Page 56 - North Star Literary & Art Magazine

I started at my crumbled ceiling, imaging the constellations in the missing concrete barrier. It took all the energy I had to keep my eyes open and aware. My hearing must’ve gone. There hadn’t been anything to listen to except the buzzing of the radio, but even that had left my ears alone. I could feel my heart still beating. I heard the brain continues to live a few minutes even after the heart stops beating and I wondered if my last thoughts, even after I died, would be of May.
I was entranced with the rhythm of my heart. How loud it was in my ears, that I thought for sure an army was coming, beating its drums. How the feeling soon multiplied, that the feeling soon turned to sound; the sound of banging at the top of my stairs.
“Sam?” a sweet voice called, panic lacing my name. “Are you down there?”
My mouth tried to call out but my tongue was so dry.
More noise came from up the stairs, the oncoming army my heart tried to warn
me about. I was lost in thoughts of a rescue that was too good to be true, but my senses were granted back to me in a resurrection that rivaled Jesus.
I could barely crawl, but I crawled. I struggled to the bottom of the stairs, strain- ing to see how the door to my tomb was being attacked, rattling back and forth with more strength and vigor than I had in my pinky-toe. I held my head as high as my neck would carry, the weight straining my atrophied muscles. With all the strength I had left I cried out, “May!”
The cellar door was thrown open with such force I had to flinch. A cry filled my ears and before I knew it I was once again feeling the warmth of human touch.
“Sam! Oh, God, Sam! Can you hear me? Please, can you hear me?”
I struggled to say her name, but the jargled sound of “May” on my tongue was enough to send her into a crying fit.
“I found you! I’ve got you, you’re safe!” The sound of May’s voice was a blanket of love, and I clung to it as I clung now to live.
“May,” I said her name. “May, May, May, May.”
Her arms held me, as we sat on my cellar floor, the sunlight streaming down the stairs and onto us like a spotlight. In May’s arms I found salvation. And with her voice, I found a reason to live.
54 FICTION