You killed the world.

The bustle of city life has fallen silent. There are no conversations between strangers on sidewalks, no discussion of the latest social media trends, no laughter or clapping. Cars no longer hum and rumble through the streets. Jetliners no longer roar through the skies. All is quiet, save for the crackle of the campfire and the rustle of rough hands through a backpack that doesn’t belong to them. My five senses are all that really, truly belong to me right now.

I see the three men who captured me, heating one of my few remaining cans of food over their campfire, the flickering orange casting odd shadows around the ransacked husk of a house. I hear two laughing and talking amongst themselves, while the third continues going through my pack. I feel the rope tight around my wrists and ankles. I can barely move, but I do my best to turn my body away from the light, to hide the locket.

It feels like an anvil around my neck.

“Are you seriously just carrying a few cans of food? You were barely worth the black eye.” one man says, the leader I assume.

I shrug. “I hope you aren’t expecting an apology.”

That earns me a kick to the stomach. I’m doubled over, coughing, and the locket dangles in plain view. Rough hands reach forward, yanking it off my neck. “Oh, you didn’t mention you had a special someone. Did he, boys?”

Laughter from the two others. I struggle against my bonds. “Okay, you can have the food and the backpack, but please leave the locket. It’s not worth anything; just sentimental.”

The leader fumbles with the latch, keeping it closed. My stomach drops. He may as well be handling a bomb. “Oh, don’t worry. You won’t need this much longer. I’ll do you a kindness and let your lovebug be the last thing you see.”

I close my eyes tightly. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…” I repeat just above a whisper.

I hear the locket open. There’s a distant boom, barely heard over the assorted whistles and laughter of my captors. “Oh, she’s a looker. She dead? Or is she somewhere waiting for you?”

Another boom, closer but still far off. I keep my eyes closed and my mouth shut, to the annoyance of the three men. “Oh, look at that. He don’t wanna talk no more. Don’t worry, we can be pretty convincing. We just wanna meet your sweetheart for ourselves! The boys and I love meeting new people.”

Laughter, and a much louder boom rattles the building. I hear glass shatter, and a sound like a soaked mop making impact with a tile floor. My body is splashed with a slick warmth that plasters my clothes to my skin. There are no gun shots. No unsheathing of blades. No sounds of defense. They have no time to react. I hear a single yelp of surprise followed by a wet crunch. Then silence, aside from a light dripping sound.

“You know,” she says with a huff of annoyance. “I really liked this dress.”

I open my mouth to speak, and my senses are assaulted by the taste of blood, the smell of iron thick in the air and my ears full with that awful dripping sound. “I told them to leave it alone; I really tried.”

I hear Marie moving around the room, her wet footsteps circling. “Ah, there I am.” She draws closer now, before stopping. “Oh, come on. This is a pain in the neck to fix y’know.” Her hands break my bonds with ease, a single yank on the ropes.

I stand, rubbing my wrists. From one of my pockets a produce a blindfold and tie it around my eyes, her hand leads me over to the crackling fire. “Probably for the best. From the sounds of it, that locket is probably pretty gross right now.”

She laughs half-heartedly, sitting me down and pressing the opened can of beans into my hands. I hear her rummage through my bag, presumably finding a clean cloth and my repair kit. I eat, tasting mostly beans with hints of iron. “Okay, be honest Marie. Is there blood in this?”

“Beggars can’t be choosers; you know how it works. I’m just glad I didn’t wreck the building on the way in.” Theres a beat of silence, and we both laugh. The memory of being dug out of rubble; the sound of countless tons of concrete and metal being moved aside like it was nothing to her.

“Yeah, god you scared the hell out of me. I knew you were strong before then, but it’s another thing to see you bring down a building around me. Now I can hear you breaking the sound barrier without flinching. That’s good progress in my book.” I say around mouthfuls of bean, spilling bits between my smile.

“Well,” Marie says with clear mischief in her voice. “You did have plenty to say the first time you felt my biceps. What, did you think these babies were just for show?”

I hear the pshew pshew and know she’s making finger guns. Laughter spills out between us like a burst dam, built up over too much time apart and now able to flood freely. It feels so natural, so right. But the thing about draining a build up of water, it shows all the bodies that have sunk to the bottom.

The silence creeps back in when the laughter dies. I continue eating. The delicate sounds of metal being re-strung is barely audible. The seconds stretch on like the darkening of clouds before a storm finally comes down, the silence grows heavier, before she breaks it. “I lost the strawberries. Overwatered, I think. I know you left instructions, but it just doesn’t come naturally to me. You were always the green thumb between us.”

The implications hang above us, our own swords of Damocles. You left. You didn’t have to but you did.

I cut right to the root of the problem. “I didn’t leave you. I’m still yours. I just… left.” I hear the question forming and keep going. “Because I wanted to see what’s left out here. I want to see the rivers not choked by pollution and the empty cities. The beaches not packed with bodies and trash.”

“The cities aren’t empty. Plenty of corpses.” Marie says angrily, more to herself than to me. “I want to apologize again- “

“-And I’ll just tell you that you have nothing to be sorry for, again.”

“You don’t get it!” Her voice is raised and steady, not shouting but hard in tone and volume. The angry tears will follow, but I will never see them. “I killed them all, with my own hands! Do you have any idea the kind of guilt that brings? Do you have any idea how many lives I’ve ended? I know I don’t. It’s literally impossible to count so many dead. My body count is higher than any dictator or fascist or serial killer.”

“And did you want to?”

“Excuse me?”

“Did you want to kill everyone?”

“You know I didn’t.”

“And you weren’t born like this”

“You know that I wasn’t.”

“And what kicked all of this off was just an act of kindness, not maliciousness.”

“That’s true.” She deflates. The memory of our one-year anniversary is still so fresh. She gave me the locket, and I made her a mask so she could leave the house. I took her to the botanical gardens. Marie helped a lost kid find his mom. The mother wanted to reward her. Marie refused, but the story went viral. The whole world wanted to find the woman who reunited a mother and child. One of the few old photos of her that hadn’t been scrubbed from the internet resurfaced and was spread like wildfire.

Thousands of shares later, millions had seen her face. She resisted the pull for a day, thrashing and clawing deep gauges into the hardwood floors. Then she broke, threw me off of her, and shot out of the house like a cannon. The screams started immediately, and they didn’t stop for months. When she finally came home and the world was silent, I wasn’t ready. I almost looked in her eyes and met my own end. Her legs, shaking and malnourished; her arms covered in blood well past her elbows. I don’t remember what clothes she was wearing when I saw her last, but the amalgamation of her rage and elemental exposure had left them unrecognizable.

“This isn’t your fault. You were a tool. If you’re going to blame someone, blame the one who cursed you. All who look upon your face will die by your hand, or whatever they said.”

She sighs. “It’s easy to break it down like that. But the mind isn’t rational or logical when it’s processing trauma. And I can’t even stop killing long enough to process it. I probably killed all the therapists anyway.”

“I ask everyone I meet if they’re licensed. Well, anyone who doesn’t try to kill me.”

“That was in poor taste.”

“Yeah, I realized right as I said it… Sorry.”

“I just…. It’s just me back home. Just me and your plants. I’m alone with my thoughts so often.”

The silence hangs between us, heavy and full. I think for a long time about what I’m getting ready to say, the weight of it. “You gave me a loaded gun.”

“What?”

“That locket is death. Ever since you gave it to me, there have been times where I get low and I come close to opening it. I think about how poetic it would be, seeing you for the first time just for you to be the last thing I see.”

“Oh. I didn’t know, I can- “

“But,” I continue. “I know that would destroy you. And even if it wouldn’t, I think about everything I have left here; the existence we have at home, our own little domestic bliss at the end of the world. It’s just… love. Pure, powerful love. I left knowing I would come back, because my home isn’t the garden, or the four walls and a roof, and it certainly isn’t a patch of land. My home is you, Marie. I’m my best when I’m with you. I just needed to see what was left out here, see if I can find someone to help you. Or, at the very least, see nature reclaiming what we took from her. I love you. I love you more than anyone in the history of mankind has ever loved anyone. You killed the world, and I love you. You saved my life, and I love you. You’re my home and my heart, and I love you. Love isn’t some nebulous force that we can measure or perceive. It’s real and tactile and tangible in a way like no other. When I left and found the first dead bodies, unrecognizable, eviscerated… the knowledge that you did that… I buried what I could. I used to lose sleep because every time I closed my eyes I would see the blood, the bones, the gore, and wonder how I could love a monster. I used to think love was the answer, unconditional love, but I’m starting to think I was wrong. Love isn’t the answer; love is the question.”

I reach across the space between us, across the memories and the years I have yet to give her, to gently take Marie’s hand in mine. Hands that have killed, hands that have grown new life in a dead world, hands that only feel right in mine.

“The answer is always.”