Sunset

The sun had just set over a small town, casting its final vestiges of brightness across the sky as it bid the world farewell once again. Not many people lived in this town anymore; they had either been able to evacuate when things got too bad or they had just died soon after. Supposedly there were safe havens out there, places that had been able to protect themselves against the onslaught, but those were just rumors. The people who remained in the town didn’t have the strength to have that kind of hope anymore.

A girl finishes climbing the ladder to the top of the high school stadium’s press box. She quickly looked out at the fading colors of the sun and muttered a curse. She had missed the sunset again. For the past several weeks, she had been climbing up here so that she could watch the sunset, but she had missed it without fail.

The girl sits down to catch her breath. Despite the daily exercise of running up the bleachers and climbing the ladder to her current vantage point, she still found herself getting winded at the activity. She hangs her legs over the side of the box, laying her arms across one of the horizontal railings and resting her head upon them. Pensively she looks out across the overgrown football field, the bare patch of land that had used to be the band’s practice field, and to the slowly returning forest beyond it.

The forest reminds her of her friends. Since things had become bad, she hasn’t caught sight of her friends. Hopefully they got to evacuate to a safe haven, if those truly existed. Regardless, she misses them, and wishes that she could spend time with them again.

The light from the sun is quickly fading, and the girl decides that it’s probably best if she started heading out for the camp; traversing the streets without street lamps is more difficult than she had initially imagined. She pulls herself to her feet with the railing and pulls out her phone.

Pulling out her phone to check the time is a subconscious habit that she still hasn’t managed to shake. She’s decided to keep the phone off in order to conserve its charge; that way she can still use its flashlight if need be, and, perhaps more importantly to her, look at her pictures. She had always been rather sentimental, but the current circumstance for people in her situation had made her even more so. Whenever she realized that the memories of her friends’ faces were getting hazy, she would turn the phone back on to refresh her mind. She needed to ensure that she would recognize them if she ever saw them again.

She stares at her phone, contemplating. Pressing the power button, the screen eventually lights up. She glances at the remaining power when the home screen opens: 23%. Not that much left. Is this really worth it?

She opens up the camera and holds her phone out in front of her. In the fading light, she smiles and takes a picture.

Before turning her phone back off, she glances at the photo. She’s surprised: maybe it was the dim light, maybe it was the fact that she hadn’t seen her own face in a long while, but regardless, she actually thought that she looked good in the picture. Something about that makes the sadness weighing heavy upon her heart weigh just a little bit less.