I can still feel my mother’s grip on my arm. I can still hear her voice when she woke me up this morning. ‘Get ready,’ she had said. ‘Say goodbye quickly.’ I can hear her screams for me too. They echo in the open air as she desperately reaches out the window of the spaceship.

I stand frozen, alone on the launching pad. My feet already feel rooted to the ground; they will only continue to sink in the next few days, I know. The Earth is about to be completely consumed by its ocean, and I am not different enough to escape it.

She’s still calling for me, and the sky is still painted by an early-morning sunrise. I turn on my heels and face away. I tell myself it’s to protect her feelings. I know that is a lie.

I pull off my bag first, then my shoes and socks. I feel the hot concrete beneath my toes. Somehow the burning is welcome. I mean, what’s the harm in it now? I’m going to die anyway, I might as well experiment.

I pull out my journal and sit myself down to write. You’re probably expecting some sob story or dystopian novel where I was left behind because of my social class or some intrinsic trait I cannot control. But no. I was left behind because I wasn’t on time. Simple as that. Simple as…

A tear falls onto the page. Why am I documenting anything when nobody can physically read it?

I close the book. I can’t do this.

I flop down on the floor, not bothering to even pull my hair out from underneath me. I’ll just lay here. I have to because maybe they’ll come back for me. Maybe they’ll decide that the Earth is worth salvaging. I clutch my eyes closed.

Somehow not trying is easier than pretending to be productive on these last days. I deserve this, I admit beneath the prickly and hot Sunlight. It’s my fault I was left behind. I’m no special last human.

I’m ready to sleep. And I do. For how long, I don’t know. But it’s peaceful, the not trying, waiting for the water to consume my body and trail me deep beneath its waves.

The water finds my face, but it pulls back almost immediately. This repeats again and again until I am interested enough to poke an eye open. I find not water, but the saliva-filled tongue of a big brown and white dog.

It’s still licking me. I turn over, trying to will it to leave. It doesn’t.

I pull myself up. “Go away,” I say to the dog verbally this time. It just sits and wags its tail softly from side to side. “That is the opposite of what I said…”

It cocks its head at me and its collar tag glints in the light: Cookie. “Your name was really common,” I note. “Did your owners leave you behind?”

(I’m too tired to continue rn lol, but I may in the future!)

Alannah and Derrick: newlyweds. That’s what the messily painted on the back of their car said. It’s what it had said for the past year. They’d never bothered to erase it; in fact, the swaying breeze of Acorn Avenue and its inhabitants thought it was cute. Everyone, from the oldest and stubborn man that secluded himself in the corner home, to bouncy, young Sally down the street, would whisper about how sweet the couple looked. They would comment on how their hands were intertwined on morning walks every day of the week, how Alannah would always blush when Derrick whispered something in her ear. Secretly, they all craved that affection was theirs to hold instead, but they never said it. To Alannah and Derrick, they were the most conscientious of neighbors.

But Acorn Avenue was no longer quiet about its secrets. People were boarding up windows with any nails they had to spare. Minivans, ones seemingly big enough to hold entire families, sped down the street with only one to two people in each. The rest of the space was needed for supplies: food, water, stacks of legal documents that people pretended still held importance.

Change had truly come to the Avenue, to their carefully crafted middle class utopia. The only constant thing, then, was the couple’s held hands. They grasped each other tighter and tighter every second, their skin reflecting the light of the TV in front of them.

Derrick felt he couldn’t watch, and so he buried his head into Alannah’s neck. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he whispered over and over again. She didn’t redirect his guilt.

Instead Alannah forced her gaze to remain on the frantic newscasters in front of her. Their speech was garbled, practically unintelligible. Many had already fled the station, presumably to make sure their families were safe. This left the program with one image to project again and again: the capitol burning, the American flag a shriveled mess of its once vibrant stars and stripes.

After a while, Alannah turned her head to look at Derrick. “Do you want to run,” is all she said. It was more a fact than a question; it was an inevitability.

“I should’ve listened to you,” he choked out. “I should’ve fucking listened when you wanted to move to Paris, but no, I just had to have my job. I just had to succeed here.”

“Derrick, we have to go,” Alannah simply said. She felt no attachment to this place, anyway. For the eyes of Acorn Avenue had always felt suffocating to her. They were always watching, commenting, only willing to see the surface image of Derrick’s perfect wife. “I packed the car already, last night.”

Derrick simply shook his head and sucked some snot in through his nose. He cupped his face with his hands and started digging into his skin with his fingernails.

“So, you don’t want to run,” Alannah noted. She looked at the TV, then at the sniveling mess that was her husband. She loved the idiot, she thought. She always had the energy to comfort him, to conjure up tears to match his own when he needed it. But something was different under the light of the fire burning on the screen.

Somehow, she felt exhilarated. “Come on,” she said softly, pulling Derrick up from the couch. The fabric had already been implanted with his form in the mere 6 months they’d had it. Something about seeing the indentation made a chill run up her spine. She had to look away.

She led Derrick down the hallway, then out the door, and finally to the car. His body was almost limp in her arms. He was there, but not quite there, somehow at the same time.

She reached into the backseat and pulled out two Subway sandwiches. She, like the doting wife she was, had made sure to get his favorite. She placed it in his hands, guiding his numb fingers to grip onto it fully.

She unclasped her hair from its tight bun, letting its natural waves fall into place along her shoulders. She flipped down the mirror, seeing herself - the one she recognized - for the first time in longer than a year. She couldn’t quite remember when she lost track; perhaps it was when she met Derrick, perhaps it was when she chose him over moving to Paris, perhaps it was even when she said her first words to another person.

Derrick was clenching his eyes tight. He couldn’t look. He couldn’t see the beauty in the fire, but Alannah did. For, in the glittering reflection of her rearview mirror, nobody was watching.

She put the car into drive, and as she looked to back out of the driveway, she only read part of the painted message scrawled onto the window. Alannah: newly. That’s what it said. And that’s what she would be.

I don't want to die.

That's what I told myself before pausing time. That's what I had told myself most times I used this power. Of course, it was usually less immediately dire. 'I don't want our relationship to die,' 'I'm going to die if I have to take this exam right now,' 'I don't want to die knowing I could've won this game of trivial pursuit with more time.' Those things all seemed important in the moment, I think. Perhaps they were.

I don't want to die.

And yet how long has it been that I've stared you in the face, my silver-toothed friend? How long have you waited to end the stupidly fast spiral of my thoughts? How can I remember only the immediacies of our struggle together: the way the light of some window glints at a 45 degree angle on your surface, how my arms are slightly pulled backward because I was unable to even pretend to defend myself. How-

I cannot look away. I believe I knew we would be in this still dance when I paused time. There are moments, blurry in the back of my mind, where I thought of solutions in a similar state. There was...must have been some sort of will in my bones, one that could make my mind's analytical ramblings true if it just tried hard enough. My bones, my body, myself.

It's funny, really. I can't even remember what I was wearing. I can't even remember my own name. I only really know you.

I didn't want to die.

I should be able to un-pause time whenever I desire, my friend. Perhaps it will be soon, perhaps we will stand here, in a disjointed and distanced embrace till the end of time. I don't know.

Because I cannot seem to desire. I have no idea what it means to live nor die, nor even the peace of closing my eyes. Would I miss this? Would I miss you?

For I cannot fathom what your imposed fear once felt like, and I'm sorry for that.

I'm sorry because all I do know is that we're here.

I hope you can be content in the silence.