The landscape, in the eyes of an optimist, could’ve been described as “integrationalist”. Ripe green grass sprouted in the same naive patterns as a teen’s new-grown body hair. The ground was a thick soil, rich as it was dark. And every few feet there lay a piece of airplane debris, charred pillars of temperature and loneliness, each supported inside a newly formed crater. Amongst it all lay Kyle, crumpled into a heap of red pulsations and skin breaks, and terribly aware of it.

This is it, he thought. This is it.

He gingerly lifted his head off the seat cushion, feeling something—blood? Sweat? Mud? All three?—trickle liberally from his right brow. The world whirred as he tried to see the color. No luck. Concentrate on what’s important. This is it.

“Caroline?” he moan-screamed.

Everything sat back down where it belonged. Eyes longing to roll back into his head, Kyle focused himself and managed to spot something about ten feet away...a vaguely familiar shape in a black skirt and green blouse, with a bundle of tan hair flailing about in the wind. It wasn’t moving.

This is it, he thought. Oh, God, let me be wrong, but this is it.

Determined, he shifted his arm. A splint of something sharp stirred and jutted clean through his tricep from the inside. Kyle’s neck gave way and he bit at the cushion until the burning subsided some.

Lungs bouncing, he flung his other arm ahead. Grating the black-brown soil up underneath his fingernails, he pulled himself on an excruciatingly slow five inches. Another breath, try again, four inches. Another breath, but this time turning his bad shoulder inwards for propulsion, pressing blood and urgency and disappointment out through a small spot and into the fabric of his shirt. It was the accumulation of every misery visited on his body that he could remember; moist, sticky fires radiating from his arm and ripping at his insides.

It earned him a whole foot.

This is it, he thought.

And he did it again.

And it happened again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

And when tears rampaged so steadily down his cheeks and into his mouth that he thought his tear ducts might be bleeding, he finally reached her, folded gruesomely in on herself.

He looked up at the sky, a smudgeless blue prairie, and pivoted back to Caroline's body, draping his good arm around her waist. Then back a little. Then down her skirt and past her panties.

In and out. In and out. In, in, in, out. In, out. In, in, out.

This is it, he thought, just before he collapsed onto what was left of her ribcage. Short Story: This is It 1

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