Loot

We didn’t feel it. I asked around, and everyone said the same thing: “I was alive until I wasn’t.” 

No one knows what happened. Before it was lights-out, there was talk of war, the oceans were getting too acidic, and all kinds of sea creatures were washing onto shores. Most said it had something to do with war, others global warming—and some said the Apocalypse, like in Revelations. I guess that means we got left behind.  

I don’t think it was a nuke or acidic oceans or the coming of Christ. I think someone stole the sun.  

I saw a pair of eyes in the sky. Have you ever looked into a fish bowl as a kid? That’s what it felt like, except I was the fish. And I had just died suddenly in my tank. Sometimes, I think we’re in a fishbowl or marble or something small and vulnerable, somewhere big and curious, where giant eyes belong to giant bodies with giant hands that can steal the sun just because they feel like it.  

Everything is a ghost now, even cockroaches. The plants are all dead, too, but they don’t seem to have ghosts. Some people are in denial, refusing to believe what’s right in front of them. They still try to go through life as it was before. As ghosts, we can’t move anything in the physical world. 

I haunt the beaches, far away from the cities and towns, with Dirk and Ginny Russo. They were married before all this, but marriage doesn’t matter at the end of the world. They agree something stole the sun. It’s the most obvious conclusion because when we all… well… died, we didn’t see the sun again. We haunt the planet in an eternal night. I am surprised no one else has thought about it. I guess they’re too concerned with the politics of life after death: who gets to haunt what, and who’s right about how the world ended, and is there a God?  

Ginny thought it would be a good idea to meet more lost souls and show them the pair of eyes. Here, the endless sea meets the endless sky, with no distractions or politics.  

“It’ll be like a party! Oh! Remember nightclubs? We’ll have a beach club!” She had said.  

I was never a fan of clubs or people. But there was a part of me that wanted everyone to know the eyes that watched us in our tank. 

When our beach filled up with ghosts and it got quiet, I said, “Look up.” Their translucent heads rose to view the stars and the moon and the faint shadow of a pair of eyes.  

I heard voices murmur things like “God.” Most pretended it wasn’t there. Others claimed they had explanations. Some started religions because of it.  

I didn’t pretend to know what the eyes were, but I still think they’re responsible for stealing the sun.