I want to live she thought suddenly as her life flashed before her. Beads of blood fell soft as her tears as images haunted her; children whom she had lost,her parents whom she never really had, even her dog so many miles away.

The dog that was specifically trained for her had been taken from her and given to the very last person in the world she wanted her with. She had been deemed unfit to care for the dog meant to care for her. She would have laughed at the ironic horror had she not already been crying. Unbidden, the scenes swam before her, silvery fish to their school. Shots of before she had gone and gotten herself sick. The doctors couldn’t explain it though they pretended to. Using diseases that were naught but initials like AML or CML, long winded words even the doctors themelves couldn’t pronounce, and even those they changed as often as their perfectly ironed shirts. Although she was beyond certain of this; she was equally certain that she did know. She knew in her heart of hearts what it was, what it always had been. It was the very core of her, the part so deep even fancy doctors with all their fancy instruments could never see.

It was her very soul rotting from the inside out. It was all the ugliness inside she had fought so long and hard to hide. It was now oozing out of her very skin for all the world to see; to mock and shame her in the end after all. It was eons of pain that she had held so tightly in her heart it scarcely managed a beat. Unleashed at last, it now ravished freely in her bones.

Beautifully painful images of her first dog and her first child tumbling in a blanket at castlewood when her firstborn had been just a babe and she couldn’t even fathom the thought of them being apart. How could she? When they had so recently been as one. Lord she cried i was so young, and thinking it would always be so. There had still been light in her eyes and curls in her hair with not a single lesion to be found on her then tan skin. “Lord almighty when did i grow so pale?”, ​

​​ “Is it true then?” the boy interrupted with wonder in his eyes “Do you really see your life flash before your eyes before you die”, excited now. “That way next time Willie gets scared on the train”, fidgeting now as he realized his faux pax, “So long as hes not seeing flashes and just the things outside the windows, he’ll know we’re not going to crash and he needn’t be scared”.

​ “Well I’m not certain if that old wives tale is true”, seeing the dissapointment on Jones’ face and the worry in his eye knowing he was speaking of himself and not his brother; even she felt she could soften (the blow), “In this case it most certainly is true”.

Satisfied he sat back. “Now would you have me tell it, if so then hush.” There wasn’t a sound. I want to live she screamed. Not with her lungs but from the depths of her very soul. So loud and terrifying that surely the lord himself above the thunder and terror of all his angels their trumpets blaring and the prayers and screams of millions of other lost souls,surely his son whom she loved and cherished in her bosom above all else, surely he heard her. For she had one last glimpse of the thousands of memories hitting her all at once and that was of June. The only child that remained to her and that was only at a glance. June so named for the peace and sunlight and harvest of love that she would bring back into her life. Only that wasn’t what was to be. No, just like the others she too would be shorn away from her very breast. And yet it was enough. That infinitesimal bit was enough to wholeheartedly change her mind. Ill just use a tourniquet she thought dimly now. She had even brought one along with the blade; but as her life’s blood ran down her arm in rivulets pretty as a stream that made her think of June again. She reached for the rubberband but it was of course like everything else in her life had been. Too little and much much too late. Her last thought before the darkness came was that her God had heard her after all. Because to think of June was to hope, and to cling to hope when the game is set is a much crueler fate than even she could take. Had she lived she would have been condemning herself to this fate as surely as the collapse of the world had been a half decade ago. As she sank deeper into darkness her eyes fluttered one last time and as the tourniquet rolled from her now limp hand Jones could have sworn he heard her whispering the word “June” over and over. He looked out the snowy windows of the train convinced he was hearing things until Willie turned his face up to his older brother’s and asked a simple question “I’m confused Jones, what does she mean? Isn’t it December?” Jones pulled his brother into a hug so full of love it ached. Realizing they had just lost yet another mother and probably their only true friend, he kissed him on the forehead in a rare act of vulnerability and answered honestly “Yes Will. It’s December alright. And yet,” his words fell from his lips as he tried to formulate what he thought her last word could have meant. Completely unaware of the daughter she had been forced to leave behind. He did his best. “ I think she wants us to be brave. Keep going without her. Eventually we’ll hit the safety zone. And eventually June will always come”

“But we never got to hear the story”, Willie complained. Thankfully still to young to understand the permanence of death. “I’ll finish it for her someday. I promise. Right now you need your rest. “ His older brother and last ally in the world assured him as he held him closer than ever. No longer caring how weak it made him look, overcome with too many conflicting emotions to count and fought back his own tears this time. Rocking his baby brother back and forth in an effort to soothe them both. His eyes fixed on her blood as it glittered like rubies and ran down the side of the train. She who he thought had loved them as her own for the last four years. That was wrong. He KNEW she did, and yet had still seemingly out of nowhere decided to abandon them. That was a question he knew then and there he would never be able to answer. With that revelation finally unmasked his tears came all at once; mingling with hers to make a crystalline river on the cold pavement of the train. Steam coming up as if from a hot spring. A single element of beauty on this ugly death machine. Blessedly he saw that Willie had fallen asleep in his arms and now that he wasn’t being pressured or asked he thought he really did understand what she meant. The undeniably beautiful river of tears and blood, the years she had done literally anything and everything for them. All without hesitation or heeding any of the sure fire consequences and as he closed his own wet red eyes he himself whispered “June”. Silently vowing to not let her death be in vain, to live by her code of love and to give his own life or even soul for the cause if and when it ever demanded it. And most importantly to never ever let anyone or anything hurt Willie again. He was older now, stronger. And in his opinion had just been taught the simultaneously most beautiful important and strongest prayers he had ever fathomed. “June”, he said again with more conviction and confidence in his voice, less tears in his eyes; and the knowledge that he would continue saying it for the rest of their lives.