By Draven Copeland, Editor-in-Chief
**TRIGGER WARNING: This text contains references to suicide and graphic self-harm. Please be aware of this potentially upsetting content as you engage with the text.**
Luke looked at the orange sun as it started to make its way down through the ocean of blue sky towards the horizon of debris. What had been New York City before humanity’s last gasp was now hills of shattered glass and misshapen concrete and Luke, standing on the highest pile, could see the entire city laid out before him. To his left, the Hudson. To his right, the East. To his back and his front, a wasteland of rock, glass, and bone.
It had been thousands of years since the storm ended. It was quick, violent, and momentarily bright before the darkness of gunpowder smoke and dust overtook the planet. The first hundred years afterward were loud. Although the extermination of humanity only took a couple of days, the screams and tears of the dead echoed across the world for a century. Even when he had covered his ears, Luke couldn’t drown them out.
After that first century, the world slowly became quiet again. Souls wandered aimlessly. Most were still looking for their family and friends, holding off their realization that they were the only members of their circles to stay with their desperate desire for the contrary. When the realization finally came, they would scream and cry even harder before giving up completely. From there, they would either lay motionless and watch the water or the weather with glazed eyes or start to look for a way out. Luke thought it was ironic how little they spoke to one another after the first couple of decades.
Now, Luke watched the few souls left wander back and forth over the rubble. Some swam in the surrounding rivers, routinely disappearing from sight as they tried to drown themselves. One young woman a couple of blocks away and far below was repeatedly slicing at her wrists with a shard of glass, watching blood continually run out of her arm, drip from her fingers, and splash onto the concrete. She had been doing it for months now. Luke wondered if she did it for entertainment or if she truly believed that, one time, it would work.
“Can I join you?” A small voice spoke from behind him.
A girl, maybe twelve at the time of her death, stood at the rise of the rubble, her red dress ragged and covered with dust and blood. He hadn’t heard her climbing up the hill, and she showed no signs of exhaustion other than the longing in her dark green eyes.
“Of course,” Luke said, motioning to a concrete boulder a couple yards away. “Do you want to sit?”
“It doesn’t matter if I do or don’t,” the girl said before sadly adding, “I don’t feel anything anymore.”
“I know,” Luke replied, walking over to the man-made rock and taking a seat himself. “But it still feels right, doesn’t it?”
The girl shrugged, her frizzled and wildly unkempt hair raising and falling with her shoulders. “I guess,” she said as she sat down beside him. “My name is Jennie. What’s yours?”
“Hi Jennie,” he replied, lightly. “I’m Luke.”
Jennie nodded. “I’ve seen you around, I think. You scared me for a long time.” Her body language told him that the ‘long time’ wasn’t over just yet; she only looked at his eyes in glances and she angled herself directly forward, towards the sun.
Luke smiled wide, the slit that was his mouth opening fully to reveal an attractive smile. “I’m not as scary as I used to be,” he said. “The way things are now, I can’t hurt anyone any more than they hurt themselves.”
Jennie shrank into herself. She looked down at the railroad of hesitation scars on her arms. “A lot of people here hurt themselves.”
“They did. That’s… well, that’s why they’re here.”
Jennie waited a minute to respond. She looked at him, her next question clearly formed in her mind before she had the courage to ask it, and pointed at the bruises around his eyes. “Did you hurt yourself too, Luke?”
“I did,” he replied. “I’ve always been the only one who can hurt me. And I did… I did for a while, actually. I think that it’s just what some people do. Pain either comes from others or it comes from oneself, but it comes nonetheless. It’s unfortunate, but it is true. Even the world hurts itself when there’s no one to hurt it.”
“Yeah,” Jennie said. She knew, even if she didn’t completely understand.
The sky turned every color between orange and purple as the sun began to fall into the horizon, its image reflecting infinitely off of the broken glass that scattered over everything the two could see, turning the hills of dust covered rubble into a crystalline desert. The sun’s color encompassed the sky and the ground simultaneously, creating a breathtaking image. A city that was dull, gray, and broken became a sea of glimmering stars. Even the wrist-slitting woman stopped to look around.
“It’s pretty from up here,” Jennie said. Tears began to fill her eyes as she looked on and she turned away when they began to roll down her cheeks.
“It’s okay to cry,” Luke said, purposefully keeping his eyes on the lights above and below.
They sat in comfortable silence as the sun slowly fell. When Jennie spoke again, the sky was becoming purple and deep blue, the sun fading as the night began to take over. The glass reflected the color and its brightness, the world around them slowly resting into peace.
“My mom would’ve liked this,” she said, not taking her eyes off of the display before her. “She’d say something about the ‘beauty of God all around us’. She saw Him in everything, y’know, even the bad. I could see it during the good but the bad… I’ve thought that maybe that’s why she’s gone. That she’s up there with Him. That’s where she’d want to be. And maybe I’m here because I never got it.”
Luke nodded in understanding, hoping that she didn’t read it as confirmation. “I had a friend who would’ve liked this too. I don’t know how he felt about God, but he had a knack for seeing beauty in the darkness of things. He told me that there was something in the way that the darkness and the ugliness in the beautiful things make them more precious. I never understood it when he was around, but I’ve thought about it a lot since he’s been gone.”
“What happened to him?”
“He passed away… before everyone else did, I mean.”
“Did he stay, like me?”
Luke swallowed and looked over to her. She had turned to face him and had been watching him as spoke. “No… no, he didn’t. He… didn’t want to.”
“I didn’t want to either,” she said, putting her elbows on her knees and cupping her head in her hands as she turned to look out again. “I don’t know why I’m still here, Luke.”
He put his hand on her shoulder, not feeling it but knowing she would. “No one stays here forever. Trust me.”
She nodded. “I’ve seen people go, I think. After they’ve died, I mean. One second they’re there, and then, the next time I look, they’re just… gone. I thought they were leaving me behind, but it’s happened so many times now. I guess they still were, either way.”
“I know what you mean,” Luke replied. “But it’s not the same… People can go at any time, but they’re not leaving you. It’s just their time, I guess.”
“Are they going to see God?” Jennie wasn’t hiding her tears anymore and turned to look directly at Luke.
“I think that’s a good way to look at it,” he replied.
Jennie nodded. “Will I see my family when I go?”
Luke thought for a moment as the sun finally faded away. The stars began to twinkle in the sky, and the destruction below was no longer bright and colorful, but faded and dark again. The woman looked down at the glass in her hand for a moment as blood still dripped from it. Then, she started again.
“I think that wherever you go, it will be a happier place,” Luke answered. “And it’s the same place they went, so… they’ll be there with you.”
Tears filled her eyes and she put her head into Luke’s shoulder as she openly cried.
“That makes me feel better,” she said. “Thank you, Luke.”
“Of course,” he replied. “I’m here as long as you need, okay. We’re friends.”
Jennie looked up at him and smiled. “Okay,” she said. “We’re friends.”
They sat in silence for a long time. Luke watched the sky, looking at the twinkling stars and thinking about his old friend. He wondered what John would’ve said to the girl. Something a lot better than he had, he thought. What he knew for sure was that he would’ve loved the stars on nights like this. He’d always loved looking up at the stars.
“It really is beautiful,” Luke said. When there was no reply, he looked over to find an empty space on the rock beside him and slowly glanced around, knowing already what he would find. She was gone.
Luke looked back up to the stars. Tears filled his eyes and the shining specks in the darkness turned to liquid light in his vision. “Show her around for me, Johnny,” he said. “Tell her I said ‘thank you’ for coming to talk to me, okay? And that I’m sorry we didn’t get to talk more, as friends.”
