Through Glass

by Rebecca Ethington

  I lifted it to the desk and began pulling out books and wrinkled papers, trying not to focus on the handwriting or the way my brother scribbled his “s” so they looked more like backwards z’s. Before I knew it, the pack was empty. My hands curled around the last few things that had been stuffed in the bottom of the bag.

  A lighter and a mostly full pack of cigarettes.

  My fourteen-year-old brother had been smoking.

  Part of me wanted to be angry, to be mad that I hadn’t noticed, but I couldn’t even call those feelings up to their full power inside of me. He had tried to tell me, that day, before the world ended, hours before he… died.

  I wondered if I had helped him, if he had been comforted. I hoped I had said enough, that I had helped him. I should have told him I loved him.

  I should have told them all, every day.

  I should have given my mother a hug before she left.

  I should have begged her to stay.

  My heart clenched painfully inside of me as the thoughts I tried to keep tucked into the forgotten spaces of my heart found their way out. The bones in my back tensed while my hands gripped the pack of cigarettes tightly and the pain tried to take hold of me. I grabbed the hurt and the fear, stuffing them back in; not willing to answer the questions, not wanting to feel the pain or the loss.

  I already had enough loss, enough regrets. Now, Cohen was added to that. Cohen was the only thing that had made any of this worth it… and now he was gone, too.

  I clenched my jaw as I stared at the crumpled pack of cigarettes in my hand. My eyes drifted to what I hadn’t truly seen before. The lighter.

  I could make fire and fire produced light.

  I held the lighter up to my ear and shook, hearing the gentle sloshing that released the last of the tension in my chest.

  I placed the lighter back in the backpack, leaving the cigarettes on the table and began throwing a few more of my brother’s clothes in the bag before grabbing the light and making my way up the stairs to my parents’ room.

  This room had not been left mostly untouched like mine and my brothers. This room had been destroyed on the very first day. After that day, I couldn’t even bring myself to come in here. I wasn’t sure why they had chosen to destroy my parents’ room and leave my brothers’ room untouched, but they hadn’t just destroyed my parents’ room, they had ripped it to shreds.

  I walked into the room, my eyes focused on the two things I was here for. The only things of my parents’ that were worth taking. I stepped over a large chunk of mattress as I made my way to half of the dresser. I pushed aside scraps of wood, fabric, and pictures until I found it. My mother’s jewelry box, upturned and shattered on the floor.

  I shifted my fingers through the shards of glass and wood in search of anything to take. My fingers felt for the smooth, cold snake of a chain, the cool metal circle of a ring. I pushed aside the glass until I found something. My hand lifted a fine golden chain out of the debris, a single pearl enclosed in the hanging pendant of a golden prison.

  It wasn’t my favorite, I had only seen my mother wear it a handful of times, but I didn’t care, it was perfect. If I closed my eyes I could see her green eyes flash in the mirror as she placed it around her neck, the jewel nestling low on her skin, shimmering against the light tan she always had.

  I could remember her and that was all I wanted.

  I didn’t put the necklace on; instead I shoved it in my pocket and moved to the closet, taking my father’s black motor cycle jacket off the floor. The leather was stiff from being forgotten for so long. I smoothed it out the best I could and pulled the relatively untouched jacket on, sliding my braid of red hair out from underneath the collar.

  It was stiff against my skin and the silk lining was chilly. I let it cling to me as I slipped my feet into my father’s spare pair of work boots. The steal-toed monstrosities were heavy on my feet. I didn’t care that they were too big because they were big enough for what I needed them for.

  I didn’t even look as I walked into my room. The creatures were still bleeding on the floor. The memories of the precious moments spent with Cohen still fresh in my mind.

  I needed to get out of here. I had wasted too much time already. I crossed the room, grabbed the piece of candle, a few of the ink pens I had been stock piling and threw them into the bag.

  I kneeled down and picked the battery up off the floor. Bringing the flickering light up onto my lap. I moved quickly, switching out one of the batteries for the new one, holding my breath as it snapped in place.

  I flipped the light over, looking into the glowing box as it continued to flicker. The flicker was brighter, but I still wasn’t sure if the strength of the light was enough to keep the monsters at bay.

  I needed to get the light working. I didn’t know what I would do if I didn’t. Light was my only sure fire weapon against them. While a bed rail seemed pretty effective, I could already feel my weak body protesting at having carried it for so long. Right now, I needed to find more batteries. It was my only chance at creating light.

  My only chance of survival.

  I attached the light to the back of my backpack, looping the clips that lined the sides of Travis’s pack onto the installation brackets of the light, shaking them to make sure it was sturdy. It wasn’t perfect, but it would have to do for now.

  I stood up quickly and ripped two pictures off my walls. One was the picture of my whole family that we had taken at a photo studio that I thought had smelled like puke at the time. I removed the tape from the backing, careful to put the picture against the back of the backpack in an attempt to keep it straight. I kneeled on my bed as I removed the other; the one I had stared at every day for the past two years.

  I couldn’t look at his smile as I shoved it in the backpack. I couldn’t see the joy in his eyes.

  Not yet.

  I would look someday when the pain had lessened and when the anger didn’t hurt. Right now, I needed to leave, to stay safe - to fight back. I had a bad feeling that Cohen’s picture would only make me want to stay with the pain a little longer.

  I zipped the backpack up as I walked down the stairs. Two large water bottles weighed it down as I fought for balance on the dilapidated staircase.

  “Good-bye, Frances,” I whispered as I walked out of the kitchen, not bothering to look at the empty shelf.

  I needed food to take with me. Luckily, I had an idea as to where to get some and of where to find batteries that would hopefully keep me safe.

  I walked into Cohen’s house, expecting to walk into a disaster zone. I clenched my muscles together as I tried to keep the pain away, letting my anger fuel me in an attempt not to feel.

  I walked into the living room where broken couches were placed where I always remembered them, ripped carpets laid back down on the floor with care. The kitchen was as broken as mine, but everything had been returned to where it belonged. Stacks of broken cabinet fronts were placed against the wall, broken dishes piled back in place inside shelves.

  I stared at it with my mouth hanging open as I moved from one room to another, each one the same. Each one a signal to the normalcy Cohen had tried to create, to the memories he had tried to keep alive. I had left everything the same, not bothering to repair the damage. I wallowed in regret, whereas Cohen had given himself hope.

  I walked through the kitchen slowly, searching every shelf and cabinet, looking for the brown packets that would hold the disgusting bits of food I would need to survive. Broken dishes, stacks of cups. Everything else that made up a kitchen was here, everything but the one thing I needed.

  Food.

  There was only one other place where he would keep the packets, which was the one place that I really didn’t want to go. It wasn’t like I really had a choice. I needed the batteries, too, and they still sat on Cohen’s windowsill. I turned toward the stairwell slowly, my body tensing at the thought of walking into his room. Of seeing where he slept, seeing my room from the other side of the gla
ss. I didn’t know if I was prepared for those memories, for those emotions.

  Each step came slowly, my feet dragging as I pushed myself up the stairs, through the clean hallway and into a room full of a million green eyes staring at me.

  My eyes.

  My hand flew to my mouth as my face heated uncomfortably; the threatening tears unwelcomed. I couldn’t stop them, however, not with what I now faced.

  His room was as clean as the rest of the house. Bed made, clothes folded, stacks of packets, rows of water, but the walls… the walls were covered.

  I had chosen to cover my walls with memories. Cohen had chosen to cover his walls with his future. The future he had hoped for. In every single one of his dreams, he and I were center stage.

  Paintings, sketches, crudely drawn finger paintings; one after another covered his walls. They bled into each other as they faded and swirled; one wish, one future, one into another. I looked at each one as my vision threatened to cloud over and the emotion touched my eyes, tears threatening to break free.

  I saw the two of us holding hands on a pier, a broken down carnival surrounding us. The two of us lying together in a bed as we laughed. His lips against mine as we sat beneath a blackened sky with a dozen twinkling lights above our heads. My body, on the wall where he had pushed his bed up against, my eyes looking into the air in front of him, staring into the exact spot where he had lain.

  I had looked at his picture every night when I had gone to sleep, as I cried in my loneliness, but Cohen, he had created me. He had brought me into his room—his heart—making it so he was never alone. I could see the places on my face on the wall that had been repainted, the paint worn away from where Cohen’s fingertips had traced so many nights.

  I turned slowly as I looked at each work of art, stopping when not my eyes, but his stared back at me. While Cohen had turned his walls into a canvas, the one canvas in the room he had turned into a mirror, with both of our faces looking through the painting, through the glass. The two of us, on either side of a window pane, our hands pressed against the pane in a mirror image. The same way we had always done.

  I had never seen Cohen’s true talent before, not until this very moment. Even the picture he had drawn with me in the window didn’t have this quality, this emotion in it. It didn’t have Cohen. I had seen what I now understood were crude sketches, I had watched him make outlines on my skin, on the windows. This, though, this was a masterpiece. A piece of his heart that he had plastered onto the canvas. The color was vibrant and the detail amazing. It was like looking at a photograph. A photograph of us.

  “Happy birthday,” I whispered as the realization of what it all was meant for hit me.

  I stared at the picture as the tears came back. They flooded my eyes and trailed down my face and fell off my chin in tiny drops of lost hope. I stared as my nose burned and the guilt I had thought I had hidden returned to skim across the surface of my heart.

  No, not guilt. Anger.

  My breathing picked up as I felt it and the tears intensified. A wail of pain and anger seeped through me in a torrent.

  I screamed as I grabbed the canvas off the stand, my hands whipping through the air as I threw it away from me. I watched as it collided with my smiling face against the wall, the wooden frame crippling with the impact. The sound of splintering wood filled the air and my heart crumpled right along with it.

  The monsters had taken him, they had killed him. I hadn’t been able to save him. As much as I had tried, as much as I had fought to save myself, as much as Cohen had fought for himself and for me, he was gone anyway.

  They had attacked him, sliced him open. They had killed him. They didn’t just kill him, they hadn’t turned him to ash like all the others. They had taken him from me. They had left me alone.

  The anger that had been bubbling under the surface rushed forward, blinding me. My fingers wrapped around the bed rail in my hand, my grip rough as another scream ripped from my chest and the bar swung from me.

  With one swing after another I destroyed our future. I destroyed the future Cohen had wished for. The future he had hoped for. The future that he would never see, that could never happen.

  I punctured our intertwined hands at a party as I ripped through his desk, sending the white tubes of paint flying through the room. I shattered his mirror. I slashed apart our date at a beach. I swung, I hit, and I destroyed everything.

  Yet the anger didn’t leave.

  Cohen had left me. He had been taken from me.

  It was my fault he was gone. If I had been stronger. If I had killed them. If I had simply let them kill me. If I hadn’t tried to grab the water bottle.

  He would be here now.

  I swung the bed rail over my head, hitting the canvas over and over again. My voice ripped through my throat until I could taste blood and my chest rippled with pain.

  With each swing, I ran one “what if” after another through my head, wishing they would stop coming.

  Wishing I could move beyond it.

  I couldn’t.

  I kept swinging the metal bar until my arms couldn’t lift it anymore, my shoulders dropping with the painful fire that moved through my bones. The bar slipped from my fingers and fell down to the ground with a clatter that rang through the still air like a church bell. I stared at the canvas, the edges torn away from the wooden frame, a giant rip moving right between mine and Cohen’s faces, through the painted glass that had always been our barrier. I stared at it as the anger and guilt at what had happened ripped through me.

  I had struggled and fought for two years only to come face to face with a monster anyway. Even after everything, I hadn’t given in.

  From the beginning I had two options, hide or run. I had hid because Cohen had asked me. Because he promised me I wasn’t alone. Now I was and, even through all of his promises, we weren’t together.

  We never would be.

  I crossed to the window, wiping my hand over the mixture of red and black blood that covered my skin, covering my fingers with the mixture.

  I looked at the red, the black. Not knowing whose blood was whose. I didn’t care. It didn’t matter anymore.

  I pressed my fingers to the glass and they moved quickly, smearing blood against the glass to form the words I had been fighting against for two years, the words that were now all I had left.

  I AM ALONE

  Even through the promises, it was all there was left.

  If only I wanted it to end this way, yet now I knew, there was something bigger out there.

  The end of the blackness. The light had shown me that.

  I had chosen to hide, but now I was choosing to run. To fight. Even if it ended in my death; at least with death, I wouldn’t be alone. Not yet though.

  I knew I couldn’t be the only one left; there had to be others. Others that had found light, others that had fought. I would search to my last day until I found them. Until I could end the black. Until Cohen’s death was no longer just one of the many useless murders.

  I grabbed the canvas and shoved it into my backpack, placing the last piece that Cohen had ever painted inside. Keeping the last piece of beauty he had given me close and with me forever.

  I placed the canvas next to my clothes before moving to the dresser and filling my backpack right to the brink with brown packets before grabbing the batteries that Cohen had left on the dresser.

  I replaced the batteries quickly with a sad smile pulling at my lips as the light burned brightly once the power source had been replaced. It was my weapon. It would keep me safe, for the time being anyway. I wasn’t sure how long the batteries would last.

  I took one last look at the room I had destroyed, at the future that Cohen had envisioned for us. One look and then I was gone; down the stairs and into the darkness of the outside, my hand firmly curled around the bed rail.

  I stood in the grass between our homes, staring at the black sky that Cohen had disappeared into only minutes before. My jaw tightened as I star
ed, the weakness in my body meaning nothing.

  I held on my body a memory from each person that the darkness had taken away. They clung to my skin at the same time they hid in my heart.

  I held in my hand a weapon which, if I was lucky, would help me find a way to fight back.

  I took a deep breath, my chest shaking in fear as the last of the sadness left me and my jaw tightened as determination took its place.

  I looked into the expanse of black sky that stretched between our houses, the inky color oppressive against me. It was there that the monster had taken Cohen away from me. He had disappeared into the sky right there, but I wouldn’t go that way, not yet. There had to be others and if movies had taught me anything, they would be in the center of town.

  I turned around, my back facing the blackness that had swallowed Cohen, away from the last thing that I loved. I moved forward into the blackness of the city before me, into the world which had been taken from me. Into what could only be my end.

  “Good-bye Cohen.”

  The darkness was everywhere. It touched the once beautiful world I had lived in, seeping its poison into it and sucking the life and beauty from it.

  I could see the shadow of color, the faded yellow of houses, the dark white of picket fences, a deep red of an upturned sedan. Even with the light strapped to my back the colors were faded in the darkness, swallowed by the black and my mind was unable to recall what the color had once been.

  Green trees that had once stretched to the sky with heavy laden limbs were now cut through the grey of air above me in jagged shadows that stretched and elongated as the protective light shone on them. Skeletons of houses loomed around me, their broken faces screaming in pain from the torture that they had had to endure and the murders they’d had to witness.

  Everything around me was bathed in the death of the dim light we had been left with. The life sucked out of it and the beauty stripped from it. The world was cast in shadow, but I had the light that served as my shield, which elongated those shadows into deathly fingers that only made the world look more forgotten.