We All Burn in the End

Sensitive content: suicide, violence

What was so special about Paris? she asks. I hesitate, blot the torrent of sweat from my brow and check my watch. That’s a long story, and we don’t have a lot of time left. Not that it’s a secret; at this point, nothing is off the table between us. I just don’t feel like spending my final minutes delving into an anticlimactic story about young, foolish me, traveling across the world to visit a girl I naively thought I’d spend the rest of my life with. So I say something vague about the way the Eiffel Tower glittered prettily at night. 

She giggles and grins and calls me a liar.

Three times fast, she says. The confusion must be written on my face, because she ahems and continues: glittered prettily, glittered prettily, glittered prettily. Dang, that’s tough. You try.

I try, fail, laugh. It is pretty hard. 

We’ve been on this bench for three hours. I still don’t know her name or why she sat with me, and at this point it doesn’t matter because here we are. I came alone, figuring the chaos wouldn’t spill from the streets to the park. It was a good choice. The screams and gunshots seem distant, even if they’re only a few hundred metres away. It’s shady here too, inconsequential as it may be. My phone lost all reception and data this morning, so I can’t call anyone or check the temperature anymore. It was forty-four celsius at that point, and climbing rapidly. 

I’d stopped crying before she walked by, but I’m sure my face was puffy and red behind my sunglasses, the face of a person who was more interested in dying peacefully than living a few final hours of unbridled lawlessness. A kindred spirit. She stopped, sat, lit a joint, offered me some. I’d never tried it before, but what the hell. There’s a first –and a last– time for everything. She asked where my family was. I told her. Hers were farther. She said she hoped my family was at home and comfortable and together. I said the same. She asked if I wanted to talk or be left alone. I appreciated that. Talking is better than crying, we agreed, right before a man marched by, weeping and brandishing a bloody sledgehammer.

So we’ve been talking. Family at first, then school and hobbies. Turns out she played bass for the Wembies, and headlined at a local festival I attended a few years ago. I remember their set. We frequent the same cafe, and even know a few of the same people. She tired of the superficial bullshit quickly, so we went deeper. Both our most embarrassing stories ever involved uncontrollable bodily functions at inappropriate times, and we both lost our virginities to regrettable people.

He was almost as sweaty as I am now, she said with a laugh. She took off her sunglasses and wiped her glistening forehead with an equally wet forearm. Her eyelids remained clenched until the shades were back on, and I wondered what colour hid behind them.

A gunshot rang out behind us, and we turned in time to see a woman crumple backward, leaking red onto the brittle, yellowing grass, a pistol still in her hand.

This is the last conversation we’ll ever have, she said. Tell me something real.

I told her about the amends I’ll never make with my dad. The addictions he suffered silently with for years, that he took out on me and my mom because that’s what his father had done to him and it was all he knew. I told her about the time he came to me, drunk and crying, acknowledging his problems and begging forgiveness. I told her how I reacted with anger instead of understanding or gratitude, because I never learned those things.

She told me about her own regrets. In her family, she had been the one who lashed out, threw dishes, screamed abuses at parents who were only trying to help. Neither of us bothered with vicarious forgiveness. It’s too late for that.

Despite everything, she’s calm, cheerful even. She’s made her peace, I guess, and her knack for drowning out the fear must be rubbing off on me. Despite the heat, the anarchy, the knowledge of impending death, it's her making me sweat from every pore. 

I check my watch. Before the satellites went down, the reports had said the end would come at 3:18 this afternoon, give or take. Twenty minutes to go, and we haven’t spoken a word about the sun. Why it’s happening, how it happened so fast, whether or not anything could have been done. There are surprisingly few sirens, but it makes sense. Police and paramedics want to be with their families, too.

Our demons exorcised, we start to talk about travel. We’ve been to a lot of the same places. Reykjavik was her favourite city, and Paris was the first place I thought of when she asked mine.

What was so special about Paris?

Glittered prettily, gli-ttered pretly, grittered prilly. Damn it. 

With a smirk, she tells me to show her the girl I hadn’t mentioned. I sigh and chuckle but relent, open up the offline photo app, scroll through, and find it: a selfie I'd taken at midnight on New Year’s Eve, the Eiffel tower gleaming in the background with a million twinkling lights. I'm sitting on the wide, verdant lawn that stretches before the tower with my arm around the regrettable virginity-taker, a plastic cup of wine in hand, and an arrogant, self-satisfied grin on my face.

She leans in, takes the phone from me. Her hand grazes mine. The fragrance of her dark brown hair is an intoxicating mix of smoke and perspiration. She lowers her sunglasses.

Holy shit, she says, taking a closer look. That's me.

She zooms in the photo to a spot behind and to the left of me. Sure enough, there she is, laughing with a friend. She has a bottle of something in her hand, and a red and blue tattoo peeks out from under her jacket collar.

She turns in her seat and lifts her hair, revealing a cardinal, outlined in blue, on the other side of her neck.

She digs in her purse and pulls out her own phone. I glance at my watch: sixteen minutes. Across the field, a child and a woman are bawling. I squint to make out what’s happening – God, the sun has gotten so bright that it's hard to see, even with sunglasses on. A group of silhouettes, maybe four or five. They extend upward with clubs, bats, hammers, then a chorus of metallic thuds rings out. The crying stops, and I wonder if it was an act of malice or mercy. My heart drops either way.

She holds out her phone.

New Year’s Eve, Paris, 2006, she says.

I shield the sun from the screen. Sure enough, there I am in her background. Arm around the French girl, head tilted back, mouth drunkenly hooting with youthful revelry. We were each others' worlds for all of three months, until she swooped into someone else's orbit. Walking to the park this morning, I randomly thought of her and what never was, and anger joined all the other emotions churning in my gut, anger that has since faded without me realizing it. I hope she's at peace today.

Fourteen minutes.

She keeps scrolling through her photos: a ramen shop, Tokyo, 2012. I'm slurping noodles two tables over, glancing in her direction as she makes a face, cross-eyed and tongue out. 

World Cup in Rio. I'm sitting directly behind her at a quarterfinal match, unabashedly staring at her from three rows up.

Creeper, she giggles and leans into me. My skin is already burning, and somehow I manage to blush anyway. I press back lightly into her.

Ten minutes.

I go through my photos: Burj Khalifa lookout, Dubai, last year, a selfie on top of the world. There she is, looking right at me, an arm in the air.

She giggles. What? You don’t photobomb cute strangers?



Machu Picchu, 2014. It's sunrise, and she's climbing ancient, chiseled rock stairs, glowing through the fog in the first light of day, smiling at the apparently cute stranger above whose photo she’s again bombing. I smile. Her turn to blush.

Six minutes. Even in the shade, the heat is unbearable; my skin is starting to sizzle. The scientists said the sun would take up five percent of the sky at about this time. Looks about right. Screams of panic reverberate from the streets louder than ever, and I can't hear any of them. All I can focus on is her. 

How many times did we see each other...

She takes off both our sunglasses. Our eyes meet and connect for the first time.

Without truly seeing?

The world has gone white with intense, unforgiving light, but her gaze burns my retinas before the sun does. The last thing I see is her blue eyes, watery and squinting and somehow, glittering prettily. We rest our foreheads on each others’ shoulders. My vision has turned to stars and static, but I can still smell her. Smoke and perspiration, and my God, is it wonderful.

Four minutes.

We hold each other. Nothing needs to be said anymore. I don't even know her name, and I don't need to. She's been with me my whole life, and I never even knew. Nothing is important anymore except this woman, this bench, this moment. I guess I found the person I'll spend the rest of my life with. How many people can say that?

I feel her sob silently; the time for talking is over. I feel a tear drip onto my shoulder. I feel it evaporate in an instant. 

I feel… grateful.

Two minutes.