By Alex Ebenstein
There’s a gale when dawn illuminates our world. The morning light arrives as though leached from my son’s eyes, his gaze cast skyward, forever in search of hope, his dreams. He’s gone.
The wind is nothing new, of course; there’s little to mark the passage of time now, everything’s wind and survival…and heartbreak. When the world turned, we had no choice but to reckon with loss. To breathe it. To choke on it with every gust. We made it damn near ten years after, him and I, and that’s that. I don’t know what time I have left, but I do know it feels like too much now.
The thing is, it’s not all bad, this incessant wind that yanks at my clothes as I sit on the beach in grief, uncertain my legs have the strength to carry me. An old neighbor, distant a mile or so as we are nowadays, was an engineer. Before. A good one, apparently, because he was able to retrofit leftover technology, made harnessing wind for energy a breeze. So we’ve got that, an efficient windmill and perpetual electricity—a sufficient, if unremarkable, new way of life in the post-apocalypse. Well, I have that. The neighbor hanged himself not long after lending his help, and today my boy is dead.
No, the wind isn’t so much an issue. The problem is everything else.
* * *
My son was only five when the earth spoiled and the heat arrived with the wind. Both came with death. What we didn’t know at the time was that Earth’s revolt had begun years earlier, the death wobble imperceptible—or ignored. There was not one single incident but a culmination of undercurrents finally boiling over at once. I never fully understood what happened, but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.
It’s funny what all’s remained threaded through the folds of my brain from that time. My boy’s, too. Our personal connection to that End of Days, which became the routine topic of discussion in the After, a storybook read enough to know by heart.
We were due to fly out west for vacation, the first real one he’d have gone on—but the morning of our departure saw all flights canceled. Globally. He didn’t understand, not really. I understood his devastation quite clearly. Can picture it just the same, even now. It was the first time I felt the visceral stab of his despair. It cut a part of me I wasn’t aware existed.
The next devastation came less than a month later, when his mother, carrying a once-dormant disease, died alongside five billion of our Earthly neighbors.
My son and I found refuge along the shores of Lake Michigan, when the urban areas became more dangerous than useful. There was little competition for land in the wake of the mass death, not to mention our spoiled earth had run the great freshwater lake rancid. I didn’t mind, and neither did my boy; the big lake looked and sounded the way it always had, at least from shore. Fresh or poisoned, it was a comfort.
I get no comfort now as I stare out into the lake, scanning the horizon as though searching for my son. Has he gone somewhere? Anywhere? I don’t know. What remains of him is still by my side, right where he asked to be when he knew it was time. I almost refused to cart him down to the water, unwilling to accept that he was right—but how could I deny my boy a final view of his favorite place?
Hadn’t I known this day was coming? Since discovering the near-extinction level disease had first rooted in humans just when my wife carried him in her womb? Even if I couldn’t guess when, there had been no doubt in my mind, I will admit now, that he would meet an early grave.
The sun has already finished rising and now begins to fall. It’s time to get moving again. There is work to be done, as is the case every day, but particularly now, in order to properly say goodbye.
Thanks to the boom in business when more than half the population died, funeral services are still attainable in this age, a decade after. Though I doubt it gets much use these days thanks to the ubiquitous lack of wealth and transportation options. Maybe it’s a free service now, I don’t know. I could find out, I suppose, but that would mean a multi-day trek into town, and we made that trip not a month ago. It’s a place I never liked, a place of false hope and gossip. A torturous place for my boy who wanted to believe a new, different life was attainable. The only real source of conflict between us over the years, but he knew. I much prefer my windmill to the rumor mill.
And I much prefer to say goodbye alone, my way, than whatever way they might suggest in town.
* * *
It’s summer and the sun, forever shrouded in haze, still sets late here. So, late it is when the darkness blots out the horizon. The fire is strong and crackling as intended, and I’m planted in the sand upwind so as not to catch any flames. Same place I always sit on bonfire nights. The difference now is that my son is not beside me, sat cross-legged, but rather up shore, prone and bundled in a blanket. Though it’s not so much a bonfire tonight, but a pyre. He’ll burn soon, when I can muster the courage to put him to rest.
To avoid fixating on that bundle of my grief, I gaze into the cloudless night sky. I could get lost in the sea of stars, and I’d like to. Though I couldn’t fathom such a journey without my boy. The thought brings me back to Earth, and I wonder if I might be better off getting lost in the sea-like lake before me. I could walk and not stop. Eventually I’d find the end. Perhaps I’d find him.
My sorrow blurs my vision, and it takes me a second to notice. There’s a blinking light, high up in the atmosphere. A drifting satellite tethered by gravity. I know it as well as anything, yet after all these years of telling my son as much, to protect him from false hope, I wonder… Is this one a plane, after all?
I rise ungracefully to my feet, the weathered skin on my cheeks feeling drier than normal, leeched of moisture by way of the wind wicking tears I didn’t know I had been crying. There will be more, to be sure—the night is far too young, much like my son.
What if it is a plane? What message would the universe be sending me, on this, the day of his death? I picture the products of his often-singular focus over the years, every paper airplane, every cardboard rocket, every kite…
With as gentle a hand as I can manage, I draw the blanket away from his face. My fingertips trace a familiar route down the soft skin from eye to lips. I kneel beside him with shaky knees, and lay a kiss on his forehead.
The wind across the water and sand, rustling the loose folds of the blanket, it speaks to me. It repeats my boy’s final words, as if they haven’t been looping through my head since he spoke them. They lay heavy and aggressive, clawing at the chambers of my heart, and I suspect they always will.
Maybe, wherever I go from here, they’ll let me fly. I’ll never stop until I find Mom.
Yet, this time, I understand. He’s not going on the fire as I had planned.
* * *
The work is delicate and agonizing, each movement wrought with anguish—but if these past ten years have done anything, it’s make me skilled in such endeavors. Countless, the number of animals I’ve skinned, and though I would never reduce my son to such a comparison, I can’t deny the similarity. Different types of necessity, but both high in levels of importance. I handle the blade with care, always, and give an extra ounce now. Once enough skin is gathered, the appropriate bones selected, and my well of tears momentarily emptied, I’m ready to begin construction.
Oddly enough, I don’t know how, exactly, to construct such an object. I helped my son once long ago, but it soon became his own challenge to tackle. Though, much like if I were handed a piece of paper and told to fold it into a plane, I find that when I employ logic and creativity and craftiness, the work becomes obvious and steady. Almost joyful.
It helps that I’m doing this for—and with—my boy.
* * *
It should be easy, flying a kite in this wind, but I can’t remember the last time I tried. Regret is acute, thinking of all the times I could have done so with him and chose not to, the mountains of excuses employed. But, I suppose, I’m doing it now.
My hand clutches the bone frame, testing the feel and positioning of my fingers. I angle the kite just so; the wind catches the taut skin-fabric and I feel the pull. There’s nothing else I need to do but jog and let the wind take hold. We’re ready.
I never liked running in sand, but I don’t need to go far, or move all that quickly. After only ten or so steps, the kite takes off. Yards of string fly through the loosely closed fist of my trailing hand. Memories from childhood roost in my mind. Up, up, and away!
A quick glance to the sand, not wanting to take my eyes off my creation above, but needing to know how much is left below. I squeeze, trapping the final few feet of string. We’re tethered, and I’m his anchor. He tugs and swoops and soars, and I struggle to hold tight. I don’t like fighting it and the familiar panic finds its home in the hollow of my throat.
Not again. Let me be the anchor.
My forward motion comes to a halt and my feet dig pits into the sand and I strain against the upward force, yanking my arms left and right, mercilessly.
I can’t let go I can’t let go I can’t—
Let go.
My grip loosens and the string slips through my hand. The loss pulls at my knees, wanting me to sink into the sand, but it’s counteracted, overcome by a swell of pride. My handiwork is good, it’s holding up to the wind.
My boy finally gets to fly.
* * *
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Alex Ebenstein is a maker of maps by day, writer of horror fiction by night. He lives with his family in Michigan. His published novellas include Curse Corvus (2023), Melon Head Mayhem (Shortwave Publishing, 2023), and Reanimated Rex (2024). He is also the editor of the SPLIT SCREAM series, published by Tenebrous Press. Find him on social media @AlexEbenstein.
