Death isn't easy

Everyone had known the world was ending. It was not a secret, much as the government wished it to be. It started four years ago, when I was a child of thirteen and my baby sister was one. The weather started getting funky around Christmas. Birds migrated back because the south was kicking up a freezing blizzard and the north was getting flowers everywhere you stepped it was so nice. Scientists said something was happening with the sun, but what kinds of things would have it snow in the south while the north grew toasty?

The icecaps melted, flooding many islands and swept down upon North America. The Mississippi river swelled up and flooded, reaching a new record. The birds started getting confused when the south warmed up again, but the north also stayed hot.

Soon the heat became unbearable. Scientists said it was a global emergency, that the sun was actually getting hotter and, worse, it was somehow messing with the axis that our planet rotated on, bringing it closer with each turn. Soon people weren't going out, dying every day out of the streets of heat exhaustion. It was madness.

People became scared and soon angry. They directed their anger at the government and soon they started breaking down the defenses and causing mayhem in the streets. If you didn't die from the heat, you would die from the dozens of people roaming around outside, driven mad and killing anything in sight.

The final turning point was when the sun rose on the wrong side of the world.

The sun rises in the east and sets in the west, right? Well this day, it did not. The sun had risen in the west and now was creeping it's bright body across the sky heading eat.

"Oh, my god," my mother whispered as she stood at the window. She was horrified, scared. My little sister, Amelia, who had been born right in the midst of things, stood next to her, looking delighted.

"Sun!" she cried.

"Jesus!" I yelled, racing over there. My blue hair smacked my mother's face as it trailed behind me, but even that could not shake her from the horror. "What the hell?"

"Annika, go get your father," Mom ordered. Her eyes were rimmed with red, so she'd probably been crying or screaming. She'd been slowly going mad over the years from all of this and I knew it wouldn't be soon before I would need to take Amelia and run.

"Why? He ain't gonna do shit. He's probably passed out somewhere in a puddle of his own--"

"Now!"

I scurried toward his office. When the world started going to hell, he'd buried himself in drink. He still made daily trips out in the barren land to steal liquor from shut-down grocery stores. He had to go at night, though and sometimes I joined him, getting the things we needed. Mom gave me a grocery list sometimes.

"Dad, we need--"

I stopped, freezing in my tracks. My father lay on the floor, indeed lying in a puddle, but it wasn't puke. No, it was blood. His wrists were slit, his old pocketknife lying next to him.

"Fuck," I whispered.

Throwing a blanket over him, I grabbed his keys and locked the office door behind me. So my little baby Amelia would not see her daddy dead. I felt a flicker of pain over this man, but how could I sit down and cry and grieve when he had basically abandoned us during this helluva time.

"He's not coming," I told my mom, giving her a look. She nodded, tears springing up in her blue eyes, the same shade and shape as mine. She wasn't surprised. How could she be? Father had been suicidal since this whole episode started. He'd only stuck around this long because somewhere in the back of his diseased brain, he remembered he had a family to live for.

"What are we gonna do?" she murmured. "I don't understand this. Amelia, love, go turn on the TV. News channel."

"Yes, mommy."

She dutifully went to the living room. After a moment of silence, she called, "Mommy, where?"

"Where's what, darling?"

"Where the news? There isn't anything on here."

I shouted a curse, then ran into the room. I yelled another swear word. For as Amelia was flipping channels, one message was written in black against the white background. One message that changed everything.

The government has fallen. We have been run down. Get to safety.

I shook my head, wordless for once since this whole goddamn ordeal. From the start, I'd tried my best to stay strong and hopeful that this might end and everything would go back to normal. I yearned the days when I might sit back down at a desk in school and listen to another crappy speech about economics and science and shit.

Amelia was only five for gods' sake. She was so little and full of life, it was horror to know that she was months away from death. Weeks. Days.

And SAFETY? Where even WAS safety? Antarctica?

The world really was ending. Soon there'd be nothing more. And we were just sitting here, crying. We needed to LEAVE. Find somewhere that surely hadn't been ravaged. An impossible plan started forming.

"Oh, baby." Mom started crying, getting down on her knees and clutching Amelia to her chest, her arms tightening around Amelia's little body. Amelia looked bewildered, confused. She wasn't fantastic about knowing what to do when confronted by an emotional adult. Or any emotion for that matter. "I can still save you. Don't worry, don't worry."

"Mom, get off her," I said when Amelia's face started turning purple. Her blond hair hung in her face as she grew limp. Those same blue eyes widened. "MOM!"

I screamed, clawing at my mother's face as she suffocated Amelia. Amelia gagged and I hit her harder and harder until my fists became bloody and my bones cracked and howled.

"Mom!" I screamed, crying. "No, stop!"

"I will save her!" My mother loosened her arms, letting Amelia's body down till she cradled her like a little baby.

"Mom!" I was sobbing now, down on my knees with her, grabbing at my sister's clothes. "What did you DO?"

Mom shook her head, giving me Amelia. Giving me the dead body of my fuckin' sister. Of her fuckin' DAUGHTER.

I cried over her, tears hitting her chest and splattering back at my face. I didn't see Mom get up. I didn't see her loosen her belt. I didn't see her come back, reaching around my head with the leather snake.

I did hear her cry, though. I did hear the pants of madness coming from her mouth. I felt the belt slip over my throat, resting like a necklace in the hollow of my neck.

I struggled, coughing and choking. My body thrashed around. My vision was failing, but then I grabbed her ankle, yanking. She fell, cracking her head on the hardwood floor. I jerked the belt off, running to her, the tears not dried yet from before when it was my sister laying there, all innocent looking.

"Fuck you!" I screamed, kicking her swiftly in the ribs. She didn't move, her empty eyes seeing nothing. I cried, running from the stench of death. Why today. Why now. Why me?

The sun beat down upon me and I cried out as my skin blistered. I hurried to the shade of a house. I stared grimly at the barren landscape around me. I was on my own now.

Later, when I didn't have to be brave, when I wasn't in as much danger, I would grieve. I would sit down and sob over all the amazing dinners we'd had together, the ones where it always ended with someone on the floor laughing so hard they cried. I would hurt for Amelia, I would picture how perfect she looked when she was a baby, that tuft of blond hair on her head like a chick.

I would remember when she said her first word. My name, Annika. Pronounced ka-ka by the sweet child. How heavy she was when I first held her.

The soft laugh of a child. The smiles of proud parents. The hugs of friends. A shared kiss in the hallway with no one else around, a secret to be tucked into your pocket for later.

The red smile of a slit throat. The soft sighs of a dying girl. The hurt and pain of an ending world.

Death isn't easy.