compendium

fire and ice

fire and ice
some say the world will end in fire, / some say in ice.

I almost died in the morning, when I went down to get some more canned foods.

I had turned to the door to leave the place, cans in one hand, when I heard the unmistakable sound of a rifle reloading. Once you've been down on the ground long enough you get used to those kinds of sounds.

Instinctively, I put my hands up, cans and all, and swung around slowly. It was a kid who couldn't have been much older than me, pockmarked and long-haired, jaw clenched tight and rifle in hands, aimed at my chest.

(You always shoot for the head. The heart is such an incredibly easy thing to miss.)

"What do you want?" I asked quietly, though it should have been obvious. I got the last cans available here.

He jerked his chin at the cans. I leaned down slowly, not take my eyes off of him, and rolled them across the floor to him. He didn't take his eyes off me either, but squatted down and shoved the cans inside a duffel bag. He straightened up, holding the rifle still, but with less nefariousness.

"Why didn't you just kill me and take the cans?" I asked, which was probably stupid, but I did it anyway.

His eyes traced the oxygen mask and down to the case sitting next to my leg. "Because we're still human." He slung the rifle over his shoulder, grabbed the bag, and was gone before I could respond, before I could put my hands down again.

This was the burning frostbite to the bitter fiery end.

This was the real way the world slipped into a suicide.

...

When I was thirteen I was extremely upset one night over something I can't even remember now, and I set fire to an old shed in the forest. It used to be my little sanction. After I found it, almost a year before, I kept it stocked with blankets, pillows, decks of cards, books, paper and pencils, candles, flashlights, nonperishable foods. I spent ages locked away in there. I even decorated it, stringing up flashing gleams of Christmas lights around the corners, lights that did nothing to diminish the damp darkness of the earth that swallowed the shed. I loved it for being so close to the earth.

I remembered marching right into the forest. I remembered taking all of my things out of it and moving them someplace unreachable. Everything except those stupid stringy lights, dancing fairies with necks snapped in mousetraps, helpless when I took my lighter and set the whole place ablaze.

When the roof caved in I called the fire department from a payphone.