Alone in the Desert

Bruce often wondered how the world had fallen. There was much that could be the cause. The dying sun. The way it spat fireballs that bloomed and curled out like whips in its dying state. Its self-ruination. Emitting more and more ultraviolet till the earth’s atmosphere had been compromised. As if the sun had grown angry at all it lit.

Or perhaps it was people who’d collapsed the world. And the sun was but an angry red eye watching everything pass.

There was no way to be sure.

And more disturbing than not knowing the answers to such trivialities was living in the nightmarish aftermath of whatever had truly happened--that was a reality Bruce was certain of.

When once man had ruled the world, it was now under the rule of its lesser creations. Wasps, those abominations of the sky, the main oppressor of this wasted world. Bruce often despaired at this truth. Why had this happened in his lifetime, during the brief little snapshot of his cosmic existence? It could have happened any time before, it seemed, so many billions of years before. But, he supposed, there was no time like the present, so now made perfect sense in the logic of the cosmos.

The earth seemed to be equalizing in these days of last, triumphantly returning to a not forgotten infancy. Maybe that was why the temperature had risen all over the world: some sort of natural defense mechanism spurred on by nature itself.

This was the theory that made the most sense to Bruce. Nature had unleashed its fury, its goal to eradicate that which troubled it most. Bruce understood what a parasitic relationship was: the idea that something thrives whilst its host meets its demise. It was a poetic irony, but it was symbolic of life, symbolic of life on Earth.

Bruce stood before the window of the concrete dome he called home and gazed blankly out the window. At the world beyond. Thick, concrete walls were the only way to stay truly safe, stay truly hidden. Insects can detect certain things: fear, sweat, sweets. A foot of concrete kept their inquiring senses in the dark, kept human existence in the unknown.

“You’re only torturing yourself,” said Selena, his love, plainly.

“Who knows, maybe I’ll venture out there some day, step into the light of day,” Bruce returned, still gazing out the thick glass.

Selena snickered behind him. “You’re not brave enough,” she said, her tone carrying a sort of cynicism he both loved and despised. She laughed again harder, heartier.

Bruce sighed. Sometimes he thought the only thing worse than being condemned to thriving in the night, when the wasps weren’t as active, was being trapped in a concrete tomb with Selena’s condescension. He thought her a pessimist, but Selena took offense to that label. She would say she was a realist, and that was that.

Bruce diverted his hardened gaze from the window and turned to Selena. “Yeah, I suppose you’re right,” he replied. Absent, defeated voice. Weakened posture.

“I know.” Selena looked up from the tapestry she was splicing together and pulled another smile and then flashed a wink. Her bright, blue eyes bearing a tremendous sheen. A smile radiant enough to light whatever darkness there could be. Let it be gone, and it was so. Bruce smiled and stared at her and let those eyes work their charms.

“How’s the progress on your little project coming?” he asked.

“It’s getting there, day by day.”

“When will you tell me what it’s of?”

“Well, when it’s finished, you’ll see. Until then, avert those eyes, mister.”

He obliged her request and meandered over to the couch. He spent the remaining hours of daylight gazing out a window above an abandoned TV. Wasps incessantly hovered by the lens in their gangly manner: their legs curled in the air, bodies rounded at the thorax. Occasionally one would collide with the window, and each of these collisions injected a healthy dose of joy into Bruce. They were the highlight of everyday. One more wasp down meant one wasp closer to emancipation. He often wondered what number would have to be reached before the volume of wasps would no longer be fatal to mankind. Numbers represented such a fine line. Like oxygen levels or the tilt of the Earth, a small, fractional variance would be the difference between fresh and toxicity, between life and no life. The nature of numbers a peculiar business.

He waited and waited for the sun to go down. Watched the sky shift from bright blue, to pale blue, to black; watched the sun’s color temperature change from yellow, to orange, to blood red. The same process observed every day, the same waiting game.

Night offered freedom from the concrete tomb. Wasps and insects retreated to their fortresses during the night, much like humans did during the day. It was the temperature. The temperature during the day was warm enough that wasps could fly about freely, as if they had laid claim to the whole world. It was also the global temperature. The global temperature had risen in great enough measures that all areas of the earth no longer underwent drastic seasonal changes, and it was this lack of change that granted the wasps sufficient time to flourish. It was under these perfect conditions, the raising of a few degrees, a few numbers, that the insects, and particularly the wasps, came into power. And they eradicated almost everything as their numbers grew, including humans, who grew increasingly susceptible to not only the volume of the stings but the potency with which they were inflicted. No longer were only a few allergic to their needled jabs, but the majority. But not even the minority, the immune, dared chancing daylight; being swarmed and stabbed to death by ravaging stingers was a displeasure no one chose to suffer.

Bruce raced around the concrete tomb. He could feel the shake of Selena’s head atop her shoulders as he rushed, but he didn’t care. He was excited, just as he had been every night prior. He knew she did not enjoy the fresh air nearly as much as he did, knew that most didn’t, in fact. But none of that mattered; they weren’t going to stop him from living.
He pulled on his Kevlar suit and returned to the door to wait for Selena. She always took forever to change, and it pained Bruce the same every night. He waited all day every day for this moment, while she didn’t seem to care one iota.

“You know, I don’t much feel like going out tonight. I think I’d rather work on the tapestry,” she said, returning from the bedroom not wearing any protective gear.

“What?” replied Bruce, trying to conceal his resentment.

“Yeah. I just don’t feel it tonight. Reward’s not worth the risk.”

“Unbelievable,” said Bruce, no longer concerned with whether he offended or not. “Just unbelievable.” He turned and unwound the submarine like lock of the door and opened it and stepped into the emptied world.

Even through the Kevlar suit Bruce could feel the cool of the air, could taste the freshness of it, too. He took a deep, long drag of air in to his lungs, half to calm himself over what he perceived to be a slight by Selena, and half to taste the freedom.

Bruce always thought the view of the land to be yet another paradox. Stretching in all directions lay a vast desert plain. The paradox wasn’t the desert, however, but the oases scattered about its nearly desolate landscape. They grew lush and wild and beautiful, despite continuous ravaging. Surrounding these oases were many small domes, their tops protruding from the rolling mounds of sand and sediment like inversions of craters on the moon. Most of the domes were now vacant, however. They stood as little more than concrete tombs, where fathers and mothers and sons and daughters lie, forever imprisoned. This sight always brought a sense of dread to Bruce; it was a bleak reminder of his future existence. The imminent certainty of death was approaching sooner than he cared to admit. Food supplies were dwindling rapidly. Selena and he had reserves enough for another a couple months, maybe half a year at most, if they rationed. They could find sustenance from berries if hard pressed, but no long term solutions had yet presented themselves; they were dying, slowly.

That was why Selena worked on the tapestry, Bruce knew. It was something that would stand the test of time, would remind God’s second children of the beauty his first children had the capacity and skill to create.
Bruce started his stroll across the desolate plain, following the same path he’d traveled every night for the past two years. He walked by the concrete bunker of the Johnson family, then the Carter family, then the Smith family, and on and on. He thought about each of them as he walked; it helped him hold onto humanity, to life. He would have enjoyed the walk better with his love, Selena, though. With her in tow the emotions would have been amplified, and he always longed for that great flood. How he wished there would be another great flood, to sow the Earth once again with water, to flush away the wasps and their stingers. But no amount of hoping or wishing or praying brought that desire to fruition.

Rounding the final leg of his jaunt, he saw the vague shadow of a newly constructed wasp nest hanging limply from a tree branch. His body shuddered. The wispy silk was the size of a human body, its insides surely festering with activity. Bruce’s mind drifted back to when he’d first seen the fury of the wasps, first seen them in all their primitive glory. He remembered how a large cluster had swirled around a strolling man, much like he was strolling now, and how the man had been lost in their spinning madness. Endless strobes of yellow and black, yellow and black. The swarm descended, presumably as the man fell to his knees, and then flattened out when the man hit the ground. The screams of the man were still palpable within Bruce’s mind, even here, even now. The man had begged for help, for mercy, but the insects cared not. They only knew the language of hunger and fear.

Even through the swirling eye of the storm, Bruce could register how mangled the man’s body was, could see blood welling up from freshly pierced flesh. The fury of the wasps eventually waned down until most were crawling upon the deceased body, more bloody pulp than solid form, tearing flesh from it for nourishment.
By the time Bruce returned home Selena was already in bed. He stood there and watched her sleep. Felt sorry for his terseness earlier. Knew their time together was limited and knew even more so he ought to cherish every last moment. She seemed to be having an agreeable dream; her face wore serenity openly upon it. There was no strain, no wrinkles. Bruce wiggled into bed beside her and pulled himself close.

When morning came, Bruce woke to his lonesome. He rarely woke alone; it was usually he who got up first, ready to stare out the window and wait for night to come. But such customs weren’t practiced this morning.
Confused, Bruce rose from bed and wandered down the cool aisle way.

“Selena?” he asked.

No response.

“Selena?”

Still no response. He sauntered to the end of the aisle and looked to the table where Selena normally resided when working on her tapestry; she wasn’t there.

“Here,” Selena said softly, serenely. It was the voice of a dream.

Bruce looked to Selena in horror, instantaneously registering her intention. She’d succumb to the insanity of the concrete prison, he thought. It’d taken two years but lunacy had devoured her mind like cancer.

“Selena, don’t. Please…”

“Don’t be afraid, Bruce.”

Selena heaved open the huge, concrete door. The morning light of the day washed the room in a wave of iridescent colors Bruce hadn’t seen in their entirety for two years, in warmth he hadn’t felt for two years. Bruce pulled himself from the barrage of colors and looked to Selena, but he couldn’t discern Selena’s features in the bright light waxing her body. He held his hand to the sun, vainly attempting to shade his eyes so he could see the gorgeous blue eyes of his love.

Maybe if he just stared into her eyes she wouldn’t do it. Wouldn’t walk into the desert.

But still her eyes remained hidden. She turned and exited, closing the door behind her.

“NO!” Bruce shouted. He was at the window in a heartbeat, tears streaming freely down his face. Hanging in the window he saw what Selena had been crafting the past few months: her gift to future. The tapestry was of him, standing at the window, staring out into the world. The bottom corner of it was inscribed: To my love, Bruce. Be brave.
Bruce removed the tapestry from the lens through which he saw the world and watched Selena glide effortlessly across the desert. Her arms were outstretched at shoulder height, and her head was thrown back in ecstasy as she approached the sun.

Bruce’s eyes continued producing tears: his great flood had arrived.

The wasps came shortly thereafter. He watched as they arced across the sky in a horrifying blur; their density blotted out the sun’s light. The legion of wasps swirled in the air above Selena and then descended, slowly, as though they both knew and cherished the torment they were burdening Bruce with. Bruce turned from the window, too horrified to watch the maelstrom. Through the film of liquid resting atop his eyes he could see the tapestry of him, by his wife, on the ground. He fell to his knees and held it to his face. Her scent was present in the art, present within his mind.

He rose from the ground, purpose trembling within his marrow. He went to the door and heaved it open. The warmth washed over him, as did the beauty. He started across the lost paradise, running. Wasps started with him, too. A sting here, a sting there; pain and pleasure became synonymous. His throat began swelling, adding challenge to his task. But that didn’t matter; he must be brave, must make it to Selena, if only to hold her hand for just a moment before the end.
He reached the vortex of yellow and black as she fell to her knees. Bruce sliced through the storm, enduring all the poking and prodding the wasps had to offer. He wrapped her tightly in his arms.

“You…you made it,” she said. A soothing smile stretched across her face; blood lingered at the corners of her lips. If there was pain in her body, her face didn’t show it.

Bruce could feel his body shutting down now. “Of course,” he said, kissing her forehead.

“You were brave, so brave,” she replied, extending her hand toward his cheek. “No tears. This is beautiful.”

Bruce fell to the ground, his arms unable to bear her weight any longer. The pain was heavy at his back now. He could feel his flesh being ripped from his body. He reached for Selena’s hand and, fumbling through the sand, claimed it. He gripped tightly, but she didn’t return the intimacy; she was gone. Bruce rolled to his back, set his gaze upon the sun, and waited for the end, alone in the desert.