The Last Heatwave

“Shut the fridge,” he mumbled. He couldn’t be bothered to muster enough energy to speak clearly, but she knew what he was saying.

“Fix the a/c,” she responded. She waved the door back and forth letting the cool air from the refrigerator waft over her sticky and sweaty body.

He let out a chuckle that was more of a high-pitched “teehee” which Elle recognized as him being sarcastic. “We got a/c,” he motioned to the old rattling box hanging from the window.

Mississippi was a cruel mistress in the summer. She hosted dense forest from top to nearly bottom, but at the very bottom of the state paradise on Earth reigned. The Gulf Coast contained beauty, unlike anything you’ve seen elsewhere. White sandy shores, endless skylines, and the occasional gator trekking slowly across the hot sand.

But in the summers, and a bit later, she was “The Devil is Beautiful” personified.

The TV flickered and buzzed as a warning scrolled across the bottom of the screen interrupting Thomas’ reruns. “This is a warning from the National Weather Service. A Heat Advisory has been placed into effect for an undetermined length of time with temperatures reaching 118 with a feels like nearing 128.”

“128? That can’t be right,” Elle said. She closed the fridge to watch the words scroll across the screen.

Thomas sat up with a groan and a grunt turning up the volume. “Gotta be a typo. That’d be record-breaking otherwise,” he said.

“You think it’s just a system test or something? You know like when Hawaii had those missile alerts years ago? It’s weird to announce an unexpected heat wave so late into the day,” she said.

“Undetermined,” Thomas repeated. “When’s the last time the weather guy used that word?” He looked at Elle, but she was looking at the window unit.

He shrugged it off and leaned back against the couch.

Elle fanned herself from in front of the window unit until it started to sputter. She gave it a knock and then another. The unit ran smoothly for a few moments until it sputtered some more and then stopped completely, only emitting a low hum as the motor came to a stop.

“What did you do?” Thomas asked.

“Nothing,” she knocked it again and again. “It just stopped,” she said, still smacking it.

“I told you not to do that,” he said, standing stiffly from his reclined place on the couch.

She moved aside, letting him look it over. “It’s a piece of crap. I told you we should replace it before it started to get hot, but we can both see how that worked.”

“Alright, alright, I can fix it,” he said. He popped the cover off fiddling with the inside workings of the old a/c unit. “Or I could have if you didn’t smack it so hard and break it,” he grumbled.

“I’m going back to the fridge.”

Thomas fiddled. He jiggled parts and pulled at wires. He moved the fan blades and rattled the whole unit, but nothing stood out to him to fix. “Dang it, Elle,” he growled.

“Don’t try to blame me. I told you to replace it and here we are on the hottest day of the year.” She waved the fridge door again. While it helped cool her chest, it did little to stop the waves of sweat from falling down her back and pooling just above the waist of her pants.

The sweat formed quickly on Thomas’ brow. It felt like someone had kicked the heat up by ten degrees and he could barely see as it dripped into his eyes. He wiped his eyes and forehead with a sweaty arm, but it did no more than sopping up a spill with a wet rag.

“God, why is it so hot?” Elle whined.

Thomas clenched his eyes shut tight, pushing out the sweat, and rubbed them. He did this a few times before the burning ceased, but there was something different about the living room. “No wonder it’s so hot, you’ve got the blinds open and it’s cooking this whole room,” he said.

“I didn’t open the blinds,” Elle said.

“My eyes are burning from the light, Elle,” he said, blinking them open, but when he looked to the windows he saw them covered. The white cord blinds that covered them shut so tightly that the only rays of sunlight that penetrated the living room were from the tiny holes where the cord weaved between each plastic blind.

His silence caught her attention and she looked his way, wincing at the light. “It's so bright.”

Thomas pulled up the blinds, light flooding the room so intensely they both had to shield their eyes as though someone had turned a spotlight on them.

“Lord have mercy,” he groaned, trying to look outside through the gaps between his fingers.

After a few blinks, his eyes adjusted enough for him to notice the outside seemed over-saturated, the exposure turned far too high, and the vibrant greens and yellows he admired in his front yard were washed out, sun-bleached.

Elle felt around the kitchen as though she had lost her sight searching for something. On the table, she found her sunglasses and placed them on. Even with her sunglasses, she felt like she was sitting on a white beach at midday and not in the safety of her kitchen. She located Thomas’ sunglasses and brought them to him.

“What is happening? Why does it look like the sun’s about to blow out like an overcharged bulb?” she asked.

Thomas slipped on his glasses and looked toward the sky. He couldn’t look at the sun on a good day, but he hoped for an answer among the clouds. He raised his hand to cover the sun, providing enough coverage to see the rest of the sky, which seemed to be less blue by the moment.

A stream like a golden river danced across the sky. The beginning of which was hidden under his hand, but it extended the length of the sky swaying and weaving and twisting like a golden dragon dancing in slow motion, its tail twirling and swirling around itself until it stopped in nothing.

“What is that?” Thomas muttered, drawing Elle’s attention.

She shaded her eyes and watched the golden and orange and yellow glisten. “What the–? It’s that thing attacking the sun?” she asked, the words feeling fake as they crossed her lips.

Thomas looked at his hand. He moved it inch by inch following the golden river until it reached the flaming edge of the sun. “It is the sun.”

“What?”

With his left hand, he covered the sun for them both as Elle moved behind him to watch over his shoulder. He traced the river with his index finger on his right hand, following each loop carefully and slowly. “From there, across here,” he began, stopping on the swirl of fire that seemed to grow by the moment. “It ends there,” he said.

“What? What does that mean? What is that?”

Thomas could only watch the swirl grow until the bright light started to dim. “It’s eating the sun,” he uttered.

“What is?” Elle was desperate for answers.

As the sky grew dim, Thomas chanced it and lowered his hand.

The sun appeared small and dull in the sky. Nothing more than a streetlight in the distance. While the swirling pool of fire grew, expelling accelerating disks of fire, gas, and matter. The sky seemed to dim for a moment, but as the spiral and its disks grew, the light returned. Warmer, brighter, and spread further across the sky until it filled their sight completely.

“Oh, God, Thomas,” Elle whimpered.

The sun was an orb of light shrinking into a lightning bug in an open field until it fluttered far enough away their eyes could no longer see it. They could only watch the last of the blazing river shrink to a spindly vein before it met the rest of the spiral and encompassed the whole sky.

It was quiet, the only sound being the buzzing of the TV as another weather report passed along the bottom of the screen.

“The National Weather Service has issued an extended Heat Advisory indefinitely with temperatures reaching 142 and increasing. Be advised to remain indoors and close all blinds, windows, and curtains. Repeat, remain indoors.”