As the world approaches impact, two people in a city square choose closeness over explanation.

In the city square, Pat was kissing Mary. Several feet away, using a laptop as a pillow, a half-naked man slept. Perhaps he wasn’t asleep, perhaps he was just scared.

Mary kissed Pat’s neck. His grunt of satisfaction reverberated through her lips; it tickled, and they both smiled.

A bus passed. Pat was surprised to see it still running. There was even a passenger sitting on the top deck, alone. He chided himself. There was no time to be distracted by other lives. He buried his head again in her neck, where it was warm.

He thought this was his life’s most, maybe only, innate moment. The only moment of significance, however brief, that wasn’t an extrapolation of his troubled childhood or doomed first love.

Mary, barely thinking at all, had come to the square by accident. Where she had to go was too far to reach. In Pat, who was as listless as her in the square, she saw someone with kind eyes. Eyes like a man she once fell for. And that was enough; there was no time left for much more.

Mary leant back. Above her small birds sang. She thought the birds would have gone by now, but where was there for them to go? The wind had picked up. Dust devils spiralled and lifted dead things in double helices toward the rupturing sky.

There was a terrible noise, which Mary thought could only be the atmosphere compressing. But she was distracted by Pat’s body. She nestled her face in his. They both smiled.

The sun was gone now and both were, all were, cast in a static haze. Pat and Mary’s features were obscured. Only the faint light caught in their eyes remained. That’s all they saw, until the moment of impact.

By Danny Saphier

Litro Magazine