DEAD AIR

Art by MOrtiz IG: _miiart_

            Had Joey known it took this long to die from a slit wrist, maybe he would have brought a book to the tub.

            Or, at the very least, his cellphone. So he could play a couple more stages of Candy Crush before finally finding out if there was a heaven or hell (but preferably, heaven).

            Joey slowly opened his eyes and looked at his sort-of-bleeding left wrist submerged in bathwater. Once in a while, pain would shoot up his arms, especially when he moved it and little tendrils of blood floated around in the water. His butt was getting numb, so Joey shifted his weight and tried to relax.

            He’s been sitting in the tub, trying to die for the last fifteen minutes. He didn’t feel any weaker, or nearer to death, which led Joey to believe he may not have cut his wrists deeply enough.

FARE WELL

Art by MOrtiz. IG: _miiart_

He hid under the couch and wished with all his might that they wouldn’t find him. Maybe then, it wouldn’t happen.

“Pablo? Where are you? Pablo?” His mom’s voice slowly faded away as the kitchen door closed behind her. Pablo sighed in relief. A small cloud of dust wafted up, causing Pablo’s nose to itch. Pablo sneezed as quietly as he could, shifted his weight off his slowly numbing right arm and lay flat on his back.

Pablo stared right up the bottom of the couch. It wasn’t very interesting, just a mesh of white nylon thread crisscrossed in a chaotically ordered pattern. He wished he brought a comic book or one of his toy soldiers to keep him company. Surely his most favorite officer, Lance Corporal James, could keep boredom at bay.

It was a mistake to think about Lance Corporal James, because it made him think of Andy. Andy was Pablo’s best friend and he was leaving today.

 Pablo didn’t know where Colorado but he knew it wasn’t in their town or even in the next town. His mom said Colorado was somewhere really far away, a place so far they’d have to take a plane to go there. Which was ridiculous, they could never do that, because they weren’t pilots. At least, Pablo wasn’t and he was pretty sure his mother wasn’t.

JUST HAVE FATE

Art by MOrtiz. IG: _miiart_

Shradha fixed her veil and sighed. It was finally time for her to meet her husband.

She had never met him before so she hated her prospective groom with a passion. It was a hatred equivalent to the love she felt for Anupam, the love of her life, stolen away by antiquated traditions that valued security over love. 

Thinking about her mystery groom always led her to thinking about Anupam. Handsome, intelligent, graceful, Anupam brought to life her idea of the perfect man, a man she could live the rest of her life with. And the moment she came to that conclusion was when, in their Quantum Physics 101, he detailed in his cigarette-hoarsened voice exactly the terrible mistake Albert Einstein made in 1933. He won not just the day but, more importantly, her soul.

With Max Planck in her brain and Anupam in her heart, the next ten months were the happiest in her life. Days spent arguing the merits of the Higgs boson were punctuated by nights of tea gone cold and forgotten in the heat of the night.

And then came her mother, with a pronouncement as dire as death calling.