Free The Lights by M. Starks Page B

space, glints of light winking down at me from billions of light years away. I found it comforting. Knowing that somewhere out there, something was happening. Beyond us and our puny wants and desires.
     
    I guess I know what my puny desire holds now. Destruction.
     
    I close my eyes. Sleep comes unbidden, I'd only wanted to picture the stars I can no longer see.
     
    I dream of them. Beautiful balls of gas, raging with forms of fire unlike the fires of earth. Blues and greens. Reds, purples, yellows. They burn as if they are lit from within, gems radiating light.
     
    When I wake, I feel rested for the first time since my world ended. I miss waking to the sun streaming in through my windows, alighting on the dust motes in the air. I feel emptier than I have since the world ended.
     
    I rise, stiff and achy. I feel my forehead, it's hot on the back of my hand. I'll have to go in search of antibiotics soon.
     
    After relieving myself under the clouds and bare tree trunks, I make breakfast. Cold, greasy soup from a can. I tilt my head back, allowing the globs of mucus-looking sustenance to slide from the can to the back of my throat. The grease coats my tongue, the taste is lackluster. The sugar rush is immediate and unsatisfying.
     
    I miss going to restaurants and ordering what sounds good to my palate at the moment.
     
    My stomach grumbles and gurgles. Uh oh.
     
    I excuse myself from breakfast and trot back to my cloud covered bathroom on the surface.
     
    What feels like days pass like this. I wake, eat, barely make it to the bathroom. My forehead feels hotter, if that is possible. My energy is sapped. I sleep.
     
    I might be dying. I don't know if I'm ill from a virus, bacteria, or food poisoning. Maybe the aliens unleashed something to find and kill the last of the humans that have hunkered down somewhere.
     
    I don't know, and almost don't care anymore. In the middle of the end of the world, I have the runs, and I don't know how much longer I'll be able to lift my body to give it more to diarrhea out.
     
    Sleep comes in fits and broken passages of time. Dreams come and go. My mother smiling back at me on the raft at my grandpa's cabin. The river is dark and wide in my child's eyes. Bugs flit and float on the surface of the water. The sound of the oars slapping the water, cutting it, dividing it, pushing us further downriver. This becomes my father's legs sticking out from under the car. A hand outstretched as I place the 3/4 inch socket wrench into his palm. His strong, lean body moving, squirming under the strain of getting the bolt loose. My face in the mirror, after showering. My hand as it wipes the steam from the glass, and I see my honey colored eyes and wet blonde hair reflected back. Fireworks on the Fourth of July, the tiny American flag waving in my equally tiny fingers. The sparkler my mother is preparing. Oddly, I see my mother smiling a lot. She didn't smile as much as my dream recollections show to me, but I don't mind. These moments are beautiful. Precious. I try to hang on to them, my little dream stars that are covered by the clouds of this new world, the cloud of my fever.
     
    I startle awake. I don't know what woke me, but my eyes flash open. I nearly sit up, but my strength has waned. I reach for the flashlight and flick it on. Three eyes stare back at me.
     
    I am not alone.

 
     
     
    Chapter 3
     
     
    It draws back, the alien creature that was standing over me in my feverish sleep. I can see a clear film pull over its three eyes and retract. It blinked!
     
    My hand shakes, the light skittering over the edges of the room I'd become so familiar with, unable to focus solely on the being in the bunker with me.
     
    If it has come to finish me off, I am grateful. I'm not well. If this is all there is to this new world, dying is okey-dokey-pokey with me. Let's get it over with.
     
    I rest my hand at my side, the circle of light focusing on my feet.
     
    The creature slips closer. My heart