100 Proof

He shook the rain off his coat and settled himself across the table at their bar, chosen for its unpopularity—neither party in town had adopted it.

She had already ordered bottles of cheap beer, and she was half into her own, which meant she squeezed his hand across the table sooner than he expected. How are you doing?

I may not make it, he answered. Everything is so empty there, and no one understands the light switches.

She tilted her head. Starting a new job is always hard, she replied, but shouldn’t you expect more?

They peered through microscopes at snowflakes on slides, the six-sided patterns softening as they melted. These are not fluffy, the students noted, squinting down at the barbs in the ice crystals.

The professor put up a photograph of a high wall of snow carved along a road in the Sierras. Individually, he said, these may not be very effective, but when combined together, when millions layer upon millions, they can be quite significant.

The storm is coming, said a student in the front row.

A student in the back row replied, It’s already here.

On the long, narrow beach at the edge of the continent, she spread out a towel and sat, looking out over the water, over the relentless waves, the froth crackling on the sand, the pounding of the surf, every 10 seconds another wave, and another, and another. She sat with it, with all of it, with the constant noise and motion, and she thought about how long this had been happening, how long before she came into being, how long it would continue on, each wave, one after another, rendering stones to sand, drowning memory, effort, action, remorse.

Inside our houses, we huddle around candles, keeping single flames alight against the draft with cupped hands and close bodies. It is so dark these days, even at red dawn, even at high noon, and we must do what we can to focus on that which is warm and bright and alive.

We know there are others like us, clusters of hope in their own quarters. We will send search parties, adding one candle at a time until we have created a flame so bright, so warm, that the darkness will skulk away, muttering and weak once more.

There are so many kinds of darkness, she said. Sometimes it is soft and warm, but this darkness is so different. It is as prickly as a bramblebush and as impenetrable as a wall.

She was right, but he didn’t want to confirm her suspicions. He already worried she’d said too much, that her very speech could manifest even worse things than she had already described.