Spoiler! :
I sat in the field, baring my face toward the heavens as I watched the stars die. The warm summer breeze swept long hair off my neck. Grass tickled my palms and the soles of my feet. It might’ve been pleasant, if I hadn’t been watching the world end.
I wasn’t the only one in the field. A sea of ratty blankets and lawn chairs stretched out in all directions. Some stargazers were loud, like the group of kids from my school, off to the right. They laughed and shouted, ‘ooh’-ing and ‘ah’-ing like it was the Fourth of July.
But groups like that were rare. Most people were quiet, and – like me – alone. Most of us just watched the stars blink out. Not talking. Not making any sound. We just watched, and wondered, and waited.
An older woman and her husband sat to my left, on a neat, clean blanket probably purchased just for the night. She had her arms crossed in front of her chest, like she was holding something in. Her husband had an arm around her shoulders and a tight, drawn expression.
And an expensive-looking watch on his wrist. My fingers twitched.
Their clothes looked faded, washed out, but then again, this wasn’t some fancy, black-tie event. They’d probably worn the grubbiest clothes they owned. I plucked at stray threads on my worn, hole-filled jeans, glancing at the couple for a moment, then turning back to the sky as the woman spoke.
“Can’t they stop it?” she whispered. The words seemed volumes louder than my classmates’ raucous laughter, and I knew everyone in our little patch of field was listening. “Don’t they know what’s causing it yet?”
A long silence. I didn’t look at them again, but I think the man with the watch probably shrugged. Shook his head. Squeezed her shoulder. Something.
Then he spoke. “Don’t worry, hon.”
Don’t worry. Right. Because it was only the end of the universe, after all. No big deal.
“It takes thousands of years for the light from some of those stars to reach Earth. We’ll be dead and gone long before whatever it is reaches us.”
She let out a small relieved sigh. Because her husband was so much smarter than all the experts who came on the news and babbled about science to hide that they didn’t have a clue what was happening. Because who cared if her descendants and the rest of the human race saw the end of Earth as long as she was six feet under when it happened.
Or maybe it was a dissatisfied sigh. Because she was smarter than her husband. Because she – like me and my friends online – had already realized that so many stars disappearing at the same time meant that whatever ended those stars was moving much, much faster than the speed of light.
Those stars up there didn’t even exist anymore. They were dead. Maybe they’d been dead a long time. They were ghosts, fading slowly as their light continued on after their demise, the way a screaming woman’s echo could continue on seconds after she drew her last breath.
“Twinkle, twinkle, little star…” The song flashed through my mind. “How I wonder what you are… Up above the world so high. Leaving behind an empty sky…”
I played with the rhyme for a while, then gave up.
I suddenly felt like moving. I wanted to get up and start running. Onto the road, back into the city, where streetlights and neon signs blocked out the stars every night.
I could run fast, like I had after leaving that store I went to last weekend, where I thought one of the cashiers had noticed something off about me. I had run down the street, a bulge in my pocket and a light, free feeling in my chest.
But the field and the city were too far apart. I was no athlete; I measured my distance traveled in city blocks, not miles. When I left, it would be on one of the shuttle buses, like most of the other gawkers who’d made the trip into the country to get one last good look. I didn’t want to be like them – pathetic sheep who sat and watched because they couldn’t do anything to stop it.
But I was like them.
Some had brought telescopes. Others, cameras. Everyone wanted to ‘capture the moment’, like the news anchors told them to. Everyone wanted to see the things their grandchildren might not be able to: stars and polar bears.
I didn’t see the point. If some huge thing, event, whatever, was really out there destroying entire galaxies, who cared if you had footage of the last starry sky posted on your Facebook page?
I guess I did, a little. Why else would I have come? Looking, just like everyone else. Helpless.
In real life, there was no mission to send Earth’s finest to battle the darkness. There was no unlikely team of heroes braving the final frontier and forging friendships along the way.
There was only waiting.
“I can’t stand it anymore.” The woman shuddered. “Let’s just go home.”
Back to the city, where the haze of civilization obscured the stars.
The couple got up and folded their blanket. The woman clutched her purse. They picked their way through the rows of spectators toward the line of idling buses.
I stayed a few seconds, then put on my shoes and brushed myself off before following. I got on the bus just after them, not meeting the eyes of the bus driver – not the same one I’d ridden out with. An empty seat just behind the couple welcomed me.
Most of the passengers dozed, huddled like roosting birds as they made up for lost sleep. They’d have work tomorrow, or school. Appointments, business meetings, tennis lessons at the country club. Packed schedules. They hadn’t really had time to come out to the boonies. But really, how many chances would they get to watch the world die?
How many more years, months, weeks, days, would it be before even the ghosts faded and only the lights of airplanes and satellites remained?
The bus coughed as it lumbered forward. People stirred and peeked past their eyelashes, and I waited until they settled down into at least a half-rest, my best ‘bored teenager’ gaze skimming from seat to seat.
The man in front of me snored, light glinting off his watch.
No. I stilled my fingers. Too conspicuous.
The woman leaned against him as she slept, still and quiet and very grandmother-like. If I were the bus driver, I’d guess they had grandchildren. Maybe a teenage granddaughter they took with them to stargaze. And if a girl followed them onto the bus, and sat by them, he’d probably assume she was related.
After all, who else but a granddaughter would reach forward and start rummaging through the sleeping woman’s purse? No one outside the family would dare.
I took what I wanted from the purse, slipping the small items into my sweatshirt pocket. I also took a stick of gum – ladies like her always carried gum, or mints, or something – and popped it halfway into my mouth, letting the driver and other passengers see the end. A bored granddaughter taking a stick of gum from her grandma’s purse. Nothing odd about that.
Then I put the purse back onto the seat, next to the woman.
I settled back, a pleasant buzz pooling at the base of my skull. I rested my head against the window and stared at the farmland we passed, holding in a smile. The feeling faded some as I peered upward and saw a few more dots of light disappear. The gum’s flavor faded, too.
The old man’s snoring never missed a beat as he put his arm around his wife’s shoulders. Light glinted off the face of his watch. A pinprick of brightness, just like a star. Gone as soon as it appeared.
The glass of the bus window chilled the back of my neck.
Everything was coming to an end. Light. Life. Time itself.
I was stealing gum from an old lady’s purse, while something out there in the void was stealing everything.
My fingers tightened on the prizes in my pockets as the bus rolled on down the gravel road, and as stars died outside my window.
How long before it stole me, too?
How long before the only thing left was an empty sky?
Spoiler! :
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