Green eyes

I awake upon hearing the tear of the duct tape from across my mouth, ripping across my lips. The rope loosens around my ankles and wrists, and I rotate them slowly in my new found freedom. There’s still darkness in the musty, damp room I look around, squinting to make out the shadows my paranoia sees in every corner.

“It’s just me.” A rich voice echoes around the chamber of a room and I turn to face my kidnapper..

“Why- why did you take me?” My voice trembles as I choke back a sob while the kidnapper muses with a light-hearted hum, the tune warm against the cold box I’m trapped in.

“That would ruin the fun if I told you.” A cold hand is pressed against my chest and I am forced to my face, inches away from the kidnapper. I can’t see underneath the hood, or the cloak that covers their whole body. “What’s your name?”

“James. James Roth”

“Well, James. I have a choice for you to make.”

The lights in the room switch on with a blinding flash, monitors whirring to life from floor to ceiling. I’m entranced by the diversity of life I witness on the glaring screens. Scenes from all over the world unfold in front of my eyes and I can’t help but stare at all the marvellous places I’m scared I’ll never be able to visit. New York. Paris. Rome. Hong Kong. It’s just people going about their ordinary lives, from CCTV camera after camera.

“How did you get this?” I mumble, neck still craned to view the screens higher up the walls.

“Magic, James.” Tearing my eyes away from the screens, I face the kidnapper.

“What’s my choice?”

“Most people have procrastinated this forthcoming moment for ages, hours even. Sit down over there.”

I stumble to the chair the kidnapper pointed at and sink into it, a sheer moment of relief before the voice continues. “You see the button in front of you? You have a choice to press it or not.” I look at the screens, endless people, endless lives. What if there’s a bomb, a bomb to destroy the world, a bomb, a bomb, a bomb…

“I can’t.” The words tumble out of my mouth in a rush and I find my eyes locked on a screen showing children kicking a football in a playground, laughing under golden sunlight. I manage a smile for a half second, before the cold gun barrel presses against my head. My thoughts are suppressed by the click of the safety switch, the sound racing through my head, shaking and rattling like the bullet that could be coming my way. “I’ll press the button.” I don’t want to die. My fingers graze the smooth metal surface of it but before I can press it, I am interrupted.

“Are you sure, James?”

“You’re going to kill me if I don’t.” I tremble, then spin around. “You’re sick!” The kidnapper flinches, but the gun remains pointed at me and I am staring into the abyss of the barrel, the death that doesn’t welcome, but threatens to choke me.

“You’re the sick one if you’re putting your life above everyone else’s.”

“I’m not sick. I just want to live. There’s nothing sick about that.”

“There is in this context, James.”

“I’m doing it.” My fingers press down on the button, and I watch the camera’s fade to black. All is silent and peacefully for a few mere seconds before horrific sounds rip through the speakers on the walls. Screams of terror, anguish, pain. I hear bombs land, with thuds and crashes that rattle the Earth. And I can’t watch but I listen as the world crashes before me.

Eventually, the screams fade to whispers in my mind as I cover my ears in pure fear from the horrors I unleashed.

“Can I go now?” I can’t think, I can’t breathe, but I must survive.

“Yes. Let me take you.” The kidnapper takes my hand with their long pale fingers, and I welcome the cold, a focus away from what just happened. I’m led towards a door concealed in the dark walls and the kidnapper’s hand curl around the handle, before pulling the door open. They don’t let go of my hand until I’ve left the room.

I stand emotionless and hollow in a forest, facing down a pathway between the trees. The kidnapper lets go of my hand and I hear the door shut behind me. I turn slowly, still lost in a new world of light, rays slicing through the trees, littering the ground with bouncing yellow balls.

There is no door, no room. Nothing. I spin, discombobulated, faster and faster, eyes searching the forest for any trace of the room I just left. I choke back a sob, that rises and eventually spills out of me, leaving me in a heaving mess on the leafy ground. What am I to do now? I let myself cry.

Hours later, when the sun sets between the towering forest, I crawl to my feet and stumble down the pathway. My hands wander blindly in front of me as I drag my feet to a new hope, a new place. The pathway stretches on and I’m a shell of a man, walking aimlessly through infinite trees of infinite life. Birds chirping, squirrels bouncing. Life, life, life, but no humans.

A town peeks into view. A small sort visible in the horizon, beckoning me. It doesn’t take long to struggle towards it; my only aim is to survive this mess of my mind and survive I must.

The town is bare, empty. I roam the streets a lost wanderer to my new home and visit every house I walk past. Cookers are on, smoke billowing through chimneys and I see half-finished meals, half-finished games, half-finished lives. It’s like everyone left in the middle of their day and just disappeared. I find myself floating through the town, pale and empty as a ghost.

I find refuge at dusk in a small bungalow, sitting on the bed and awaiting the next day; for now I want to rest. I’ll try the radio tomorrow.

***

I see the figure at the door before I hear the knock. It’s rapt and clear, three sharp sounds awakening me. Stumbling to my knees, I grasp the handle of the door and ease it open, sunlight spilling into the room and shining on the tall man in front of me.

“Hello,” he says, “Everyone’s gone except you. Can I come in?” He steps into the house wearing just jeans and a t-shirt.

“How are you not cold?”

“Magic…” The man falters and ends his sentence there. I take a seat on the bed and invite him to sit down next to me.

“I was going to try the radio, but you just said we’re the last two alive.”

“You can still try it if you want.” I lean over to the radio I saw yesterday and turn up the dials. It crackles for a minute before falling silent.

“How are we the only people left alive?” I whisper, knowing the answer already.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know.” The man’s eyes crinkle into a kind stare and somehow I recognise a familiarity about him, but also a liar. “Take my hand, let’s walk.” His long pale fingers graze mine and I clasp onto their warmth and comfort, letting him lead me out of the house, out of town, into a forest.

“What’s your name?” I ask.

“Louis. Yours?”

“James.”

“James.” The man repeats my name and mulls it over in his mouth as we walk, still holding hands. “It’s a nice name. So tell me your story James. We have all the time in the world.”

I can’t help but spill my life story to the kind man with the green eyes and the warm hands. He’s comforted, natural in this strange emptiness of land but he listens and that’s all that matters. We sit for hours under the conifer trees that gently rain their needles down on us, fluttering like green butterflies from the sky. He listens and nods at the right places and says “yeah” at the right places and doesn’t interrupt at all. Might’ve I the opportunity, I would have invited home to make him tea and talk for hours more, because as my story unwinds like paper film, I’m eager to learn of his, this perfect man with his perfect eyes.

When he starts, he’s smooth but consistent in his inconsistencies; he forgets to mention his school or where he grew up. This man just came to be and I don’t know what to think anymore except I am so starved of human affection, so starved of love, before and after the kidnapping. I lean into him as we lie under the trees, under the stars, under the heavens that eventually open up into great sobs of rain. How complimenting, I ponder, remembering my tears that flooded the ground yesterday. But right now, I have a kind man in my arms who will stay with me until the world ends.

“James, I must tell you two things.” I love hearing my name upon his lips.

“Tell me Louis, tell me.”

“I love you. Because it’s just me and you forever and always.”

“I think I love you too.” The words are a whisper in his ear, lost by the torrential rain.

“And one more thing. I can’t keep this from you any longer.” I nod eagerly, so lost, so alone but so comforted. “I kidnapped you. I kidnapped every person I fell in love with and gave them the choice. To die, or to live with me forever at the expense of the world.”

And yet, from his familiarity of his hands and voice, I am not surprised. I am not hurt. I am in love with the man with the perfect green eyes.