by Drew Bell
Chapter 3
The scene played over and over in Miles’ head;
“What happened?” He asked rubbing his eyes.
Miles remembered being in Spanish class, next to Seymour’s nasty shoulder pimple.
“That’s right! I remember that blue-eyed crow. That feathery fiend attacked me, first at the window, and then outside the classroom. I checked down at my arms, relieved that my skin was no longer clear like glass, when I moved my arms around I realized that I could again move.” Miles reminded himself with a crooked grin of disbelief.
“Everything is back to normal.” Miles thought happily, but he then removed his hands from his eyes.
He stood on a barren planet; Earth had seemingly been wiped clean.
Like some chalkboard, the ridges and color of the chalk had been erased; all he could see for endless miles was a smooth slate grey, as though the planet had been reduced to a cement ball. Miles pleaded with himself to wake-up;
“This dream was terrifying.”” Miles thought, starting to whimper, he fell to his knees and began to cry;
“What did I do wrong?” Miles screamed to the blank sky, “How do I deserve this?”
But somewhere knew, somewhere deep inside, that this wasn’t a dream. He was terrified; he began to wander aimlessly around this giant grey planet, there were no trees, and there weren’t even hills. Miles began to walk anxiously, his pace picked up and soon he was running.
Miles would have said the Earth became flat, except that he could see the curvature of the Earth for miles and miles in the distance.
“God. Please let me wake up.” He said out loud, tears mixing with the snot streaming from his nose.
Miles continued to walk along this forsaken planet, pulling at his hair and wiping at his nose with his arm.
“No. I don’t want to die like this.” He cried throwing his hands in the air, “I don’t want to be alone. I want things the way they were. I want to wake up!”
“This is real.” He began to admit to himself. He begun to finally realize that it wasn’t a dream, somehow he had actually witnessed the end of the world.
“But I didn’t really turn to glass.” He conceded to himself.
“If I was going to accept the truth I needed to eliminate the part that was obviously something my brain did as a defense mechanism.” Miles told himself, still refusing to fully accept his situation.
Miles slumped to the ground and sobbed loudly for several minutes. After an hour, his sore throat compelled him to lie still and quietly. The quiet frightened him the most; silence allowed him to think, and thinking brought him closer to terms with reality. He laid there on the smooth stone planet for maybe an hour or two. The ground didn’t feel cold though, in fact it felt kind of warm. Soon he found himself laying facedown on the ground, spread out as though he were trying to capture the warmth. That odd warmth emanating from the planet filled the hug he so desperately needed; he realized then that he was indeed all alone. His parents, his grandparents, his neighbors, and his friends were all gone.
“Mom, I really am sorry for yelling at you.” Miles thought.
Despite the warm ground, the deep sorrow brought Miles to shiver, his teeth chattered loudly. His thoughts raced through all of things he wouldn’t have anymore;
“No more family, no more home, no more Wii, no more food, no more talking even.” He listed mentally.
He sat up stupefied, he had nothing left. Miles was certain that he would die of hunger now; his day just kept getting worse and worse. He tightly hugged himself; he was just skin and bones with a 100% cotton tee shirt.
While not known how it came to be, but Miles ended up naked somewhere near his fifth hour of being alone. It is believed that he wanted desperately something to remind him of his old life; so he took his shirt off to read:
“Small/ Chico. 100% Cotton/ Algadon. Wash in cold water, dry in low heat. Made in Mexico. Cotton proudly grown in the U.S.”
No one is certain why he needed to read the tag on his jeans; it wasn’t the most exciting thing Miles had ever read. But, apparently, he needed to read the sequel to The Pants Book also known as The Pants Book 2: Revenge of the Boxer Briefs. So, yes, he ended up naked, Miles was not proud of it necessarily. In fact, for a little while he felt really exposed, after about twenty minutes, however, he figured that he was the last person on the planet anyways. Miles would come to mostly regret not having any clothes on for this next part.
After five hours of lonesome sobbing, wretching, and streaking Miles was wandering the empty landscape, singing the same line over and over:
“One is the loneliest number that you ever knew.”
He eventually found the spot where he had been standing when the whole planet died, he knew it was the spot because his shoes had left foot-prints in the cement, Mile silently stood there looking out at the blank vista and wiped his eyes, he only had days to live until he died of dehydration, there was plenty of time to cry.
“I ought to pray or meditate.” He tried to calm himself down; he had already vomited whatever food he had in his stomach.
But as he thought this a glimmering object pierced the night’s sky, something was crashing to the Earth from outer space.
The spaceship was really shiny, it looked a lot like an icicle, and the whole ship resembled some sort of ice spear being thrown at Miles. He started to run as quickly as he could, ignoring the pain in his lungs he ran for cover. Of course, given the planet is completely void of any thing to hide behind he looked like an idiot ready for the slaughter. At this point Miles was ready to die; whether it was by humiliation, psycho-crow, and the extermination of Earth, hunger, or alien invaders.
Miles stopped mid-stride and faced the now-landing alien ship. He could see steam rise off of the frozen ship as landing pads lowered from its bottom.
“Hey I’m over here.” He shouted at the icicle. “Look at me, I’m alive!”
He walked closer to the spaceship, now convinced that he had gone insane.
“No. It’s a spaceship, it hovered for a while.” He assured himself.
Miles Hearst was not going to give into insanity. He looked around quickly to find my clothes;
“S***!” He said for the third time that day.
Miles’ clothes were underneath E.T.’s landing pod. He instead cupped his empty hands around his human extremities, embarrassed that he would be humanity’s ambassador to the great unknown. He hadn’t really considered that aliens might have been responsible for wiping out the Earth; in fact he was fairly certain he killed off all of the universe’s life. Miles had always been a little narcissistic, but somehow he was certain that he somehow blew-up the planet. He continued closer to the alien ship; trying to figure out where the windows or doors were. The whole ship was coated in ice;
“Maybe the doors are on the side.” He thought as the back end of the vessel hissed open.
From the backside of the icicle lowered a hatch, a tall slender figure started to walk down the ramp onto the planet’s surface. He would have screamed, but he was too scared to move or make a noise; instead Miles stood stone still with his mouth a gape and his hands beneath his waist.
Lalia Tarrus’s bright blue eyes faced him, and he knew.
“She recognizes me.” Somehow he was certain, but before he could say anything she raised a strange tool above her head.
She brought the tool down, her eyes glimpsed over him as he raised his arms in defense, she smiled slightly.