The Things We Do for Love

His eyes were the color of the ocean that raged inside of him. It crashed against the sheer rock cliffs that guarded his heart. The ocean raged and tormented and swirled and laughed and never calmed. She saw all this and smiled. She didn’t know why she smiled. His eyes weren’t quite sapphires and they weren’t quite aquamarine or tanzanite. They were his and only his. They grew dark or light as the ocean allowed.

She swam in the oceans for far too long, years perhaps. Her body was raked over jagged rock, scraped, crushed, raw yet she stayed. She clung to the rock face of his heart. The waves would rip her off and she’d climb again over and over. Her fingers and toes became long spiny claws and slowly the waves were unable to rip her down. But the battle had changed her. She became black and bitter and defiant. She was a sea urchin, a rock urchin. She was stuck forever in her spot on the rock cliffs unable to climb, unable to fall. She was prickly and poisonous and even the ocean stopped paying attention to her. Eventually he stopped paying attention to her and he smiled.

If the rock walls ever came down if the wild ocean every won she would be forgotten. She would wash up a fossil, a relic, centuries later on the inviting sandy beaches of his heart. The ocean would toss her carcass in play and it would laugh.

Slowly the sea urchin began to climb. Moving an inch every so often. Slow enough the ocean never noticed. Slow enough he never noticed.  Over time, over much time, she reached the precipice. The sunlight penetrated her spines. Warmed her being and slowly she felt herself emerge. Her shell cracked her spikes turned back into fingers and toes. She had limbs and hair and breasts and in front of her was a vast desert. A barren wasteland of sun and dust, petrified stone and bleached skulls.

When she got to her feet, the ocean crashed high and hard and loud against the rocks, trying to reach her, trying to pull her back down. The ground beneath her feet shuddered and the wind blew hot and fast. The sand ripping at her face. She began to run as she ran the whole place shook. The chunk of cliff where she was standing previously cracked and fell into the furious sea. She ran until the land stopped quivering and her feet began to bleed.

The sun, the heat, the sand, the dry started to consume her. She felt her flesh grow leathery. She could only run in short bursts now along the hot barren wasteland. Unsure if the direction she was going was the right one. She could no longer see the ocean and the sun was eternal. There was no night. There was no break from the heat. Where she once thought she would drown in the ocean of his soul she now though his heart would consume every bit of moisture. She would crumble to dust and blow away with the wind. The wind would toss her back out into the ocean. Her hands and toes once again turned to claws and her skin became the color of the desert. It was all reflected in her brown scales and long tail as she scurried along the fissured surface. She began to forget anything other than to dig and scurry long the splintered, dusty shell of earth. She became lost in the blinding sun.

Her tongue flicked at her eyes, moistened them. She scurried in quick bursts, taking deep breaths in through her nose. Had she been lost for years or days as the sun beat down? There in the distance her heart thumped quick in her chest.  She zipped from under a bleached stone to the shade of a petrified lizard.  It was a molehill. She felt her senses come back to her as the rain started to fall and she ran, rejuvenated, to the mountain. A storm raged ripping up the dead dust and hurling it into the dark clouds. The ground became mud and she no longer had claws and her tail fell off with a painful snap. She was upright and laughed at the storm. He clutched his chest coughing.

The mountain loomed menacing and vile and dangerous. She sneered. Everything shook violently and compulsively and angrily. She could hear the ocean again and the whispers of the sand in the wind. She could hear the venom in their tongues.

She climbed. She climbed with passion and enthusiasm. She climbed with love and purpose. It kept her going until the cold stole the breath from her lungs. She knew she was destined to drown in the ocean and crumble to dust in the desert but now it was certain she would freeze for his heart. Yet she moved. Crawling and she felt her hair grow long. Her hands and feet became stumps hardened to hooves. On all fours, her ears grew long and curled back on themselves and she traveled up the mountain. It was endless night. It was brutal and cold. Her breath froze and her soul was forgotten. For a while, she meandered content with the fact that movement kept her warm. She wandered. Until the night began to laugh at her. The snow began to taunt her. She ran and rammed full force into the mountain repeatedly. Her anger hot and palpable. Eventually the mountain yielded. She reached the top and he stood there with eyes black as the night. She galloped to him. Feeling her horns break off sending waves of pain through her. She was on her magnificent two legs again and she ran open armed to him.

This world fragmented when she felt his embrace. She saw the ocean and desert in his eyes. The cold that whipped around them no longer touched her.

“You have to jump,” he said with a half smile.

“You have to jump with me,” she said with all seriousness.

His smile left him. “I’m not the one the heart wants.”

She looked over her shoulders. To her right a volcano, spewing hot and red. To her left the raging sea, which swallowed up the desert.

“You made it this far to me, you only have to jump,” He was desperate his eyes matched the air around them.

“You have to love yourself,” She said.

It seemed like he let out a primeval bellow but his mouth never opened. He hugged her deeply.

“We’ll jump together,” he promised.

“You jump first,” she said.

He looked at her frantically, madly, fearfully. They kissed deeply and she let go of him. As he fell, she whispered to the storm “I’m not coming.”

His body crashed into the lava and the mountain cracked, gyrated and heaved. The wind fell flat and the sky began to fall.

“The things we do for love.” She whispered to his heart as she dove gracefully into the calm ocean. She watched the world die. Sinking poetically into the sea. She swam to the edge of the ocean and let herself fall off, free.

Life Mission - Part 1

In the woods, Maggie ran. Night was falling and the only advice she was given was run and hide, hope they don’t find you. Evolution had found a home in the Bone Snappers. A large, wolf-like beast covered in thick skin instead of hair, with a turtle’s jaw that snapped through bone, even trees if it wanted you bad enough. With an amazing sense of smell and superb ears and night vision humans didn’t stand a chance. The Bone Snappers were taking over, slowly, invading, but only at night. Their food source was scarce, birds didn’t sing and if you heard something shifting in the bushes odds are it will be the last thing you hear. 

Maggie had crashed landed back on Earth. She and her crew stopped receiving messages from Earth and assumed the worst. They spent 5 years in space, exploring everything within a reasonable distance. Searching for anything besides Earth being the only hospitable planet. Unmanned vessels brought back only shoddy footage and inconclusive samples. They needed something that knew what to look for, what to collect, how to interpret things. Hence the Life Mission was born. 

When they circled Earth, it didn’t look like anything was amiss, it was still green and blue, no nuclear weapons, no war they began their descent with no connection to Earth. Two of the 5-man crew died on impact. Maggie, Jeff and Vanessa were the survivors for now. 

Maggie ran, fear welling up in her like the sweat that poured from her. When they landed they crashed in the Appalachian Mountains during the day. No clue where other than that. A few people had seen the crash and rushed to see if maybe it could get airborne again. There must be some place on Earth without Bone Snappers and this was the first thing in the sky they had seen in months. When Maggie and what was left of her crew awoke, the sun was starting to set. A man told her the Earth had an affliction. The Bone Snappers are new predators that emerged liked some dormant dinosaur a few months ago and have almost wiped out life on earth.  He told her there were few defenses against them. Some houses have survived by utilizing a type of ray the government handed out before being cutoff and overrun. It was essentially a shrink ray.

“The sun is setting,” the stranger said. “You need to run and hide, but they’ll find you. Do what you can to survive.”

“How have you survived?” Maggie ventured.

“No time, sun’s gone, run.”

What sounded like laughter amplified boomed and reverberated off the trees. The stranger had disappeared. Maggie, Jeff and Vanessa took to heart the advice. They covered themselves in dirt and ran, in the dark, the laughter chasing them.

She could smell herself, which meant the Bone Snappers could smell her. There was a clearing in the woods, just ahead. Vanessa tripped and screamed.

“Shhh,” Maggie quickly rushed to her and covered her mouth. Vanessa tripped over a rope. They followed the rope. Together they pulled and revealed a grass covered thick metal door, which opened to a staircase underground. Entering and quickly shutting the door, behind them they felt trapped, following the only path there was. They came to a door and knocked. They waited and knocked again. They felt around the door, there was a button, they pushed it. Amazingly the door opened.

“Bone Snappers don’t ring doorbells,” said the child who opened the door.

“Who are you?” Said the adult standing behind him.

“I’m Maggie and this is Jeff and Vanessa,” Maggie paused to see if that would be enough. “We were astronauts for the Life Mission several years ago. We crash landed. We lost 2 crew members. “ Maggie  brushed the dirt away from her uniform patches.

“Life Mission? How long have you been in space?”

“About 5 years.”

“You’ve got a lot to catch up on, I’m Mark and this is Charles.” Mark smiled and grabbed Maggie in a hug. “Come in, come in, let’s get you some food, maybe a shower and get you caught up on the Bone Snappers. It’s so nice to meet other survivors sometimes. We’re so used to it just being the 6 of us.”

“What is this place,” Vanessa asked.

“We built this when the Bone Snappers were first discovered. Sometimes it helps to be a nut job that lives in the woods. There’s the door entrance and we kind of scale down this hill towards to lake so we can have access to water.“ Mark discussed everything so light and easily like we were expected for a dinner party.

They followed him down a narrow hallway and then it opened up to a well-done, elegant kitchen. With his back to the astronauts, Mark said,

“These are some astronauts that crash landed and are only finding out about the Bone Snappers now.” He turned to face them,

“This is our family. My wife, Sandy.” She waved. “Our former neighbors Jim, Beth and Tiffany.” They all waved.

“Hello, I’m Maggie and this is Vanessa and Jeff. We were with the Live Mission that launched 5 years ago. Could someone please tell us what is happening."

“It’s a long story,” Sandy said. “Best you sit down and eat while we tell you, I’m sure you’re hungry.”

“Would it be possible,” piped up Jeff, “to use any kind of shower?”

“My goodness, of course!” Said Sandy. “You all must need one. How about we do that first?”

“Thank you, very much for your kindness and for letting us into your home,” Maggie said.

They settled in, took some showers let the truth of the world permeate. When they all converged back in the kitchen, the got the whole story:

“The things just showed up about 6 months ago. They’re unstoppable, insatiable and they only hunt at night," Sandy said.

“Why at night?” Maggie asked.

“No one knows, no one who encounters them can stay alive long enough to figure it out and even if they did, they’ve taken over the world. They can swim long distances. We have no way of communicating with the outside world. Or being communicated by the outside world…”

“Unless they trip over your rope while running,” Vanessa said.

It lightened the mood, soft giggles.

“We’re just surviving. We can only go so far during the day for wood and food. None of us have even seen them up close we’ve just heard the laughing, the noises they make when they’re on the hunt and we can’t even hear that down here,” Sandy finished drank some water and stared at her son. “We were lucky. We even got one of the shrink rays and set it up at our most vulnerable point, where our compound meets the water. Well at the doorwaythat leads down to where our compound meets the water.”

“A shrink ray seems like an odd way to combat these things,” Jeff said.

“Yes, everyone thought that too but nothing kills them: guns, knives, anti-artillery, fire or electrocution. At least when they’re small they’re weaker. We can’t crush them or burn them, but we can collect them, let them starve out. They die in captivity after 3 days. I hate it, a slow, cowards’ death,” Mark answered.

“Can I see your vulnerable point?” Maggie asked.

“Sure.”

They walked down a series of zig zagged stairs. Floors and floors. The floor gave away to dirt and there were some pillars one had to wiggle through to get to the water. Maggie made her way through the pillars and stared out over the lake. It was beautiful. The moon reflected off the still waters. It was strange to see the moon from earth again.

Ripples formed on the surface of the lake. Maggie turned toward Mark, who had remained behind the pillars.

“We don’t come down here at night; you really should get back behind the pillars.” 

It was too late. A Bone Snapper rose from the serene lake scene. Mark bolted up the stairs. Maggie ran to the pillars. It pursued. It laughed. She squeezed her way through the pillars and the Bone Snapper slammed itself into them. Put its entire weight and force into bringing down the pillars.

“You’re so scared.”

The Bone Snappers could talk.

“I want your marrow.”

“What are you?” Maggie gasped as she backed away towards the stairs.

“Your bones crunch so deliciously. Your blood is the best marinade.”

Maggie ran up the stairs but could hear the Bone Snapper laughing and breaking through the pillars. She struggled to climb fast enough when she was almost at the top she screamed,

“It’s behind me!”

She flew into the kitchen and before she could turn around Sandy activated the shrink ray and soon the Bone Snapper was the size of mouse.

“They can still snap at you, draw blood, you have to pick them up a certain way,” said Sandy as she grabbed it by its neck and walked it over to a dry aquarium tank. The tank held some weak and dying mini bone Snappers.

“We bury them once they die around our compound, they don’t like the smell it usually keeps them away. They must be starving,” Mark said.

Maggie caught her breath,

“They talk.” She got out between breaths. “It taunted me.”

“They don’t talk, that’s impossible,” said Beth. It’s the first time one of the neighbors have said a word to the astronauts.

“It talked.” Everyone started at the tank of Bone Snappers. They didn’t make a sound.

There was a deep bellowing laughing that ricocheted from the stairwell. It moved slowly but was coming closer. Beth gasped,

“We took her mate.”