By J.F. Sebastian
Trigger Warning: Suicide is discussed. If you or someone you know is struggling with thoughts of suicide or self-harm, help is out there. You can call, chat, or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
Nathan watched his daughter as she trotted towards a river that spurted from a crack in the marble walls of the deserted concourse. To Nori, for whom malls were the relics of an era she had never experienced, it was a real wonder to see, but the sound of rushing water made Nathan uneasy for he knew it would make it difficult for him to hear if someone, or rather something, was coming their way.
“Nori…” he said when his teenaged daughter turned a corner and disappeared from his sight.
Even though he had noticed how his protectiveness had seemed more and more annoying to her, he still couldn’t feel comfortable whenever she was too far for him, especially so close to dusk.
“Oh. My. God. Dad!”
He felt a sudden lurch of ice-cold fear in his gut as he heard her shout and started running, readying his rifle.
“Nori?!”
He turned the corner and stopped when he saw that she was standing in front of a row of movie posters. He let himself breathe again.
“Nori, for God’s sake, how many times do I have to tell you?” he said as he walked towards her.
Nori jumped on the spot, with a big grin on her dirt-covered face.
“Do you see that?” she said.
Nathan looked at his daughter and couldn’t help but smile, for beneath the dirt, scars, and clothes two sizes too big, he could still see, in that moment, the little boy that he had been what now seemed like a lifetime ago. Yet, even as he embraced the image of the strong and resilient young woman she was becoming, he couldn’t shake the twinge of guilt for momentarily clinging to the memory of the little boy she used to be. He massaged his eyes, hoping to chase away the thought pattern and fully appreciate the wonderful person she was growing into, even here, at the end of the world.
“Do you know this one?” she said, nudging at him.
Nathan sighed, briefly scanning the nearby hallway, and turned towards the wall to focus on the alignment of faded posters. He then touched the plastic cover with the tip of his fingers, removing a thin layer of grime. The poster was a background of gradually disappearing stars with the vague profile of a hairless, vaguely alien-looking woman in the middle. She had her eyes closed and, within her profile was a human silhouette in the middle of a pillar of light that came from above.
“Inward Skies… Yep, this one is definitely new,” Nathan said.
“How come we never saw it before?” Nori asked, walking along the wall, checking out the other, more familiar posters.
Nathan took a few seconds to reply, feeling confused by his daughter’s question. Here they were, at the end of their journey, and she was asking, very seriously, about the release of a B movie he had never heard about.
How is she still able to think and care about things like that? he wondered.
Then it dawned on him that she might be trying to cheer him up by conjuring their old games and conversations, trying to make him forget the reason for their travel towards the ocean.
“I wonder what it was about,” Nori added after a few seconds of silence.
Nathan felt his throat contract and tears swell up in his eyes. He coughed and rubbed his face with his hands, hoping to look composed.
“Well, it kind of looks like another alien invasion or alien contact movie,” Nathan said.
“Another one that got it wrong, then,” Nori added after a few seconds.
There was a short, uncomfortable silence filled with the continuous echoing rush of water as Nathan tiredly thought about the possibility that a pod of Wind-Scorpions somewhere nearby was about to wake up and stalk the growing night.
Keeping an eye on her father, Nori took out her knife and started to work on the poster frame before retrieving it with a satisfied smile.
“Hey, Dad?” she cautiously said. “Do you think that you could, you know, storytell that movie for me tonight? Like we used to?” she said as she folded it before putting it in her backpack.
“Why? I thought you were done with inventing stories,” he said, immediately regretting his tone.
She looked at him, and he couldn’t tell if she was hurt, or embarrassed.
“I know I said that, but I thought you could do it one more time before…”
Before I let myself die, Nathan thought, feeling as if cold, hard sobs were trying to claw their way up his throat.
He took a quick step towards her and ruffled her greasy hair, trying to push away the oppressive thoughts invading him.
“Of course we can. I miss our story time, you know?”
She looked at him and, seeing the wet redness in her father’s eyes, smiled and reached for his arm.
“Really? After our argument, I thought you were done with it,” she said, squeezing gently.
Nathan took out his metallic canteen, unscrewed the top and drank the lukewarm water, focusing on the faint taste of earth and rust to try and appease his mind. He then cleared his throat. “Why? As deadly as nights have become, they’ve been my favourite moment of the day because of our storytime,” he said before putting the water back into his backpack to avoid looking at her.
Nori frowned.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Well, I mostly, remember how mad you got when I said that I would have liked for the heroine to fall in love with the werewolf girl,” Nori said.
Old pangs of guilt slithered their way back into his chest as he remembered the deep hurt in his daughter’s eyes when he had criticized her ending, how he had completely missed the point of what she had tried to tell him.
“Nori I… You know I’m sorry about what I said.”
She gently punched him in the shoulder, avoiding his gaze.
“Dad, I’m just messing with you. Let’s just say that you like sad endings while I prefer happy ones, okay?”
Nathan stayed silent for a few seconds, overwhelmed by contradictory thoughts and emotions.
“But, Nori, if you like happy endings, how can you possibly…” he blurted out, cursing himself as he did.
“Dad. We talked about this. I’ve made my decision,” she said, firmly.
Nathan looked at his daughter, trying to find hesitation, hope, or fear in her eyes but finding only cold anger.
“Nori, I’m sorry.“ He tried to open his arms to hug her, but she evaded him and started to walk away. “Nori, please, we need to talk about this!”
“Let’s go, Dad,” Nori said as she walked away. “We’re not going to find any surfboards here.”
She then rummaged through her backpack and crumpled the poster she had just folded before throwing it in the mall-river. Nathan felt his heart sink as he watched it slowly unfold like a strange, glossy flower before it disappeared over the edge of the waterfall.
*
Nathan was sitting on the frigid, tiled floor of a bathroom in an apartment building, his back pressed against the substantial bathtub where Nori slept, wrapped in blankets, snoring softly. Alone in the world with his daughter, and despite projecting resolve and calm for her sake, he couldn’t escape a gnawing sense of vulnerability. The once-familiar darkness he loved, now ruled by tangible threats, weighed on him, reminding him that even a parent’s strength had its limits in this changed world. On the other side of the broken window, the desolate streets lay in an eerie hush, disrupted only by sporadic ululations and ominous hooting from the scavenging Wind-Scorpions.
Each time he heard their haunting sounds, a fleeting thought crossed Nathan’s mind—wondering if this is how people felt in the old days, when they were afraid of ghouls, ghosts, and vampires. The night now harbored a different, more palpable fear. Nathan rose to his feet and peered through the jagged, broken glass. The nighttime streets, devoid of artificial lights, were bathed in the ethereal hues of blue, green, and mauve emitted by the creatures. The stars above provided a subtle backdrop, but it was the creatures’ otherworldly glow, really, that transformed the shattered streets, casting an eerie radiance that captivated the night.
Nathan reluctantly tore himself away from the mesmerizing light show and sat down again. He picked up his daughter’s backpack and went through her poster collection, checking the dates and reminiscing about their journey. Every time his mind went back to Nori’s decision, all he encountered was a hard, cold wall of refusal and despair as he realized that his daughter’s choice was probably final.
He picked up the figurines they had ended up using for the previous night to storytell the movie Inward Skies. One of them was a bleached, robot-like character that didn’t belong to any movie or series he could remember, but it immediately brought him back to the day his daughter had found it. He could still remember the excitement in her eyes as she told him that they could now re-enact robot movies with an actual robot. He couldn’t help feeling like she was a different person back then… and yet the same. And now there she was, without hope, on her way to let herself die in the ocean.
How can I accept this… he thought, tears welling up again, how can I simply give up on my daughter, even if it’s her choice?
He thought about the evening Nori had made her peaceful but determined decision and how he, her father, had been incapable of making sense of anything she had said.
“Dad, it’s my decision. It’s not about giving up. It’s about being in charge of my life. It’s about dignity,” she had said.
“You’re my s…, my daughter, and as long as I live…”
“Dad. Yes, I am your daughter. But I’m also my own person. I can make my own choices.”
“But you’re fifteen!”
“Legal age doesn’t matter now that there’s no society left. Dad… I’m not going to change my mind when I turn sixteen… or eighteen. It’s my decision and you have to respect it.”
“But why?”
“I… just don’t have your drive to move forward.”
“But I did it for you. For us!”
“I know, Dad, and I’m sorry. But you know what? You’re a true survivor. Not me. I’m just tired…”
“Don’t say that. You’re a survivor too. You saved yourself – and me – on multiple occasions. You were born a survivor.”
“Yes. Dad. Precisely: I have never had a choice. And I will never know anything else!”
“But you don’t know that!”
“Really, Dad? Look around you: there is nothing! Nothing! People are gone. Food is scarce. Books are crumbling. Think about it! I’m fifteen, and I know I will never fall in love, meet the girl of my dreams, never truly be the person I want to be. Shit… I’ll never even get to see a friggin’ movie!”
“But there might still be some people out there! We might still find… something!”
“Dad, we have crossed half a continent, and we haven’t seen anyone in months! I don’t even remember seeing anyone my age, like, ever.”
“But we did, we…”
“But not recently. Not in years, Dad, years!”
“What about me? Us? We’re a family for Christ’s sake!”
“Well, I guess that’s being a parent. You have to let me go.”
“I just cannot let you die. Not this way. Not any way.”
“I’m not asking you, Dad. I’m just letting you know. You can either stay with me until we reach the ocean, or you’ll wake up one day and find me gone. That’s the only choice you have.”
“Shit, Nori, you are my daughter!”
“Yeah well, I didn’t ask to come into this world, but I do have the power to decide when and how I’m going to leave it.”
After that last argument, Nathan had felt defeated. What could he have said or done to change her mind? He understood his daughter. He felt her pain and knew what he had to do as a father. But he hadn’t been able to accept it. So, he had stopped talking about it as thoughts raged, day and night, through his mind.
*
When he woke up from a nightmare a week later, the day after having found two surfboards in a dilapidated shop, Nathan found himself wishing they had all died together in the initial stages of the invasion, when the Orbs had appeared, first only visible at night, and nobody knew what they were.
He looked at the rifle propped straight up against the wall next to the surfboards, its shadow slowly losing consistency as the moon was setting. It was easier for him to imagine killing himself than to imagine letting his daughter drown in the ocean. But, then again, he knew that if he decided in one desperate moment to avoid facing his daughter’s suicide by shooting himself, she would probably kill herself immediately after without achieving what she had set out to do.
Maybe she’s right, he thought, maybe there is no point in living in a world without hope, and without memories of better days. Unless, maybe…
Suddenly, without even looking for it, the seedling of an idea started to germinate in the back of his mind. A tiny flash of brightness in the invading, beckoning darkness.
***
Nathan and Nori were walking towards the edge of an overgrown public garden overlooking a deserted speedway. The air was cool, grey and foggy with a strong smell of seaweed and deep, churning sea.
“Wait. Dad, is this the park where you and Mom first got together?” Nori suddenly said after a morning of silence.
“The palm trees look wilder than they used to, but yes, this is the place,” Nathan said.
Nori stopped walking, and Nathan turned towards her, noticing her frown.
“Dad? Why did you bring me here?” she said, clenching her jaw.
“I know, I know, but Nori, please, hear me out…”
Nori sighed, walked towards the railing overlooking the speedway, propped her bright orange surfboard against the rusted metal, then took her backpack off her shoulders and placed it at her feet.
“Okay, Dad, tell me your story. I guess I owe you that much,” she said crossing her arms without looking at him.
Nathan took a deep breath and joined his daughter at the railing: “Nori, I hate to say this, but,” he paused then said, mostly to himself: “God, this is so cliché, if your Mom heard me say this…”
Nori turned towards her father and looked at him with a half-smile as if she was about to say something sarcastic. In that moment, she looked so much like what Nathan had imagined his teenaged daughter would be like that he had to resist the urge to smile back. He then cleared his voice and turned towards the ocean again, holding the railing.
“It was almost twenty years ago, when nights were not as dangerous and terrifying as today, but I remember that first date like it was yesterday. I think it was 2 or 3 in the morning, and we had spent most of the day together. I remember the vague smell of the ocean in the damp, cool air, the gloss of your mother’s leather jacket and the endless succession of cars, speeding in the dark like… lights gliding on a concrete river.”
He made a swooshing sound, gesturing with his hands like he did when he re-enacted movies for her. Mouth slightly open, eyes unfocused, Nori was picturing it all in her mind.
“It’s hard to imagine today when you see it overgrown and empty, but there were so many people in this city. There was always someone going somewhere, day or night. It was not super original, but your Mom and I used to wonder about that, you know? Like, who were those people? What was their life?”
Nathan looked at the cracked structure of asphalt and concrete that cut through the grey, empty city. Even now, so many years later, it was still spectacularly ugly even though nature had tried to claim it.
He took a deep breath. He could still vividly recall imagining a man behind the wheel, his round, featureless face resembling a planet bathed in the glow of his dashboard’s artificial night.
“There is something you need to know: there was nothing inherently romantic about life from before, okay?” Nathan said.
Nori seemed confused. “Okay…”
He continued. “Anyway, I remember looking at your Mom’s dark, shiny hair swaying in the breeze, and even though I’ve never been a physical person, I remember putting my hand on her arm to create some kind of contact. When she felt my hand, she just turned towards me and came closer and smiled. And there, in that moment between us, I saw her as she was, you know? I saw her as another painfully beautiful human. This was the moment we kissed for the first time, the moment when everything changed.”
Like she often did when she was about to cry, Nori suddenly pretended to cough to hide her face between her hands, wiping her tears in the process.
Nathan paused and tried not to look at his daughter. “Life had been going in uncertain directions for So-Hyun and me. We each had no idea where we would end up in life, and then, we met. We had this morning date that never ended, and just by touching and by responding to each other’s kiss, we had created a shift in both our realities. A shift that led to you, to your brother, and to here… to now.”
Since his daughter still said nothing, Nathan took a deep breath and continued.
“Now, even if the world as I knew it has ended, life didn’t really change that much. It’s still about choices, making mistakes, trying to figure things out, just like you and…”
“Dad, please,” Nori said before looking away.
“What I’m trying to say is that life was always difficult to figure out, and mostly sucked for a lot of people. But this life you want to throw away …Nobody can experience it like you do, and that’s precious.”
He wanted to take a step towards her but hesitated for he knew she might back away from him.
“I never told you, but there were moments when I also thought killing myself was the only way to reclaim some sort of control and to end the constant pain of having lost your Mom and your brother.”
Nori stood silent for a while. “So why didn’t you do it? Was it because of me?” she said, her voice faltering.
“Yes. But also because one day I realized that I was alive, Nori, while millions were not… because I realized that all those people who had died were now forgotten, never to be remembered again. This gave my life meaning.”
A crease had appeared between his daughter’s eyebrows, and Nathan felt his throat contract again as he continued.
“You mean memories of them?” Nori said.
“Of course. Your mother lives through me, Nori, and through you as well. I never told you, but she loved how you both had the same eyes. She called them your phoenix eyes, and… through you and all our memories, she will survive into the future. So will your brother.”
Nori bit her lip and looked towards the horizon.
“Fuck, Dad, you had no right to do this to me… No right.”
Nathan took a step towards his daughter to hug her, but she evaded him, wiping her face with her sleeve. She then grabbed the bag she had left propped against the railing.
“Nori…”
He tried to reach for his daughter again, but she broke into a run before he was able to touch her.
***
When he finally arrived at the beach, Nathan let out a sigh of relief when he saw a lonely figure standing at the edge of the water, facing the vast expanse of the ocean with her surfboard planted into the sand next to her. The sun, a pale silvery orb partially hidden behind the clouds, was low on the horizon.
“Oh, thank God, she’s alive,” Nathan said to himself as he walked towards his daughter.
Littered with unrecognizable remnants of humanity and the seemingly indestructible shreds of bleached plastic bags, the beach was greyer and flatter than Nathan remembered. As he came closer, he saw that Nori was wearing her full neoprene wetsuit and that she had left her shoes and clothes folded in a neat pile on the beach. He felt his heart sink when he noticed that her knapsack, containing all her personal objects and memories, was gone.
He checked his analog wristwatch.
One hour before sunset. So that’s it, he thought, his mind suddenly blank, she has made up her mind after all…
“Where is your bag of souvenirs?” Nathan heard himself say, his voice distant, as he joined his daughter on the edge of the dark green waters.
“I dumped it next to a garbage can,” she said, still looking in the distance.
The horizon was dark grey and serrated, occasionally reflecting brief flashes of sunlight like a burnt, twisted sheet of aluminum.
As he felt his mind slowly shut down, he couldn’t even focus on the inner voice that kept screaming at him to do something to save his daughter.
Nori stretched her arms above he head, sighed and turned towards Nathan.
“So this is the spot, right?” she said
“The spot?” Nathan heard himself say.
“Where Mom taught you how to surf?”
“Yes…”
“I wish she was here with us. I wish she could’ve taught me and Eun.”
“I haven’t heard you say his name in a long time.”
“Because it hurts. Every time.”
“I know…”
They remained silent for a while, their world nothing but the crashing of the waves and the slowly setting sun casting its dirty orange rays in an increasingly grey world.
“Is it how you remembered it?” Nori suddenly said, her voice loud.
“Uh, what?” he said, feeling in a daze.
She turned towards him, smiling slightly, pointing with her thumb. “That thing over there. The ocean. Is it how you remembered it?” she said.
Despite the weight of existential fatigue now washing over him, Nathan tried to smile.
“Kind of, but that’s the thing with the ocean: it’s always there but it’s always different,” he managed to say.
Nori took a deep breath, stretching her arms over her head again.
“Well, I think I like it. I think I saw a pod of whales earlier. Puffs of mist on the horizon. Lots of them.”
Nathan had no idea where she was going with this. He knew he should have said something wise, something father-like, but he felt as if he was in shock.
“I guess it’s because humans are not around anymore. Whale numbers must be bouncing back,” he said.
For some reason, Nori continued to question him, as if she didn’t want him to stop talking, as if she didn’t want the moment to end.
Nathan couldn’t help but feel impatient and once again felt like snapping at his daughter for her questions when she was, literally, about to let herself die.
There was a faint thumping sound coming from somewhere behind them and a distant hooting. Nori.
“Dad?” Nori said, shifting closer to her father and looking towards the city.
Nathan turned around and saw one of the creatures slowly crawling towards the beach. It glowed in sickly flickers of pus-like orange, the chaos of its dozen legs moving jerkily.
Fuck, he thought, of all days, they had to get out early.
“That one looks sick,” Nori said.
“I’m sure the healthy ones will be here shortly, though,” Nathan said.
He felt a rush of nausea when he suddenly realized that, after all these years of survival, they were now trapped, their backs against the ocean.
“Well, I guess I don’t have a choice now, I better get that wetsuit on,” he said.
“Dad…” Nori said, but he didn’t look at her.
He walked back to where his daughter had left her clothes, unable to think past the act of getting undressed and putting the wetsuit on. He looked at the sickly creature that was exploring the beach, trying to find scraps to ingest, and was suddenly overcome by images of Nori and him struggling in the dark green waters, of their bodies tumbling in the surf before washing up on the beach where they would be eaten by a creature like this one.
Once he put it on, he felt as if his wetsuit was suffocating him. Near the water, Nori was looking at him with a conflicting look of happiness and grief.
A series of deep, thumping sounds echoed from the streets, followed by another series of hoots and ululations louder than before. Nathan turned towards the city and saw another Wind-Scorpion tumble down from one of the streets, a spidery, chaotic flurry of oddly angled legs and pulsating, purple lights.
Shit.
As soon as it saw its sick competitor digging the beach for food, it attacked, a screaming luminous blur with its jagged vertically opened mandibles.
More thumping sounds echoed as a dozen more creatures, glowing different shades of blue, purple, green and red appeared on the beach.
Nori’s voice then came through the sound of the surf, calling him with urgency, the Wind-Scorpions instantly looking up. Nathan felt a shiver course through his body as they cocked their fleshy faces towards him, their black eyes set so close together that they almost looked cyclopean.
He grabbed the last energy bars they had, stuffed them in his suit and ran back to his daughter, feeling as if he had just died, leaving the empty shell of his body on the beach behind him.
***
Nathan kept an eye on the beach ahead of them. As the evening was drawing over the water, it was slowly losing its features, illuminated only by the glowing shells of two dozen Wind-Scorpions. It surprised him that about half of them were glowing in sickly shades of greens and reds.
“You’re doing a good job, Nori. We knew it wasn’t going to be easy, okay? Surfing takes time… Do you want to take a break?” he said, feeling the beginning of a tremor in his lower jaw.
“No, Dad, I’m okay. It feels like my w-whole b-body is getting w-warm again…”
Hypothermia, Nathan thought.
“Did you pee in your wetsuit?” he heard himself say.
“What if I-I did? A bit of h-heat is always nice, even if it doesn’t l-last long,” Nori said.
“It’s just, hem, gross. Just don’t do it,” he said, suddenly distracted by the unwanted mental image of sharks circling under them.
And don’t forget to keep all of your body on the board. Don’t let anything, hum, dangle,” he added after a few seconds.
They were both silent for a few minutes. Nathan could tell that his daughter was looking in his direction.
“Hey, Dad?” Nori finally said, a smile in her voice.
“Yes?”
“Are you afraid of sharks?”
“Don’t say that word,” he said, warningly.
“Why? They have the right to be there. It’s their ocean. Their planet. Not like those fuckers on the beach.”
“Nori, language,” he said.
He saw the faint glimmer of her smile in the dark.
“What don’t you want me to say? Fuck or sharks?”
“Both.”
He started to worry when Nori didn’t tease him any further. It wasn’t like her to stop talking when she had found something that made him mad. He wondered if the cold was getting to her.
“I’m sorry if it’s not what you expected,” he said, trying to engage her attention.
She took a minute to answer as if she was falling asleep.
“What, Dad, surfing or dying?”
“Both?”
She stayed silent for a while. Nathan had to paddle to stay close to her to make sure she wasn’t falling asleep.
“Nori?”
His heart sank as he thought he heard a faint whimper, lost in the sound of the breakers. He couldn’t remember when he had last heard his daughter cry.
“I-I’m sorry Dad. I’m sorry I got you in this mess. It was such a stupid idea. Fuck.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m glad we’re doing this together,” he said.
“Dad, you don’t have to stay. You could still get out of the water and find a place to spend the night.”
He looked at the beach again. It was now almost deserted, except for a few lights that seemed to hover in the darkness, but he knew he wouldn’t stand a chance against one of the creatures without his rifle and his body on the verge of hypothermia. Somehow though, he felt calm and at peace.
“Come on. Don’t be stupid. I’m with you until the end, okay?”
“I don’t want you to die because of me.”
“Nori, look at me. I wouldn’t die because of you. I would die for you, okay? Besides, no one is going die tonight. ” He paused for a few seconds, trying to control his shivering body, “unless it’s what you want.”
Since Nori didn’t answer, he continued.
“There is no shame in wanting to stay alive, you know? It takes courage to want to go on living in such a world.”
“Dad, d-do you think it’s too late now? To go back, I mean,” she said after a while.
Nathan felt his heart break. There was something empty in his daughter’s tone, as if it were just an echo. He looked at the beach. There were still a few Wind-Scorpions wandering in the dark, making returning to land impossible. He tried to think about another beach or a place to land but couldn’t think of any.
“I don’t know, honey,” he said, coming close, hugging her awkwardly.
He felt her head turn to look at him and felt her warm breath on his cold cheek.
“D-do you t-think sunrise is c-coming? Be h-honest.”
He looked around and up at the sky and tried, but failed, to read from his watch. He had no idea how long they had been in the water, nor if he could actually distinguish a pale dawn rising from behind the city.
“I don’t know, Nori. We may have a long way to go…”
She stayed silent for a while, and he felt her thin body shiver against his.
“What if we tried to surf again? Paddling might help keep you warm,” Nathan said, “Let’s show those fuckers what a father and daughter can do.”
“O-okay…”
***
Sometime later, Nori perfectly rode her first wave, and Nathan heard her laugh for the first time in weeks. Even though he couldn’t quite see her in the dark, he realized that, like her mother, she was a natural surfer.
Feeling a glowing wave of relief course through his body, he caught the next wave to join her, feeling himself smile despite the cold.
“Oh my G-god, D-dad. This is s-so c-cool!” she said, her voice somehow stronger.
“I know, right? Want to try again?” he said.
“What d-do y-you think? Let’s go!” she said, paddling back towards the surf.
Wave after wave after wave, Nathan and his daughter continued to laugh as they surfed side by side, oblivious to their exhaustion and to the brightening of the Eastern sky.
J.F. Sebastian is a queer, autistic writer originally from the South of France, now residing in Toronto, Canada. Writing in English, and under various pen names, is not just a creative outlet but a means for them to explore and express their multifaceted identity.