My mother was one of the first to die.
Don't ask me why, or how, or what from, other than that stuff that wasn't supposed to be there. She just started to fade, and I'm not being metaphorical. Her soul shone right through her skin, and there wasn't much left to bury.
My dad went next. We spent a lot of time those two years watching people fade away.
Eventually it was my turn. There were only the three of us left by then.
She was the one with the plan. She'd taken up prayer, any church she could think of. He'd gone for reason. I'd just railed at God and spent a lot of time drunk, trying not to think at all. It didn't work.
Nothing we said could talk her out of it.
She wanted to go back to the island. Or maybe I did and she wanted to give me that much. It's the kind of thing she did. I won't bore you about the ship; it was hell to find one that still ran, and that somebody knew how to steer. Eventually we found one whose captain was fading faster than I was. We spent most of the trip hiding from the noise. I had earplugs, she had her music, and he took to the engine room when it got bad.
Sometimes we all hid in the engine room, trying to block out the voices in the other noise. I was afraid we'd never make it to the island. I was even more afraid we would.
We made it. I was on deck, noise or no noise, as soon as we were anywhere close. They both came up. She was wearing a dress, something light and summery like she'd worn that day. Her glasses kept sliding down her nose. He leaned on the rail on her other side. He hadn't said much since we'd agreed to her plan.
The jungle had advanced, but not as much as I'd thought. The dock was battered and stained, but solid, and I could feel her shivering as I swung her down onto the dock. He jumped off after us.
The rocks on the path crunched underfoot. Nothing much was making noise out there. Maybe the animals had died like I was dying.
Dad had sealed up the house and closed the shutters. I opened everything up, for what little wind was moving. It still smelled musty and closed-in. The heavy furniture and my mother's curtains were still there.
The dining room used to have the best view, with the island on the south and north and the ocean to the west. There wasn't much to be seen out there now. He handed me the knife when she was leaning out the window, looking for any breeze.
She turned away from the windows and hugged me. She was warm, and she smelled of sunlight. I didn't want to let go.
I shoved the knife into her back. The blood ran over my hands. She looked up at me, as if she'd meant to say something, and went limp. I didn't let go.
There was a tree twenty feet outside the window, leaves rustling in a breeze just starting to make it into the room. There was another tree a few feet beyond it. I looked up at the break in the sky.
If you could draw dye back out of water, or blow seeds back onto a dandelion, maybe that was it. But it wasn't either of those, though that's the least wrong I can get. That darkness between earth and heaven tumbled and writhed and dived, but it went back through the broken sky.
The returning sunlight was almost blinding. The sound died off, replaced by breaking pottery and overstressed metal. The sky began to shake.
The tear screamed as it shrank, until it was a contorted line across the sky. There was a final screech, and it was gone.
The sun was bright in a cloudless blue sky.
Her blood was all over my hands.
Copr. ©2004 Sara A. Keating. This work will enter the public domain January 1st, 2034.