Invisible Tears

A Story by Shaun Gurmin

A flash fiction story about a dystopian future.

The night was black. Clouds rested on the sky like a smog blanket, and all that could be seen were flashes of light and roars of thunder after nightfall. The Sun could be made out, through a haze of fossil fuels, with the naked eye. The children had stopped crying, as no one could see their tears, and no one could hear their shrieks amid the panic.

Like the flowers, humans slowly withered, starved of light, our cosmic vitality, starved of hope, our spiritual energy. Those that remained searched for answers, to repair the irreparable, to bring a new dawn to the gloomy earth. But all in vain.

I sat out on the porch, on my old wooden chair, and watched the thunder. Veins of light burst across the sky, as if the Earth were being defibrillated, desperately clasping on to life.

The thunder stopped. Like a polluted sea, a murky haze swirled in the sky. Then I saw something, hiding behind the whirlpool of suffocation. A tiny light.

I doubted at first, waiting, hoping to see it again, but it eluded me. I told my family, discrediting they said it was a mirage, a hallucination I saw from a bygone time when all was green, blue, and clear.

Now my skin sags, my eyes heavy, and my life weary. But like a lover, waiting to be reunited with their dearest, I sat out on my old wooden chair, devoutly, come night fall, every twenty-four hours, waiting to see my love again. As I struggled for my final breath, she returned, through a clearing in the heavens, feeling once more her touch upon my skin, filling my eyes once more with her warmth. Embracing me, one last time, before everything went black.