Scareship_Issue8

articulations in his voice fall away and he clings to her muddy
hand, scraping ragged nails against flat palm.
“I wish they would come,” Em says, pulling away from her
brother and settling herself on the ground. When he does not
follow, she rests her head on the bony slant of her arm and, with a
soft indentation of a sigh, screws her eyes shut tight and hides
herself in the darkness that she has created. When she sleeps, she
can imagine worlds apart from her own and lose herself inside of
them.
Hours have passed and the tension in the air has become harsh
and intentioned. As Kai waits, his head buzzes with anxious hope.
When a rumbling crack is impossibly close, he smiles feverishly at
the afterimage of the white-blue pillar of light that has zigzagged
across the horizon. This storm is manmade. It is angry. It splits the
sky in half. The ground shakes beneath his feet.
In the distance, he can see some shape floating closer, a black
blur that sheathes itself in the sound and light.
“Wake up! They are here!”
Em shifts in her sleep and comes halfway awake.
“They are not.”
“They have come for us. Look, the sound comes close.”
“It is just a storm. They won’t come for us. It was a lie.”
“It’s so bright. So loud. And it’s year’s end. They said they
would come.” Kai embraces the expanse of nothingness before him
with outstretched arms and trembles with the earth as it shakes
with the sound of another desolate crack.
She’s awake now, fearful but not timid. She comes to his side
and says that they have to go, that it is not safe here. That she can
still remember weeks of hiding, of storms—one after another,
black rolls of sound and white forks of light that she thought would
split right through her until she was no more. He’s forgotten. Or
he’s tried, at least.
“It’s year’s end. They have to come. She said they would
come.”
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