When Fireflies Die Out
By James Helmick
The deep red sky, by Mary's guess, might just be poor air quality. On a typical afternoon she watches through the blinds, laptop blaring brightly on the dining room table.
Yesterday, the mouth of Hell opened in Clearwater, Florida, just off the coast of the Gulf. The first to deny involvement were the Scientologists. Next were the venture capitalists. Really, the way things were going, this was no surprise.
It is the evening of the day after the beginning of the end of the world. Sean stands in the wide dining room entranceway, flimsy yellow light from the living room casting a grey shadow across his mother’s table.
“I saw it on all the socials,” he says. “It’s global news.”
Mary stirs her tea, subsuming streaks of milk in the black mire. The spoon catches and clinks on the inside of the mug.
“I can’t hear this, Sean.”
Sean takes his smartphone out of his pocket, switches it on, then switches it off.
“You’re going to be a teenager soon,” Mary mumbles. The tea mixes into a brown elixir.
“You should be happy. I was.”
“You should be watching the news,” Sean says. He turns and strides down the hall.
Tonight, Mary stares at the black ceiling for an hour before sleep strangles her softly. In the emptiness after her eyes close, soothing lights flutter. She remembers seeing fireflies. A teen girl, a cool night, a cabin in the Appalachians, a world that was green and blue and smelled like
cedar and cinnamon.
This is the usual evening routine these days. Sean doesn’t sit down for dinner. Come evening, he stands in that dining room entranceway, says his piece, then disappears until the next evening.
It’s four days now since the opening of the mouth of Hell. Mary sifts through job opportunities, reflected white burning on the lenses of her reading glasses, curly hair scrunching in her skittish hand. The light overhead slurries everything greyish blue.
“The Amazon River—” Sean begins. “You know, that one, it’s just streaks of dirt now. Full of dead fish.”
Mary glares up from her shining screen to make eye contact.
“The sea’s brown, too. Casey from Algebra posted a picture. His family’s taking a long vacation, since the world’s ending.”
Sean scrapes the bottom of his sneaker against the tile floor.
“Why can’t we go on vacation?”
“I’m between jobs, Sean,” Mary attends to the glowing laptop.
Sean lingers in the entranceway, the ceiling light stretching his shadow away from his mother, melding to the hardwood of the night-dark living room. He runs a hand through his silky hair, only once.
“How can you focus on such small things?” Sean asks.
Mary scrolls on the trackpad and sighs, “Why are you worrying about such big things, Sean?”
“The least we can do is be informed,” Sean says.
“It doesn’t matter whether you worry me with every horrible detail. If I can land a good job to support us, we’ll be alright.”
“That kind of thing isn’t reassuring anymore.”
In truth, Mary had felt similar, the day after she learned of the beginning of the end of the world. She climbed up from her laptop’s gleam, glanced in the fridge, and sighed tiredly. As she gathered bags, she eyed the car keys on the counter but didn’t reach. It had been a while since she went to the store.
When she was outside, lightheaded, her legs continued forward. The concrete sidewalk crunching underneath, she tilted her head back and breathed the deep crimson. A little walking never hurt anyone.
Then, a single slimy stream of blood trickled from the sky, dripping onto her left eyebrow and stopping underneath her ear. It stank of tin.
Cars packed like sardines down the road, honking like furious geese. They scraped forward, an inch each, the gaps between tightening but cars never advancing.
At the end of Mary’s leisurely stroll, it turned out the store had shut down. Supply shortage. It’s fine, she thought. It’s all fine.
“Hell didn’t rise up to reach us,” Sean says. Mary blinks and the memory dispels.
“What?” Mary looks up again, her forehead scrunched. “You’re still here? You have another calamitous news story from your phone?”
“This was on some forums, actually,” Sean says. “On my computer. Not phone.”
Sean coughs into his fist.
“They figured it out,” he continues. “The President went to talk with the Devil at the mouth of Hell, and it turns out everyone was right. Heaven is somewhere far away in the sky and Hell is deep below, close, like home.”
Mary scoffs and turns to look at all four walls of the room, “What?”
“Hell didn’t rise up to reach us. We lowered ourselves. Succumbed to it,” Sean sniffs.
“What?” Mary buries her face in her hands. “What do I do with this? The whole world is crumbling, and my son doesn’t eat, and I can’t get a job?”
“Well, the entrance to Hell is literally seven miles away,” Sean says.
Mary groans. Sean stomps.
“What am I supposed to do? I’m only twelve.”
Mary tugs her head from her palms and refocuses on her laptop screen, glowing like spraying sparks.
“I don’t know what else to talk about. I hate the end of the world. It should’ve been a big meteor instead.” Sean turns. Sean leaves.
Sleep comes easy tonight, Mary’s shoulders bunched up under her sheets. Every day there’s the feeling of being crushed on both sides. Assaulted by blinding light or miserable darkness. She clutches her gently glowing memories like relics from a kinder world, or at least a time when Hell wasn’t on her doorstep.
Mary slumps between sips of black coffee. The laptop sits closed off to her left side, charging. Pink sunlight gleams through the window sashes.
Then, Sean enters. He sits across from his mother and pours small glass of pulpy orange juice. They glance at one another a few times.
“Fireflies,” he says. “They’ve gone extinct.”
About the Author...
James Helmick is a writer based in Jacksonville, Florida. A junior at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts’ Creative Writing Department and Vice President of the Spoken Word Club, she specializes in surreal and magical realist elements to explore the nooks and crannies of being human and evoke curiosity in both her poetry and prose. In addition to having been previously published in Élan, her environmentalist short fiction won a regional Scholastic Gold Key in the sci-fi category.
About the Artist...
Audrey Adams is an 11th grade Visual Artist at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts. She focuses on
sculpture—but also has works in photography and painting.