the chaos of toppled shelves, scattered food, and half-empty shelves, scavenged by the people who thought they could grab necessities and run.  Not many people had touched the frozen goods—it surprised me, actually.  I'd think that people would have enough sense to eat a tub of ice cream as their last meal.

The frost from the tub of Ben and Jerry's ice cream nipped my fingers when I took it from the fridge—once again, it struck me as odd that electricity till worked in this time of chaos.  In the end, these small comforts that humans revolved their lives around would not help them when the world was about to end.

The ice cream was Chocolate Macadamia flavored—I always thought that it was an odd combination, but he loved it.  I smiled as I remembered the last time I had seen him eating a tub of it.  What a wild party.

I checked my watch—fifteen minutes until the asteroid would enter the atmosphere, and another predicted five before it hit Greasy Bob's.  How ironic, I thought again as I walked back through the aisles, my hands pulled back into my sleeves to protect them from the cold of the ice cream.  They finally created food so terrible that God Himself sent a meteor to wipe it from existence.  

I reached an exit.  The bold red letters painted on the door read "EMERGENCY EXIT:  ALARM WILL SOUND".  I had always wanted to use an emergency exit.  I pushed the door open, just because I could, and felt a small measure of satisfaction as the alarm blared through the silence, echoing through the open space.  I let the door slam against the wall as I swung it open and tossed my head just for good measure before cutting across the pavement back to the grass.  I was sick of broken bottles cutting my feet.

I always came up with a sharp jibe while walking up the driveway to his house.  Usually it had something to do with kids who were filthy rich—or had filthy rich parents who handed everything to them.  Call me a prickly person, but I can't help but poke fun at him.  His parents had bought him the house when he decided to go to college, as a good-bye present.  They paid for electricity, internet, heating… pretty much everything.  Granted, it wasn't a typical rich kid's house—it looked more or less like any other house in this town, but with one exception.  He had painted the entire exterior bright green.  I remembered painting it with him, in fact, though he's never explained why he decided to emblazon this particular color on his pre-paid living space.  

I didn't bother ringing the doorbell—I had always invited myself in, and I didn't even consider stopping now, when we were all about to die anyway.  He's probably gone, already, I thought to myself as I walked through his house, glancing around at the strange tidiness that was the polar opposite of the rest of the world.  He probably…

But there he was, sitting on his back porch.  Usually he stared out at the water—his house was almost directly on a cliff that hung over the fresh water of Lake Superior.  Today, however, he was staring up at the sky, one hand cupped over his forehead like a visor, shielding his eyes from the glare of the sun.  His legs were casually crossed, and his sandy hair was casually ruffled, as it always was.

"Hmph," I grunted from the doorway, copying his laid-back manner as I leaned against the sliding glass door.  He turned at the noise and blinked at me with his sea-green eyes as they adjusted from the brightness of the sky.  "I thought the rich kids would be the first to get out.  Best cars, and all."

He half-smiled—a feeble attempt at his old humor.  "I tried to call you."

"My phone's dead."

He stood up, the wooden planks of the porch creaking beneath his weight as he rolled his shoulders to ease the tension.  He walked over to where I stood and put a hand on top of the tub of Ben and Jerry's.  "I'll get spoons," he said after a couple moments of silence—there was precious little time to spare.  We sat on the cliffs, staring out over the water and trying to find where the horizon really was.  We ate the ice cream slowly, as if we had all the time in the world.  I checked my watch—five minutes left.  Perhaps ten left to live.

What do you say to a person in your last few minutes of life?  Would you tell them the things that you might have never told them before, or do you just sit in comfort as the friends you have always been?  I thought frantically of something to say—anything.  I didn't want to leave something unsaid that I would regret later.  There wouldn't be any time for regrets.  

"I was hoping that you'd left," he murmured, licking the bottom of his spoon.  It was a peculiar habit that he had—he could leave no trace of ice cream on his spoon before taking another bite.  

I licked chocolate from my spoon as well—why not?  It tasted like metal.  "It wouldn't have mattered," I replied coolly, seeing my own grey eyes reflected in the spoon.  My face was upside down.  I smiled as bright as I could, and my reflection frowned.  It was somehow fitting, given the circumstances.  "You didn't leave, either."

"Maybe we should have tried to make a run for it, Izzy" he sighed, taking another bite.  "We might have made it somewhere safe.  My gas tank is full and my car can get up to a pretty good speed?"

I stared thoughtfully off at the horizon again, wondering whether we would see the meteor before it hit, or if it would take us by surprise.  "The impact that that size of an object would leave a crater a thousand miles wide," I said, bending my spoon so the rounded end touched the tip of the handle.  "It would kick up enough debris and dust to flatten anything within another few hundred miles.  Even if we managed to somehow evade all of that, and drive two thousand miles in three hours, the amount of dust it would send flying would block out the sun for years.  Even with the food stores that humans have, we're pretty much screwed.  It'll kill off any plant life that depends on sunlight—which is to say, all of it—and start a complete breakdown of the food chain.  There'll be nothing left in less than a year."  I tossed the spoon off the cliff, watching as it caught the sun every few seconds, tracing its progress until it was lost in the tides below.  "I don't want to have to wait that long, knowing that nothing will ever get better.  I don't want to die alone and in the dark.  I'd rather go out in flames."

Where my mind, this sequence happened in a logical order, all numbers and algorithms, charts and graphs showing the deterioration of the earth, I knew that he saw it differently.  He was an art major to my science major.  Where I could see the raw data and the inevitable end, he saw images of flames, clouds, white plants crumbled to the ground.  The population hitting zero, and a blank canvas.

It surprised me was his frustration when he tossed the empty tub of ice cream to the side, his spoon clattering in the box as it fell over the edge and spun into the surf.  But it surprised me even more when he pulled me into a hug.  I struggled for a moment—I had a clear definition of personal space, and for the most part I didn't like to be hugs.  What was worse, the pent-up emotion that I was feeling was threatening to overflow in the form of tears.  I didn't want to cry in front of him, and I didn't want to die bawling like a baby.

But after a moment, I gave in with a sigh of exasperation, putting my arms around him as well and holding him tight.  

"If you're so smart," he said into my hair, "tell me why this is happening."  His voice shook slightly before he steadied it and I knew that he, too, had rejected the idea of dying with tears in his eyes.

I closed my own eyes, shutting out the world.  "It's just a random occurrence," I said, trying to explain the world away with my ever-present logic.  "A chunk of rock that got too close to the Earth.  The planet's gravity is pulling it in."  I could tell that this wasn't what he wanted to hear, and it really wasn't what I had wanted to say.  But I couldn't think of any other answer to give him.  

A bright flash penetrated the darkness of my closed eyelids, and the two of us raised our heads, breaking off our hug.  We could see it now—a burning ball of orange and red, darker than the sun, and filling up more of the sky.  It was growing fast—faster that I thought it would be, at the rate it was predicted to be traveling.  I waited for the entire world to darken, like it did in the movies about the dinosaurs, but the world seemed to only get brighter.  Our death was strangely beautiful, and the thought almost comforted me.  At least I wouldn't be killed by something ugly.  

Despite all of that, I still heard my small whimper as it escaped from between my teeth.  I clenched my mouth shut before I could start screaming—what a way to go that would be, almost as bad as crying.  He put his arms around me again, and I leaned back against his chest.  We felt the sea breeze stirring the grass around us, tickling his nose with my hair.

"Dare…" I said, just as he said "Izzy".  I tilted my head back to look at him, and he was almost smiling as he gave my shoulders a squeeze.  I turned my face back to the second sun that lit up the sky with its fiery halo.  We would die with the other's name as our last words.  In that moment, I made my peace with my death.

My last thought, as the heat from the falling rock scorched my face so much that I had to turn away from it, putting my face in the soft fabric of his shirt, was that even in the face of death, some things were just known.  Some things would be ruined if put into words too soon, even when your life is measured in a number of breaths that you could count on the fingers of one hand.  Some things were better left unsaid.

The world turned to flame.
Wow. This might be the most depressing thing ever written.

...but it's one of my favorites XDDD It's my virst draft of it, but I don't think there's a whole lot I could change. Critiques, comments? I might be sending this into a contest, so I'd like all the help I can get :3
© 2011 - 2024 Riveriia
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KittySib's avatar
It's so sad it's beautiful...I especially like the fact that they weren't all cinematic and mushy at the end. Sometimes silence speaks loudeer than words...

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