Write To Rank 2022 | Contest Entries

when it's us against the world | yellow belt

The hand comes up, like it always does, with a whoosh and a stifled scream; fingers searching before they find mine.

I've been told the journey up here is disorienting, almost painful.

"Hello," I say, to allow time to adjust.

"Hi," the monster under my bed replies, eventually.

"Think it will be long?" I stare up at the glow-in-the-dark stars still stuck to my ceiling. It's weird how the apocalypse makes you want to cling to things like that, when every day feels like the last.

The monster makes a considering noise, and its hand tightens on my own, claws carefully retracted. "I wish," it says in that rough, now-familiar voice. "But."

We're not that lucky, it doesn't say.

"Yeah," I sigh, "but," and move over onto my stomach. Brace my knees, dig my toes into the mattress. "Let's go," I say, and pull.

-

The world outside is on fire.

It always is, these days. This day. The one that resets itself, whenever my monster or I don't make it through.

It's weird.

We've given up on trying to understand it.

(After a while, you start counting Death among your friends.)

The world outside is on fire, but we are, too.

Run and duck and dodge, hoist me up, pull my monster around the corner out of the way of a stray bullet.

It's routine, but today, by some unspoken agreement, we've yet to let go of the other's hand.

(Maybe it's to do with how we both died, last time.)

(With how I used my last breath to finally ask the monster's name.)

(With how it could not give me an answer.)

(I try not to feel hurt by that, but—)

Oh, shit.

The monster almost dislodges my shoulder as it pulls me back behind the car; a moment later, the gunfire opens anew.

I forgot.

"Thanks." My voice is breathless, crushed against my monster's chest as I am, and it's hoarse, because I feel strangely safe here.

"Thanks," I repeat, a little calmer, when my heart stops pounding quite so hard.

"Call me Red," the monster says.

The shock of this is almost enough to make me miss the moment we need to start running.

"Are you trying to get me killed?!" I yell, quite irrationally, because I'm not equipped to deal with this emotional rollercoaster on top of the literal end of the world.

(I think this always bears repeating; the world is ending.)

(The world is ending, and becoming entirely numb to this fact would not be good.)

(It worries me, when another bullet only just misses my face and I barely even flinch.)

"Never!" the mons— Red yells back, and, well, that's that.

-

We don't let go of each other, through it all.

-

"Never, huh?" I say, quite numbly, and stare, as the sun disappears beneath the horizon for the first time in— for the first time.

Red lifts our still-linked hands, points up at the sky.

"Together," it says, and the stars twinkle.

-

The world stops ending.