and then there is nothing

by Daniel Sheen

WE SHOULDER A BACKPACK OF belongings, barely enough to show we ever belonged. Although I guess all that don’t matter anymore. Not if what they’re saying on the radio is true.

“Come on,” I say, tugging at the sleeve of his hoodie. “Let’s get going. I don’t want to be late.”

He laughs, grabbing his BMX. “Right, yeah. Definitely don’t want to be late.”

“Shut up,” I snort. “You know what I mean. If we’re really going to do this, I want it to be perfect. It ain’t like we’re going to get another chance.”

He laughs again, but softer this time. “Yeah, guess you’re right.”

*****

THE FIRST TIME I SAW him it was at a Friday night senior’s party down by the junkyard. That was the local holy grail for packs of juiced-up wildlings looking to fight, party, hook up, torch stuff, and every now and then, blow something up.

See, Wildwood, California was a real small town, which is just another way of saying the kids there lived for trouble. It was your local sport, seeing who could do the most messed up shit. Although it lead to some truly epic blowouts. Howling voices. Bonfires you could see from space. Stomachs churning with cheap booze and pills. Although I guess we had our quieter moments too, euphoric even, everything blurred and fizzing, like a firework knocked on its side—dangerous, but still undeniably beautiful.

That junkyard was something else though. Machine oil stink. Bouquet of rusting metal. A neon-lit, spray-painted wonderland, with extra points for a half-collapsed warehouse, an old railroad siding, and even an ancient fire tower biting deep into the dried-up throat of the sky. The bonfire roared out front of the warehouse, taller than a horse and set between a towering stack of dry-rotted tires and the corroded husks of several burnt-out pickup trucks, their windshields bullseyed with stones. Fragments, left over from the glory days, now a rotting, dystopian playground for booze-soaked teens looking for trouble. And when the sun turned angry, the warehouse made a prime spot to try and stay cool, while from the top of its creaking fire escape you’d have a clear line of sight all the way back towards town, just in case.

Not that the sheriff gave a shit anymore. That place was forgotten on purpose.

I stumbled out of the brush, floundering through the confusing maze of decomposing metal, the edge of the warehouse roof slicing a neat wodge of black outta the star-strewn sky. You had to step careful come nightfall, because what was left of the tree line was choked with hundreds of broken panels from down the ruined solar farm.

I was on my own again, as usual—a small party of one, slouched in the shadows down the far end of lonely. But at least I’d chewed my last tab of acid on the walk over there, so now my arms were tingly-spooky, the pale of people’s faces sparking and spitting like loose wires, the world filling up with floating bits of light like someone had broke apart the stars and hauled them down to earth. Back then, acid never failed to keep me amused, everything swirling that little bit harder, my thoughts drifting further and further apart until there was no distance at all between me and eternity.

It was almost enough to make me forget how utterly alone I was.

That was when I first clocked the new boy.

Which was weird and kinda surprising, because how’d he even know about this place, or these parties? I remember watching him close, the tight of his skin, the pattern of it, the way he was different to the rest of them, like a dull flash of heat and then gone. It’s a peculiar thing, ain’t it? How you never get to understand why you like something. The want is just there, deep in the pit of your gut, like your bones went and made up their mind while the rest of you was sleeping. So now my bones were screaming Go Say Hello! Go Say Hello! but the sight of him made me all shaky-nervous, and Lord knows my body ain’t never been worth a damn at acting civilized. Every time he drifted close I felt a moist goodness in my chest and all my ribs started dancin’ like they were tryna break free. So what if I went to say Hello and instead of sayin’ words I just made a weird gurgling noise? Or worse, what if I shit myself? But by then it was too late, my brain had already been teased by the shape of him—the kinda pretty that hurt to look at—eyes bright like a lone coyote, taller by two lines chalked on a door. I whirled around, gawping at the sky, but even the fat yellow moon was screaming, YOU FOOL, GET ON OVER THERE AND TALK TO HIM, WHAT ARE YOU DOIN’ STANDIN’ AROUND LIKE A SIMPLETON?

But hell, Mr. Moon, it ain’t as simple as all that—I can’t just swagger up to a complete stranger and start talking! It’s alright for you, you’re the Fuckin’ Moon! I’m just Some Kid with Anxiety Issues!

Although there was clearly somethin’ about this boy, like he was an eerie collection of fragments made from everything I’d ever wished for. It was very distracting. And now there was a burning smell too, like my brain was overheating, like my thoughts and my bones were moving in two different directions.

“I am totally normal,” I whispered to myself, to the night air, to the stars.

But then someone yelled, “No, you fuckin’ spaz,” and suddenly we were all chokin’ on a lungful of thick black smoke. Some joker must’ve tossed an old tire on the fire and now the noxious fumes were crawling through the yard like a mean drunk lookin’ for a fight. The smoke stuck bitter on my tongue, so I turned away again, pulling my sleeve across my face, curling my toes inside my shoes, feelin’ the shape of the land beneath my feet. Soft whisper of desert sand. Grey bark of twigs that look like bone. Just some scattered pieces of a broken boy. Nothing important. No one that mattered. Usually.

But suddenly, there he was again—the new boy—snuck up close beside me this time, all sharp teeth and shaggy black hair, stumbling outta the smoke like the half-drunk farm boy he was, the dark pooling under his eyes like a thunderhead. And yet despite lookin’ tougher than the back end of a shootin’ gallery, there was a softness to his voice that seemed at odds with the way he held himself—all black clothes and dark hair falling into his eyes, his weirdly skinny frame rejecting both fat and muscle. And I say weird, because it was an in-your-face skinny, a what’s-wrong-with-your-home-life skinny. Like a pack of wild dogs had raised him up from under a porch somewhere.

He cocked his chin, and there was all kinds of trouble in his eyes, so at first I thought he was gonna smack me one, but instead, he asked if I wanted to dance. He just. Asked me. Out of nowhere. Confident in a way that made me feel like something new. Meanwhile, I was frozen, skate shoes glued to the floor, because he looked dreamy, and in a way that felt mysterious and interesting, unlike me—I was incredibly dreamy, but in a way that made no sense while everyone else forgot that I existed.

“Don’t mind them,” he said, like he didn’t know the whole crowd was watching. And just like that, something unspooled from within my chest.

A warm letting go.

And I tried to play it cool, like this weren’t some type of new and shocking behaviour, but inside I was all black flies and buzzing fridges, because I was different back then, back before I knew him, timid and small, trapped behind dry lips, pale skin and shaky hands—a redacted boy. So right away I was thinking, What if this is a prank? A dare? Some sorta horrible Carrie-like situation?

But what if it wasn’t.

What if it was sleeping under the stars, stealing cars and lighting shit on fire? What if it was foaming at the mouth, clinging to his heat like a tooth gone septic? What if it was fumbling hands on a mattress in the dark—terror and warmth and campfire smoke—what if it was something more? Because all night long he kept shooting me these weird little sidelong glances that made me look away because my skin felt hot like I were burning at the edges.

But then the next song clattered to life and suddenly we were five strides deep into the crowd, the air thick with the brackish tang of fireworks and gasoline fumes. It was everyone’s party that night, and by now the yard was packed and yet for some strange reason no one was watching the two boys swaying together. The music was loud and the beer was cold and the night was close and hot with the news of the recent military conscriptions. And then we were dancing, the way grown folks do, our bodies fitted close, his hands riding low on my back, his warmth seeping up through my face till it burned me alive. I remember shutting my eyes, because I’d never known the like of it before. And that’s when it all washed over me. The pure weight of it, how it spread through my chest as wide as the desert sky, prickling my skin and softening my edges. The way it wrapped around me. The way it made me feel bigger than myself. I don’t know how else to say it. Or what to name it. Because it was surprising. The way somethin’ that powerful should’ve made me feel gone and yet it didn’t. I felt full to the brim, swollen with light. How crazy is that? How ridiculous! Like I were half-way in love with him already. I actually had to reign myself in as a sense of peace moved through me, like a pressure in my chest—a sense of belonging—almost like I had a body unmarked by pain, by loneliness.

I guess I’d been waiting on that feeling for a real long time.

Turns out I’d remember that night with the sorta fondness and nostalgia I reckon most kids reserve for the gilded sanctuary of early childhood. Just a smear of careless laughter under an edgeless sheet of peach-tinted sky. Snapshot flickers of memory, shimmering like distant starlight. Although it’s unclear to me now as to whether these so-called memories were cooked up later, as a way to make sense of everything that followed. The war breaking out. The bombs dropping. The broken cities. The ruined bodies of boys and men. The waste of all things. But then again, perhaps not, because even at the time I remember that night being loaded with a curious sorta density, like it was taunting me, almost as though the weight of everything fixin’ to happen was already pulling at us, like gravity. Impossible, of course, but still, the weight of it remained, skulking at the back of my mind, like a sliver of dark in an otherwise sun-bright room.

And so we dance until we’re soaked and drownin’ in joy-sweat, safe in the heat of the crowd, fever-hot and bouncing, loose-limbed and giddy as spring lambs born fresh to the world, the music twisting and snapping like something alive, my stomach packed full of this wild, ragged joy—the sorta manic, thrashin’ energy I ain’t never felt before, leastways not without the bitter taste of rage and violence following close behind—and even though my tongue is coated in noise and everything tastes like silver, the music and the knowing and the heat is utterly transcendent, and I reckon that’s when I first realized, wrapped in the white-hot fist of light and heat and fire, that maybe everything that happens in this broke-down excuse for a world is simply a reflection of how much love we hold inside us.

“I’m not even drunk, I’m just a little tipsy,” I said, and he laughed.

Then I started puking.

Things got murky from there. I reckon we drank too much. Flushed cheeks and wandering hands—all burning and no damage control, skin blistering fingertips, tension overflowing. I never knew talking could feel like this. Like feeling seen. Like he were talking to my skin and my heart and my bones and my soul, all those deep, concealed parts of me. Like we were both from the same little island, separate from the rest of the world, belonging to the same sorta God—teenage, feral, a dark shape with glowing edges. For the first time in my life, I felt violently understood. I could feel myself sweating. A dampness down my neck. Between my legs. A hot, anxious thrill. Warm and spreading. Christ, we got so caught up in talking that I clean forgot about the civil war and Mom being ill and my Whole Shitty Life in this town. I was just watchin’ him run his mouth. Waving his arms around. And then the next thing you know the sun’s coming up. I swear. This kinda thing could thrill a boy senseless. Words and sunrise as revelation. Translucent forms that run along the edge of the world. Look at all that fucking light. Leaking out from the horizon.

Thank God my old man weren’t home.

*****

 BUT NOW A YEAR’S TICKED by and we’re both staring down fifteen. Although he’s got the jump on me by a good six months. And just last week the age of conscription was slashed to sixteen. To hell with that. Why spill blood to protect a government that looks at you sideways. Why protect a country that don’t believe in us—that don’t believe our love is the right sorta love. Nope. Screw that. Especially not after our dad’s were conscripted. After his older brother signed up and never came home. But then again, perhaps it won’t matter no more. Not with what the folks on the radio were saying earlier. That the warheads might be launching. That perhaps they’re already in the air. Which is why we need to hustle, because we’ve still got a ways to go and already I can hear the sound of the world starting to panic.

So now we’re on our bikes, the gloom of poverty swallowing this part of town, the whole neighborhood a reluctant witness to how life can fuck you over at any given moment. Piles of trash line the curbs, stacked up like bizarre sculptures around gnarled and leafless trees, while up ahead, the boarded-up windows on a fire-gutted trailer look like the sunken eyes on the head of a starving child.

Fingers numb, throats gasping, we head towards the shortcut, weaving through a slashed-open fence, back-jamming our pedals, threadbare tires slip-skidding through the dust, scattering dirt and pebbles all around us, our movements drawing the attention of several scary lookin’ dogs—nasty brutes strung out on long chains, faces swole up mean, foam-mouthed and snapping in the gloom. There’s another dog, out in the street this time, but this one is dead and twisted, a thing made quiet by violence, its flesh already claimed by flies that rise and swirl like cinders from some distant burning.

We press on, legs cranking hard against the dry wind, shoulders bent low, panting sharp with effort, racing past weed-choked ditches brimming with spirals of rusty wire and disused fridges, past ancient street signs either riddled with bullet holes, tagged with graffiti or just plain gone—ten, twenty minutes, time losing its shape as the world unravels around us, the gap-toothed road dissolving into grass-studded edgelands, the skeletal trees castling the distant ridge, gravel pinging off the frame as we leave the hardtop behind, the echoing roar of warplanes screaming overhead.

But as we arrive at the top of the eastern trailhead, the world is still hanging on, leastways for now, all wrapped up in moonlight bright as tin foil. Although now we’re right high-up there’s another color too, a mean-looking scarlet staining the flickering clouds, red as fresh-killed venison.

As for us, we’re a little bit worse for wear, swayin’ on our feet, our muscles sticky with salt and hurt, my insides a shelf of rusty nails. But when we finally reach the summit, throwing down our bikes by the edge of the cliff, we catch our breath hard at what we initially took for storm clouds, but now from way up here we can see they’re actually the towering plumes of smoke rising from the dense blaze of the Malibu estates, the Palisades, even Santa Monica, the vast fronds of fire fracturing the darkened glass of the ocean, ash falling from the sky like the flaking skin of angels. It’s a terrible kinda pretty, like watching lightning strike too close and knowing there’s something worse coming. Meanwhile, the city itself is howling somethin’ awful, like nothing I’ve ever heard, even from way over here. Los Angeles, on fire. The bloom of giant orange flares. The chest-thump of distant explosions. Whole neighbourhoods plunged into shadow, like dark blank voids in a jigsaw puzzle. And always, from overhead, the monstrous churning hum of the air-ships—a last-ditch evacuation attempt for anyone who can afford a ticket.

I don’t know why people pretend things are different from how they really are.

But then he nudges me with his shoulder, passing me the joint. “I wish we’d had longer,” he says, his voice soft and clear, his eyes on the horizon, his face a dream made real, a dream made of flesh and blood and bone.

I would not have survived this long without him.

“Yeah,” I say, clasping his fingers in my own, holding on to somethin’ real in the midst of all this crazy. “I know. Me Too.”

“Please don’t go where I can’t follow you,” he whispers, and perhaps it’s the weight of these last scant moments together, but those few simple words show me everything he’s carrying inside. I even catch an ache of his love for me, a clear-white flash, blow-torch bright and shivering, like it’s being held up to the bloodless light of dawn for inspection. And for a moment—just for a moment—it’s like I’m clued in on the absolute truth of the world, which is only made more real by the fact that I cannot name it, though if I was forced to write it down, I’d guess it was a sort of longing, a yearning, a craving, like thirst, like hunger, like a howl in a vacant sky, or a full-tilt sprint down a skinny dirt road toward an ever-brightening sunset, only you ain’t never gonna catch it, because you’re never gonna reach the end of the road, and so you’re always gonna be left wanting.

“I’m scared,” I whisper, my voice trembling as the first celestial streak appears from over the horizon. And then another. And another. I can’t look at them. But even when I turn my back, I can still see their polished brightness reflected in his black-water eyes. Painfully beautiful. The boiling sky veined with the fiery tails of a dozen artificial comets.

“Yeah, I know,” he says. “Me too . . . but at least I get to spend this night with you.”

“The last night on earth,” I say.

He laughs. I love hearing him laugh, seeing him smile. “Always so dramatic.”

I laugh this time, in spite of myself. “Shut up.”

Not long now, under a minute at best. I think of the hollowness in my chest. I feel my breathing like a moth under a glass. Like a boy in the sea, drowning.

I shut my eyes, trying to picture something different. The two of us, but in a different life, in some other universe, growing up the best way we can, the only way we know how. Perhaps we even manage to carve out some sorta place for ourselves in the world. Perhaps we’re even happy. That’s a nice thought.

“It’s not fair,” I say, as he wraps me up in his arms. And I wanna say more, but there ain’t no time.

“Don’t look at it,” he whispers, and then he kisses me.

And from somewhere over his shoulder, a great light blooms like a flower. It’s so bright, even through my eyelids, like nothing I’ve ever seen, crushing everything in its path. The heart of a sun, falling towards a city. And yet it feels expansive, miraculous. Like sand turning to glass.

And then there is nothing.

Photo of Daniel Sheen

BIO: Daniel Sheen is a queer artist and writer. He's been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, Longlisted for the 2025 Caledonian First Novel Award and is the Winner of the 2026 Hartnett Queer Lit Now Fiction Award. He's currently writing his debut trilogy of novels. Find him at: www.danielsheen.net as well as @Daniel_Sheen on Twitter and daniel.sheen on Instagram.