When It's Over

Flash fiction for Madness & (May)hem Day 15

Image: Ruan Carlos via Unsplash

For Day 15 of the Madness & (May)hem challenge, I asked writers to tell a story set in the span of a single moment.

Please enjoy my entry…

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The Aeternus war had been raging for generations. Centuries of unending battle, trillions of deaths, and hundreds of worlds.

People were handed a weapon from the moment they were born, and battle was all they would ever know.

And, if they were lucky, they wouldn’t live long.

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A pair of bomber screeched across the sky above me. I looked up at the trail their engines left in the planet’s purple clouds. I couldn’t remember the name of the world, but it sure as hell had a pretty sky. I had to give it that.

My eyes shot to the left as the bombers dropped a payload of antimatter bombs. The flash was blinding, but I think the worst part was that there was no sound. Just a flash, and then whole swathes of land were gone.

Erased. Along with everything and everyone upon them.

There was some debate on whether the soul could survive antimatter annihilation. It was the subject of heated arguments among ethics experts.

Some argued that the soul wasn’t made of matter, but others said the use of such weaponry was unethical due to the spiritual questions it raised.

I honestly wasn’t sure which side I fell on.

“Hey, you with me?” a soft voice asked.

The crackle of laser rifles pulled me back to the present as I looked down. Below me, lying on the ground, was the one person that kept me going.

They had their hands over a scorched and twisted tear in their exosuit.

They squeezed the space on their abdomen with white knuckles, but blood seeped out from between their fingers anyway.

They were dying.

“What are you thinking about?” they asked, trying to force a smile.

All I could think about was how the color had drained from their face. Their once glowing skin was now pale as moonlight. Their lips were turning a sickly shade of blue.

“I was just thinking about the antimatter debate,” I replied.

They lifted one of their blood-soaked hands and pressed it against the cold metal of my exosuit.

“I know you’re in shock, but I need you here with me, okay? I don’t have much time left.”

Shock is putting it mildly. My entire universe is bleeding out in front of me.

My mind couldn’t comprehend what was happening. I had never imagined a future where we weren’t fighting together.

If we were going to fall in battle, we were supposed to fall together. This wasn’t right.

“This isn’t how things are supposed to go,” I said.

They stifled a laugh, but blood still splattered from their lips. “You’re telling me. I just want you here with me, though. Before I go. Just a moment, okay?”

The night before was the first moment of peace we’d seen in years. Somehow the barrack was empty. The others were off celebrating a victory long into the night.

We weren’t interested in their bloodthirsty revelry, so we stated behind. We celebrated in our own way. With each other.

How did we go from that…to this?

“Hey, come on, look at me.”

I turned my eyes toward them and for a moment I did feel present. I fell deep into those emerald oceans. The din of warfare faded until all I could hear was their voice.

“You need to leave me here and regroup with the others,” they said.

The words didn’t make any sense, like they were said in a language I didn’t speak.

“No. No, they’ll need your body to resurrect you,” I replied.

“Oh please. Resurrection tech is only for the elite. They’d never use it on a foot soldier like me.”

I wrapped my hands around their their head, leaned down, and kissed them on their bloodstained lips.

“I’ll make them. I’m not losing you,” I said.

They looked down at the wound and back up at me with those endless green eyes.

“Alright then, if that’s the case, wake me up when this war is over, will you?”

I nodded. “We’ll have to get you into a cryopod to prevent cellular decay, but that’s should be difficult.”

They smiled. “Always thinking like a scientist.”

I saw their eyes looking past me. Their jaw fell open.

“I never noticed how beautiful the skies were on this planet,” they said.

With that, I saw the life leave their eyes. The flame that I had admired for so many years was gone.

They were gone.

If I accepted the reality of the situation, I would never have left that foxhole on the surface of Zolton-VI. I would have either been killed by an enemy soldier, or worked up the courage to do the deed myself.

The soldier in me had lost the urge to fight a long time ago.

The human being in me never wanted this war.

The scientist in me knew I had four hours to get them into a crypod before their chances of resurrection would fall drastically.

So, I let the scientist take the reigns.

Better get moving.

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Thanks for Reading! Here’s Your Musical Pairing

Listen to this after reading, like pairing a glass of wine with dinner.