Page 54 - North Star Literary & Art Magazine

There was a stupid seed of hope blooming inside my heart because I hadn’t been crazy
i don’t think i’m crazy, am i crazy?
when I heard someone try to respond. I wasn’t alone, and there was someone else alive. There could be more.
Pressing the stone against the concrete wall, I carved a straight line. Perhaps it had some kind of magical runic property, as if the end of the world could bring such a thing, but I swear it whispered to me;
“Day One.”
I spent that day going between the radio, desperately trying to reach out to whoever was holding out their hand, and staring at the walls, falling into a trance of dissociation.
There was some success in our communication, though the interference was too bad to fully comprehend anything this person was saying, They had a very feminine voice, whenever fractures of words came through the line they were always said in a sweet voice.
“You...trap?”
“In my basement.”
“...ere.? My.. could... safe.”
“Safe? I’d like that.”
My staring contest with the walls was one I always seemed to lose. I had scratched
in a pathetic set of eyes to gaze into but they looked more like footballs than anything realistic. They worked, though, and whenever I fell into my trance I could hear my Before. My mom would call me down for lunch, my dad giving a big sigh as I struggled with
my math homework, our dinner table conversations over our days. I swear I could hear them. Sometimes my dad would whisper a joke, where I couldn’t help but giggle- “What’s a dentist’s favorite time? Tooth-hurty!”
and my mom would whisper a reminder-
“You have to sleep. You’ll lose your eyesight staring at that thing all the time!”
and I would sob after breaking the trance. They were dead, I was dying, and I was so lonely.
I scratched another line into the wall the next time my eyes opened. It whispered “Day Two.”
It hurt to breathe. I spent the time I had alive trying to focus on the radio. The
static was still there but I managed to catch more words through it than I ever had before. She told me her name was May.
“I’m with my parents and my sister,” she told me. “They’re driving me mad, but I guess it’s better than no one.”
I laughed at her, “You’ve got no idea.”
She told me, “We had plenty of supplies Before, but my dad is trash at rationing it. I think he’s been giving my sister an extra granola bar for lunch. She just wouldn’t stop crying.”
I whispered, “I haven’t eaten in days.”
I hadn’t had a lot of friends Before. I mean, I did but it always felt forced, like there was some kind of spell that kept us from splitting apart no matter how far the seams
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