World On Fire
Trigger Warning: Suicide.
“The sun giveth, now the sun taketh away” I slur, staring out across the garden. It was hot. Heat slipped into everything, the kind of heat that made you want to collapse somewhere and stay there. It had been like this for five months. “What the hell you drinking?” my friend Rafael murmurs beside me. I lifted up the beer bottle in my hands, wincing as sun rays bounce off the glass and collides with my eyes. “Sorry, beer makes me theological. Don’t know why I’m drinking this stuff anyway. It’s warm”.
“It’s all we have” Rafael reminds me as I move to toss the bottle away.
“Oh yeah. That’s right”. There was no more water. A drought had been declared a year ago, but it hadn’t been enough. The warnings and the water guards and the sight of children dying of dehydration hadn’t been enough. The water had run out four months ago.
“What did you want to do? When you thought about the future, what did you think of?” I ask Rafael. He tosses back his head and laughs, beads of sweat dribbling down his face. “I wanted to go snowboarding. I wanted to explore the Himalayan mountains and meet the people who lived there. I wanted to get my degree in geopolitics. Make a difference. What about you”?
“Hmm”? The trees on the horizon are beginning to light up like motion sensors. We don’t have to move, not yet. Probably won’t anyway. There’s nowhere left to run. “What did you want to do when you grew up” Rafael said, his voice laced with a hint of mirth.
“Not worry. Be happy. Watch history being made”. I suppose I’ve achieved two of those goals, but not in the way that I imagined. Rafael peers at the growing fire coming towards us. It’s moving faster now, the only thing not so beaten down that snail’s pace is the only way to go. “We should probably move. The caves on the beach should be fairly cool” he comments.
“Mmm, assuming we can find a cave long enough”. We pick up our things, moving like sloths, sweat pouring down us in waves as we try to urge our bodies to move a bit faster. I can smell the smoke now, tickling my nostrils and slipping into my lungs. We trot out of the house and head for the beach, each breath coming out in a rattling, exhausted gasp. Eventually we make it and crawl into the nearest cave. It’s not long enough, not to protect us from the boiling ocean water. But it’ll do, for now.
“How long do you think we’ve got left?” I ask Rafael.
“Once we’ve found a longer cave, days” he murmurs hoarsely. I guess this is it then. The time to take the final leap into the un-known. There’s no point in trying to go on an longer. Not with the world on fire. There’s nothing left for us but a painful death by sun or sea.
I slowly pull out two bottles of cyanide from the pocket of my trousers and hand one off to Rafael who swallows and refuses to meet my eyes. “Our father, Who art in heaven, hallowed by Thy name” I whisper to myself. I open the bottle and down the contents, “Thy kingdom come”. The cyanide burns, I have to lie down. “Thy will be done on earth as is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive our trespasses”. I can’t see Rafael. Panic and pain spurt through me but I can’t get my body to move. “As we forgive those who trespass against us”. I can see Rafael now. He hasn’t taken the poison. He’s leaving, leaving me. But it’s okay. I forgive him. He’s always been the optimist. “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil”. I’m not sure if I believe in an afterlife, but anything is better than here. Anything is better than trying to survive the end of the world.
Published 18th October 2018