somewhere beyond worry
by Alex McNicoll
Only Colin and I live in the building now, and I haven’t seen him in nearly a week. The city rots your teeth and hollows your face and you’d have to be a fanatic to stay (or share a childhood and some genes with one, as it often goes).
Colin is convinced our city is already infested like how the state news says Springfield is. He screams at me to get a gun when he hears whistling or sees their boots hiding beneath the curtain, but when I lift it up all I ever find are fruitless flies droning and rats that gnaw your toes when you sleep.
But that day was the first time I heard something too—rythmic thumping like soldiers in march. I checked everywhere, the empty cabinets; the stairwell with its creaking, rotted panels; then finally the basement where I sometimes bring Colin to watch a rerun of a baseball game. There were no soldiers, and certainly no Colin.
Identical posters of our fearless leader hung next to and on top of each other, forming a shoddy wallpaper that hugged the basement and demanded anyone that listened to buy more war bonds. I started peeling them off, but they were stuck with a bitter adhesive that burned to the touch. Then the thumping started again, then shouting, then a wrench fell on my head.
I awoke in bed with scabbed fingers and bruised wrists. I heard a murmur only this time I knew where and who it came from. On the roof, Colin sat legs crossed in jubilee. The sun was setting and the cement homes around us curled in dissipating red daylight. Clouds above bloomed like something manmade, a painting from a past so ancient it may as well be fiction.
“Everything’s on fire—it’s beautiful,” Colin said. And then, finally, I could hear them too, whistling like hummingbirds picking flowers. Bombs. Bombs that weigh as much as buildings and burn biblically. He laughed, and I must admit that I laughed too because he was right: it was beautiful. I did not know if the bombs were coming or going; we both knew it would be over soon.
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BIO: Alex McNicoll is a New York-based copywriter by day and fiction writer by night. His short fiction has appeared in publications including BRUISER, Every Day Fiction, and Flash Fiction Magazine. He currently lives in Brooklyn with his girlfriend.