Mouse and the Stars

“So this is the end.”

Mallory looks up at the inky stretch of sky, a never ending blanket of malicious stars and darkness. The grass is prickly and wet underneath the back of her neck. She is searching for life in the splatter of stars, any sort of movement that will signal the extinction of the human race. To be honest, she was never scared of death. In fact, she knew her whole life that she would die young and she was okay with it. It was a romantic thing, death, because she chose to play its games instead of flee from it. 

Whether it was her excessive use of drugs, her tendency to jaywalk, or the copious amount of Red Bulls that she would chug whenever she had the chance, there was a strange, fulfilling satisfaction to know that her death would be at her hands.

Nevertheless, things were not working out as she had originally planned. 

“Are you not going to say anything?”

A sigh ghosts off of her lips. “Nothing we say right now is going to matter in T-minus 15 minutes, Zachary,” Mallory says blandly. 

His response is dripping in anger and bitterness. The perfect skin for a body of fear and lost hope. “Mallory.”

She can almost hear him begging her to look at him, to kiss him, to tell him that she loves him and to make love to him, right then and there on the cold patch of grass. She doesn’t even know who he is to her anymore. Lover, friend, enemy, partner -- it’s an insignificant mystery that she wouldn’t have bothered to figure out even if she had ten more years to her life. 

For eleven days now, they’ve been sleeping in different houses every night and eating whatever expired crackers they would find in the pantry. They had to go back to Connecticut for their own reasons; he had been talking about his little sister nicknamed Rio (because Cheerios had been her favorite snack) and she had told him how badly she needed to hear one last story about her idolized mother from her father before the world ended. 

They had failed.

The shooting star, Cupid’s arrow, or whatever mystical bullshit the media would call it was coming. It would come and burn up the Earth in a matter of seconds and Zachary would never get to attend his fencing competition and Mallory would never flirt back with the Seven-Eleven worker with the cute smile ever again.  

She hears his shaky breaths in the darkness and she shivers when she feels his searching hand slide up her rib cage, down her shoulder, and across her neck. The pads of his fingertips are soft against her skin.

“Mallory,” he says like a plea, and his voice is full of thirst and desperation. He cups the side of her face softly and shifts closer to her. His dark silhouette looms over her but she refuses to look at him. His rough lips graze her cheek, her neck, the space above her shoulders, and his nose prods into her skin unwelcomingly. He is searching for solace along the map of her body but he doesn’t find it. He will never find it.

He wants to do with their bodies what reclaims their power from the inevitable. Sex, to put it bluntly, is an act of human rebellion in the face of the dark night sky. The connection they have belongs completely to them and he wants to find control by indulging the raw human desires. All she wants to do is face death and stare right back into its beautiful face and finish the game she’s started.

“Look at me.”

Her eyes burn into the night and all Zachary can see are the blinking stars in her muddy pupils. Her silence has always been her greatest strength. It was the only form of connection she had with her father, it was the only form of connection she had learned. The rejection hurts worse than a cigarette burn, Mallory can tell, because his hands detach from her body just as quickly as they arrived. 

“You’re a real work of art,” he spits angrily and he rips a handful of grass from the Earth, and the sound of pulled roots echoes in her ears. The action angers her but his words sting more. She sucks in a mouthful of the cold, mountain air and curls her fingers into her sides. She doesn’t know what to do, she doesn’t know what to say to make it any better. 

The meteor was said to be on the course to the Eastern Hemisphere. No matter how deeply she peers into the bright night, she will not see it run its course. She waits for the fear, the regret, the sorrow, anything, to engulf her but it never comes. All she feels is cold resolve. “I’m sorry,” she says softly. “I’m sorry, Zachary.”

He is a beautiful boy. A strong brow, bright green eyes, and a smile that magnifies his cheekbones. But she refuses to let herself feed off of his beauty for the last moments of her life. She won’t let herself. She refuses to milk any more human glory from the bud of her existence. Human touch, human connection, human emotion: everything eventually boils down to the beautiful thing called death that she has been playing with her entire life. She must face it. 

Their trip had been a blur. A montage of love on a kitchen counter, crumbs on their clothes, a stolen pillow, dirty footprints on the sheets. A melee of hope, lost hope, and penitence.

A handful of seconds pass before he breaks down completely, burrowing his face into her curly hair and sobbing softly. She can still smell the artificial strawberry wafting off of her hair from her last shower.

His voice is broken. “I don’t know where my dad is. My sister. My mom.”

She remembers the hot summer nights when she and her dad would sit in their dingy backyard and open up a cooler full of Smirnoff. It was after the cigarette burns, after the broken plates, after they found Mouse, their chihuahua that would always lick the salt off of Mallory's face in apology for running away whenever the shouting started.

“Just leave a plate full o’peanut butter at the front, Mal,” her dad would say gruffly, never looking at her in the eye. “That damned thing will be crawling back in no time.” She would flash him a dirty look and do exactly what he said.

It was those hot summer nights when the cicadas whined and the mosquitos ended up squashed up on her bare legs when her father would talk about the long-legged, anxious goddess of her mother who was too scared to commit. She would never ask him questions in the fear that he would fly into one of his spinning rages or his depressive shells. She would just stay quiet and let the bottle of Smirnoff perspire on her sticky leg. 

“Hair jus’ like yours. Red as a tomato.” Her father’s eyes would etch deeper into his hollow bones as he let the alcohol rip through his body like scissors. His tongue would grow looser, his memory more hazy, before the thing inside of him welled up and he couldn’t take it anymore. He’d let out a sound of annoyance and leave her with a cheap tube of burn cream in his place.

“I miss my dog,” she whimpers, feeling a sharp incision into her stomach, and her shaking hands curl around the back of his neck. His body is overwhelmingly heavy on her’s, but she doesn’t have the desire to push him off. 

“Rio. Mom. Dad. Nana Grace…” Zachary murmurs. He sounds lost and deflated. “Rio. Mom. Dad. Nana Grace…”

Her heart is palpitating -- how many minutes did they have left? She was never afraid of death but now that it’s creeping up on her closer and closer, alarm begins to thrum at the pit of her stomach and her body becomes a fizzing chemical reaction. She was supposed to die by her own accord -- not some rock made up of space debris -- and she had expected ten more years at the least.

She still thought she would have days left. Days to smile a little more, cry a little more, live a little more. She doesn’t want to begin reflecting on the sad 18 years she’s spent on Earth in fear of spiraling down the rabbit hole in her mind. She wonders if she should have let herself go. If she should have never bothered to play the game and became the game master itself.  

Goosebumps erupt on her skin and her hands tighten around the base of Zachary’s neck. His tears scorch down the valley of her neck and it’s an uncomfortable, tickling sensation.

“Mouse. Ivan. Julia.” The words slip out of her mouth and betray her but she pulls herself into a soothing chant. “Mouse. Ivan. Julia.” Her words and Zachary’s words mingle into a confusing mesh of sounds that is oddly comforting. 

Her eyes begin to blur as she stares up at the beauty of the stars, another projection of the universe’s power. The stars almost seem spiteful as they sneer down at Earth; as if their mortal minds could understand the extent of the universe, as if Earth held any sort of significance within the galaxy to beg for salvation. She’s never noticed the separation of power. She’s been an atheist for life and had forgotten that nature still had its claim within the world. 

She sees it, finally, when she cranes her neck to the left. The unnatural, purplish, orangish bruising along the sky, as if someone had slashed the sky to tatters. Oddly enough, she finds herself speechless by the mix of colors in the sky; the dark night contrasts starkly with the colors of the sunset. 

Mallory tells herself to breathe as she stares up at the stars and allows every fiber, cell, and muscle in her body to feel the last moments of the Earth.

Every breath feels sharper, Zachary’s voice sounds louder, every word in her mouth feels more pronounced. Her fingers lightly caress the grass and the last word that leaves her lips is “Mouse.”