The Story

The storyteller finally put down his pen, and closed the book, for he had at long last finished. And he sat back in his old armchair by the roaring fire with his wine and books and women, with the small leatherbound book sitting quietly on the bedside table. The storyteller closed his eyes and rested, satisfied, and when he slept he had no dreams, for all was done.

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Summer watched the fires out of her window, wondering how long it would take for her to get used to the acrid smell of the smoke. A black uniformed Officer of Peace passed by on the street below her, and she ducked away from the window so she wouldn’t be seen.

It had been forty days and thirty-nine nights since the last riots had been quelled, and the fires were still burning. The streets were filled with the empty, blackened husks of cars, and the ashes drifted from the sky like smoke. 

And yet it was over. It had all happened shockingly fast, but Summer knew that it had been building since before she was born. The riots had spread like fire across the country, and slipped unnoticed across the borders into others, and had resulted in battles fought in people’s backyards, on civilized corners in quiet neighborhoods that had, over night, become war zones. 

It seemed to Summer that she fell asleep one night to the sound of people yelling in the street below her window, and the dull bangs of smoke bombs, and when she woke up twenty-five thousand dissidents were dead and martial law had been declared in a secret bunker at one a.m while the moon watched in silent reproach. 

Newly declared Officers of Peace had the rights to employ any means possible to keep the peace that they had declared in sixteen countries while Summer slept. And as the dawn broke across the Pacific Ocean the rights of millions of people were quietly and completely stripped away. 

Summer had not been outside her house since that day. Since she did have a job, she was not permitted to be, and she was afraid to ask the woman down the hall to get food for her on her way home from the hospital where she was a nurse. 

She wouldn’t dare attempt to venture out herself. She had seen what had happened to the man in the apartment building across the street from her when he went outside. Summer had watched him yelling at the Officers of Peace when they told him to go back inside, had heard him shouting that his family was starving, and watched as they put a bullet through his stomach. 

He died in the street, and no one dared open their doors to bring him inside. 

Standing at her window, Summer shut her eyes, and when she opened them Caden was watching her from his window across from hers.

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Caden’s hands made her forget the burning cities, the hunger in the pit of her stomach. He undressed her fervently, as though he knew that it would be the last time. She clung to him as though she knew she wouldn’t be able to again. 

Afterward, they lay wrapped in each other's arms and Caden brushed the hot tears off Summer’s cheeks. 

“Tell me the truth,” she whispered, “Are we ever going to see eachother again?”

“They’re going to do everything in the world to try and make it so we won’t,” he replied and held her tighter. “Any day now, and we won’t be able to leave our apartments without getting killed.”

Summer squeezed her eyes shut as tight as she could. “What will do, Caden?” she whispered against his chest. “Is there anything that we can do?”

“There is always something, Summer,” he said, then abruptly pulled her head up off his chest, forcing her to meet his eyes. “Look at me,” he said, “Never give up. When you give up then they’ve won. Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” Summer whispered.

“Promise me,” he said, and his grip was almost painful, “Promise me that you’ll never give up, Summer, no matter what.”

“I promise,” she said, “No matter what.”

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In the bottom drawer of her dresser Summer pulled the bottles out from their bed of dresses that she hadn’t worn in months. The gunpowder was hidden behind her mirror, and she cradled the small tin in her hands like one would a newborn. Her breath caught in her throat, and she could only breathe again when she was in front of her window, and could feel Caden looking at her.

When she met his eyes, she felt strong again. He was holding up a sheet of paper with a crude drawing on it, to anyone looking at it quickly they wouldn’t know what it was, but Summer knew what she was seeing. A diagram, neatly labeled that would guide her as Caden patiently held the paper for her.

On her knees she put it together, piece by piece, until in her hands she held something that could change everything. When she looked up Caden was staring at her, and her heart felt like a wild animal, throbbing in her chest with hope.

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He was sitting outside her door when Summer came home from work, and he didn’t say anything until she had taken off her heavy coat and vest that she wore for protection when she walked through the streets. 

“It’s happening,” Caden said, and Summer was startled by his voice, low and fearful. He gripped her by the shoulders and forced her to meet his eyes. “Summer, it’s happening. In less then a week, they said.” 

She knew what he was talking about, it had been all he did talk about since the beginning of it all, and for as long as she knew him for that matter. She’d always been the one to shake her head, to tell him that it wouldn’t be as bad as he thought, but today, for the first time, she found that she had no words of comfort.

“What can we do?” she asked, and hated herself for the panic in her voice. “Is there anything that we can do?”

And that’s when she saw the bags that he had set down on her kitchen floor and she knew the answer to her own question.

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It was hot every night now, even though it was nearly November. Summer didn’t know if it was because of the fires, or if the very core of the earth was burning. She couldn’t sleep from the heat, and when she breathed the air settled in her lungs like a wet blanket, making her feel like she was being suffocated. 

Below her window the lights of passing Officers of Peace reflected dimly through the residual smoke, and every half hour there was the crackle of their loudspeakers as they announced over and over that the city was under curfew.

Everybody already knew, nobody would dare go outside. Summer knew that they did just to keep people afraid. They were required by law to keep their lights out during the night, but Summer could see a tiny glow in Caden’s window. She knew that they were candles, arranged like an altar so that if an Officer of Peace noticed, and came to investigate they would believe that they were there for religious purposes.

And in a way they were, Summer thought. She knew what Caden was doing by the light of those candles, and in a way they were a prayer, a desperation, a last chance. 

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They lay in Summer’s bed listening to the soft lilting tones of Kathleen Battle that did nothing to drown out the sounds of the riot outside her window. It was worse than ever, she hadn’t even tried to leave her apartment to go to work, and on his way over Caden had been hit in the head with a rock.

She was holding a towel to the bloody cut on his forehead, but he was distracted and kept trying to push her hand away. She was trying to pay attention to what he was saying, but she was distracted by the way his blue eyes were dark and animated, the way his too-long hair fell against his cheek. She couldn’t explain her sudden desire for him, but she imagined that it was because she had quite suddenly realized that there would most likely come a time where she would never be able to see him, to touch him again.

Summer interrupted what he was saying by abruptly kissing, catching his words between her lips. When she finally pulled away Caden was staring at her, his eyes confused. 

He opened his mouth to say something, but Summer cut him off. “I don’t want to lose you, Caden,” she said, and was surprised that her voice trembled, threatening to break. 

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“If what you’re saying is going to happen actually does,” she whispered. “I might never see you again.”

She looked down, not wanting him to see the tears in her eyes, but he gently lifted her chin until he was staring at her and she couldn’t look away. “Listen,” he said, “This is going to happen, I know it is, but nothing they do can keep me away from you. I would cross through all seven circles of hell to be with you, Summer.”  

“But how,” she whispered, “What can we do? We can’t stop them.”

“I don’t know if we can stop them,” he said, and for the first time Summer saw the fear in his eyes, then it was gone and replaced by steely determination, “But are sure as hell going to die trying.” 

Then he pulled her to him, and made her forget everything else but him. 

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On Saturday morning Summer ran out of food. Caden had brought her all the food he could before it all ended, saying that she would need it, but the Officers of the Peace had come door to door and confiscated all dry goods and extra food, saying that it was needed elsewhere. Summer knew better; they were trying to keep the people desperate and in need so they were unable to stand up for themselves.

She tried to swallow the panic that she felt bubbling up in her chest, and calmly waited at the window. When Caden’s face appeared in his apartment’s window she felt her rapid heartbeat slow, and she found that she wasn’t as frightened anymore. 

He waited until there were no Officers of Peace on the street below before he signaled to her. They were hidden in the chest that used to hold extra sheets and blankets. In her hands they felt warm and as though they had their own heartbeat, gently throbbing against her palms. Cautiously, glancing at the street periodically to make sure she couldn’t be seen, she lifted them up to the window so Caden could see them.

He nodded his approval, then mouthed a word. A shiver ran down Summer’s spine, but she nodded, then retrieved the small black gun from where she had hidden it in the hollowed out post of her bed so the Officers of Peace wouldn’t find it when they searched her apartment. 

Just holding it in her hand made her heart beat in her throat, and her hands trembled slightly. It all felt so much more real when she held it, much more real than when Caden had told her that she was going to have to use it. 

Back at the window she held it briefly to the glass to show Caden, but quickly lowered it when she saw an Officer of Peace approaching on the street below. He nodded, then placed both hands on the glass, even though he knew that the uniformed officer on the street would be able to see him if they looked up. 

Summer met his gaze, and the fire in his eyes made her hands tremble even more fiercely. I promise, he mouthed to her, and even though she could not hear his words, only saw the movement of his lips, she felt a shiver run down her spine as though he whispered the vow into her ear. He pressed his fist against his heart, and she mirrored his movements, imagining that it was his hand instead of hers that was pressed against her skin.  

Tomorrow, his lips said, and suddenly Summer found that she couldn’t breathe. Somehow though she managed to open her mouth and whisper the word, knowing that he could not hear her. 

Tomorrow, she promised. 

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“You have to trust me, Summer,” Caden said. 

Summer tried not to look as afraid as she felt, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from what he had put on the table in front of her. She didn’t recognize most of it, but she knew what it was, what its purpose was. 

“I don’t know if I can, Caden,” she said, “I don’t think that I can kill someone.”

“Then they’re going to kill us,” he replied harshly, and she stood abruptly and left the room, barely aware of her actions, knowing that she couldn’t bear to be there for a second longer.

She stood by the window and stared out, watching smoke from a fire below gently curl up into the sky, blown by the wind. It was the strangest kind of beauty, the kind that comes from violence.

She felt Caden behind her, his arms wrapped around her and his lips brushed against her ear. They stood in silence, then finally she said, so softly that her words were nearly lost, “I’m so afraid.”

He held her tightly, but his words were a soft caress, “I know, baby,” he said, “But I’m not going to lose you. I won’t let them do that to me.”

“Me either,” Summer said, and her voice was stronger. “I’ll do it, anything I have to. This isn’t the end of our story.”

“No,” he whispered, “It’s only just begun.”

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For the first morning in months the air was clear enough that Summer could see the sun rise over the city. The buildings were silhouetted in gold, and for a minute when she awoke she was blinded by the unexpected brilliance.

She took it as a sign, and she was not as afraid as she thought she would be as she got ready. She knew that in the buildings all around her, other people were doing the same thing that she was, and that strengthened her, knowing that she was alone.

Caden was not in his window, but she knew that he wouldn’t be. This part was hers to do alone. And when she was standing before her door, about to step out to a place where there was no going back, she realized suddenly that this was perhaps the most important thing that she had ever done in her entire life. That maybe everything she had ever done before in her life had been leading to this moment.

And if that was true, she thought, nothing could make her turn back now.

They came out of their building together, a great flood of people that filled the street, and they were strong because they were not afraid. Summer fought her way through the throng of people who all refused to accept this as the end, but she had eyes only for one. 

For one breathtaking second she could not find him, and then there he was, directly across from her, the new sun setting his hair on fire. And when their eyes met nothing else mattered, and when they reached each other anything could have happened from that moment onward, because they had already won. 

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In his bed the storyteller slept soundly, fat and content from overindulgence, satisfied because he had finished his story, because his work was complete.

Oblivious, the storyteller slept, and while he did the small leatherbound book on his bedside table quietly caught on fire and began to burn.