Author’s note: This is for every single person on Earth. It is a pretty long piece, but one of my favorites because it asks you a question. What would you do in your last 8 minutes? This short story concerns a young couple, Jamie and Allison when they find out the Sun has exploded. I would truly suggest taking the time to read this piece to find out what the question means to you, because it retracks you into a mindset telling you what you should be doing to live a full life, even with goals.
The gigantic flaming ball of the Solar system had been burning for all of eternity. Unfazed. The first crack appeared like a slash from a whip, loud and painful, and possibly the most damaging on its orange surface. It grew branches, and the surface began to break, the white light under the blinding amber revealed. The second crack came 180 degrees off of the first, and then the third, somewhere at the bottom. Maybe, the force was from its inside.
A thousand men beating at its surface like a chick would at its egg’s shell, and then breaking free. The cracks extending, sprawling like hands would towards each other to find unity, and God forbid, they did. The scars of light on its surface wrapped around each other, became wider and wider, bleeding more and more light. The core shook violently, a small crack extending on it like that on a glass orb. It was too much. Too less pressure, too much heat.
It exploded.
7 minutes 59 seconds
“The Sun has exploded.” The weather reporter on the TV said, right after she’d just told them that today would be the hottest day of the year. Tears welled up in the woman’s eyes. “Our satellites detected it, however, we won’t feel the effect until 8 minutes have passed, but that is all the time we have left.” She sobbed finally, “I’m sorry.” She left, stumbling off of the stage. Jamie stared at the TV blankly. All we have left?
“No.” He said, before getting up. He turned to his wife, Allison who was still sitting on the couch, tears rolling down her eyes. “Come on.” He said, extending his hand towards her. “We’ve got, 8 minutes.”
They ran outside, making for their car at 4 a.m. in the morning.
6 minutes 59 seconds
Jamie drove out of the garage, with Allison in the passenger seat. They entered the neighborhood and exited it in seconds. “Where are we going?” She cried.
He didn’t know. He didn’t know what to do, or what to think. Jamie looked up slightly and saw the night sky blooming sunrise as the sky turned purple and a brownish orange, beautiful, but it was no longer the same because this would be the last sunrise he saw. “JAMIE, STOP!” Allison screamed.
He kept driving, faster now; the empty plains of deserted land around him flashed past in gray light. He would not accept it, he would not accept death in 7 minutes. Jamie opened his mouth and a soft groan left him. “You don’t know what you’re doing!” He sped up. “JAMIE!” No, he couldn’t stop this though, could he? He let out a shallow breath as tears spilt down his cheeks.
They entered a forest, green pines extending to the sky watching over them. Jamie crashed through barks and branches, the leaves slapping against his front view window. He got so close to crashing into thick standing trees, but zoomed past them at the last moment, his heart rattling. “Wait! Jamie! The wolf!” His wife screamed. The car slammed into the animal, an echo of a welp sounding right after.
5 minutes 59 seconds
Jamie realized he was panting. Allison broke out of the car, her hand slamming onto her mouth in horror when she saw the animal they’d hit. Jamie closed his eyes, trying not to think about what he’d done, because it wouldn’t matter in the future anyway.
Eventually, he got out of the car, his eyes following the dented hood of the car to the grey bleeding animal that had splattered down the dark brown bark behind it, its blood leaching into the soil. He looked away, tears in his eyes. At least he’d saved the thing its misery. He looked back up at Allison, at how petrified she was. She turned to him with an accusatory look that turned to a flash of terror, enough for him to catch it before she could scream.
“Behind you!”
He turned right in time to see a growling wolf emerge from the shadows, a few others around him. Canines flashing, the wolf sprung onto him. Jamie thrust himself forward towards the bark and onto the hood, dodging the animal as its paws screeched against the side window of the driver’s seat he’d just been in. His breaths came out raspy as he stared into the dark eyes of the wolf, the pain and sadness inflicting on him from them over weighed his fear somehow, maybe because he felt the same way. He wasn’t just about to lose himself, he was about to lose all the time he had left with the one person he loved too.
Bang! A baseball bat hit the wolf in the head from behind, his stark frame colliding with the ground. Allison threw him the bat she’d just swung downwards onto the head of the wolf. She slid off of the hood and ran back to the backseat area, producing her own baseball bat, a slightly smaller version. Jamie couldn’t help but smile sourly, their baseball date from yesterday..
Her green eyes glinted with determination, and Jamie took up his stance as the second wolf of the day jumped onto him.
4 minutes 59 seconds
He swung the bat like he was hitting a baseball, the collision with the wolf’s skull sending shivers up his arm and the wolf flying back to the side it had come from. He watched it let out a last choked scream as it hit the bark of a tree, falling motionless onto the ground.
The third wolf came from his left, and this time Jamie swung the bat from over his head downwards, so the wolf fell at his feet, its eyelids closing. He heard a scream too human, and his head turned instantly towards Allison. She’d knocked out 3 and the fourth one was hounding her, her bat was a splintered piece of wood sat by her side with ripped and torn fibers.
She was on the ground, moving backwards as the wolf moved towards her, her eyes panicked but she didn’t break eye contact with the animal.
3 minutes 59 seconds
It walked like an oversized grey dog with shades of brown in its fur. The wrinkles on its snout gained deeper ridges as a low grrrr escaped its mouth in testimony to its rage.
If only he’d crashed the car through.
Jamie ran towards the wolf, his bat swinging back before he took a small jump to land on the ground and swing with all the strength he had left. He screamed, letting the bat take its way towards the face of the wolf, a wide arc, it stopped between stone jaws.
Jamie’s eyes went wide. He swung the bat back and forth, and the wolf lifted with it, heavy growls thrumming inside its stomach as it shook unswayed a foot above the ground. Allison had got off the ground. The force on the other end tightened, and Jamie felt his grasp on the bat slip. In seconds, the bat was thrown onto the ground, much like Allison’s bat. The wolf growled in victory, pacing towards Jamie just as he had towards Allison. Hounding and impatient, sending Jamie stumbling backwards.
Allison was behind him, her hands rummaging through the dash at the passenger’s seat. Half her body was inside the car as she slammed her hands through multiple compartments. He knew what she was looking for.
“In the glovebox!” Jamie screamed, right before the wolf jumped.
2 minutes 59 seconds
A gun shot echoed, loud and deafening, sending birds cawing and flying out of the trees. The wolf infront of Jamie fell mid pounce onto autumn leaves the colour of rust. He could hear Allison panting behind him, breathless. She moved the gun up, aiming it at the other shadows in the trees, the two of them watched green, and brown eyes back up and disappear.
Jamie looked down at the dead wolf, the puddle of blood at its stomach becoming a pool. A wave of pain and sorrow overcame Jamie. “Oh God.” He said, his voice coming out strained. He went down on his knees, brushing his hand over the wolf’s head, feeling no life or response as he did. Relief and guilt washed over him at once. He shook his head as Allison placed a hand on his shoulder, firm and supportive as it always had been. “He would’ve seen the same fate either way.”
The first rays of dawn climbed through the canopy, and collapsed on the three of them, lighting up the wolf’s dead body.
Jamie stroked it again, the fur warmer instantly under the Sun. The Sun exploded minutes ago. The thought sent a shiver down Jamie’s spine.
“Allison.” He said, feeling his wife’s head in the cranny between his neck and shoulder. “I’m not ready to die.”
They both got up, turning to eachother.
1 minute 59 seconds
“Neither am I.” She said, touching his cheek. Jamie noticed her eyes glazed over with tears, and yet she smiled. “But why?”
Her green irises turned to emerald, like the night he’d first seen her. He ran his fingers through her flat dark hair. “We’ve lived, we’ve loved; isn’t that enough?” She asked.
He thought about his parents and his grandparents. His grandfather would take him bowling every weekend, and his father, they’d play basketball all summer. He thought about his mother, the apple pies she made, so delicious and fresh- unparalleled though, to the wide smile she always had when she put them on the table. He thought about his older brother who’d died in the army and felt hot tears run down his cheeks. They’d finally see eachother again, after 7 years. He remembered him, every single minute of them together.
He thought about his friends from college, all of them in different parts of the world now, but he knew he’d still hug them just as tight as he did when they graduated 4 years ago. Would he see them again?
He thought about his first bible, his first kiss, his first interview, his first job, his first house. About his wedding day, cozy and beautiful by the beach. He thought about those emerald eyes, shining just as bright right now, two years after.
59 seconds
“I’m so glad I met you.” He said, closing any space that was left between him and Allison. “I’m so glad, we, everything happened as it did. All the good, and all the bad.” He thought about the accident that had left him with temporary memory loss 5 years ago, his first house burning down, his father dying in the same fire. “because I would have never got the good things if the bad ones didn’t happen.” He thought about his second house, larger and designed exactly as him and his dad had pictured their dream house. He thought about his father’s best friend coming to him the evening of the funeral to tell him that his father had been struggling with addiction in the last days he’d been alive.
“So much, yet so little.” He thought about his dreams of the perfect start up. About how today, and for the past week, him and his wife had been waking up at 4 to go running in the wee hours in the hopes of fitter bodies; while also stuffing themselves with roast the moment they got home. He thought about the job he’d left to pursue his business dreams, and the life of a nurse his wife had re adapted to support him. “Thank you, for everything, Allison.” He said, his voice breaking.
She laughed between tears and a hurting throat before rustling his curly brown hair. “Shut up, you only thank people when you haven’t returned the favor. You were the best thing that ever happened to me Jamie Quinton. I wish I’d met you sooner, so we could have had more time together, but I suppose life has its ways.” Her smile turned to a pout as she burst out crying before throwing herself onto Jamie’s chest, hot tears soaked into his shirt. He pet the back of her head, before looking up. “In this life, and every other; I’d always want you with me, I’d always want all of this,” He hugged her tight, as tears squeezed out of his eyes, “again.”
He thought about a rainy night, 20th February 2018, and the woman soaked from it after a long day at the hospital, he thought about how her eyes had shone when he’d walked up to her with an umbrella over his head and a hot muffin in his hand from his favorite bakery, and the most beautiful smile he had ever seen had painted her face.
She looked back at him “To life.”
He nodded. “To having lived.”
If only they had champagne to toast to it.
A loud crash sounded in the distance, the first heat wave.
Jamie and his wife melted into their last kiss, smiling like it was their first. Their hands shook, and they held onto each other to keep from falling, as they remembered lives they had lived before each other and then with each other. As the ground burnt to a crisp under them, and so did they.
~
Image source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1N-c2sg9z0&pp=0gcJCdgAo7VqN5tD
A poem about coping with change: https://saragawde.com/change-is-growth/
A wholesome short story about coming home, and hunting a missing snake: https://saragawde.com/seeking-a-snake/