Aiden

I have spent eternities here, in the dark. It’s been decades, centuries. I have lost track of how long it’s been that I’ve stayed hidden in these bushes.

I was able to kill one of those things, evident in the black blood washed all over my hands, but I don’t have it in me to do it again. I’m too tired, too hungry, too weak.

I don’t even know if I’m still alive or if I have died waiting. It wouldn’t matter. I am going to spend eternity trapped here, hiding until one of those things finds me. And then I’ll be brutally torn apart, and any remaining piece of my soul will be stolen from me. I’ll become one of them. I’ll become another monster.

I can’t save anyone if I can’t save myself. And I can’t save myself.

I can’t make it out of this.

I have held it together for so long, for centuries. But I can’t. I can’t anymore. It breaks, that small thing in my heart, the final pillar. I don’t scream or cry. I just curl into myself like a broken, rotting thing. I think of my mother, of Lucy, of Alex. Has the end of the world come already? Have I failed them all?

I am terrified of the end, but what’s the point of hiding anymore? This is not life. This is just a placeholder for death. I have evaded it too many times. I’m tired.

I’m tired.

My trembling arms push the rest of my body forward, up to a sitting position. And then to my knees. And I stare up at the darkness that falls from the sky, engulfing me. And I open my palms, watching as fire shoots up toward that blackened sky, illuminating me in a cast of gold. It’s warm. I had forgotten what warmth felt like.

The sound of snarls and screeches ring through my ears, but it’s all background noise behind the sound of flames. I close my eyes when the noises get closer. I imagine my mother’s face.

And, in the presence of that dark oblivion beyond death, I spend my last moments trying to remember how my mother looked when she smiled. I try to remember the sound of her laughter.

And I can’t remember.

I can’t.

So I open my eyes, afraid of death but more afraid of forgetting, and through my tears I see the outline of a face that fills me with a sudden wash of comfort, and I am grateful for my mind, grateful that desperation has given me a final peace, even if it’s only a hallucination. I can die looking at the face of someone I love.

It is not my mother. It is a different kind of beauty, a different type of mercy.

I swear I can feel his hands on my cheeks, the ghost of warmth stained on my frozen skin.

I’m not afraid anymore. I am not alone. I have him to carry me to the other side.

Love is sacrifice. Love is faith. Love is easy.

“Close your eyes,” he tells me, against the shroud of dark.

And I do.

***