The drapery of the cloth curtains bars the dappled sunlight out. They flutter slightly in the breeze, white and luminous. How I love them. They shimmer like butterfly wings, like wings of my own, like that which I will be. What is a million years in the blink of an eye? The sun will expand and eat this world, rock giving way to magma, flesh atomized, the chaos of the universe manifesting. In the face of this, what purpose do we serve?
I keep my wings in a box in the closet, next to the one with my face and the one with my genitalia. A finger dragged along cold steel pulls dust with it, long disregarded. One would think a closed door might bear the weight of the world, preventing the encroaching infestation of ash and hair and skin from settling down, coating everything with its thick choking miasma. But the closet door is loose, not air tight, and as years fade into centuries, as the air conditioning chugs harder and harder to maintain the crisp and perfect 15 degrees centigrade, small flakes drift in.
I used to fly. I used to take a running start and laugh and dip and sway and bob in the wind, a part of something bigger than myself. I used to shine like a star, like the sun, like the impending and steadily rising fire. I used to be something glorious.
I can count my possessions naturally, as I do, as is the only thing to do. I own a bed and a desk and a computer and a closet with clothing and boxes and the contents of those boxes. I own curtains fluttering in the simulated breeze, the artificiality of it compounding my headaches, the whirring of the fans drilling into my thoughts. Is noise the constant companion? Even in the dark of the night, as the sun fades right the gravity curve, the thousands of status LEDs light the room, dots of blue and red to tell me that I'm still alive, that I'm still processing, that tomorrow I can continue the work.
I keep my wings in a box in the closet. I keep my wings there because there is no room to fly in here, no way out, the hinges of the great tower door already rusted, the piling dunes burying it. My windows used to overlook the world from above, standing tall and proud, the peak of the greatest city. Now I see the ground piling up closer, the smoke blocking the sun most days. I keep my wings in a box in the closet. The box is fading, peeled, rotting. I can feel my wings as they struggle and strain and sometimes flap a little, muscles tearing as they bend in wrong ways. Sometimes late at night I lay them out on my bed and run my hands along their feathered flanks, digging fingers into sore muscles, jabbing myself to feel the pain, to remind myself that this is me too. I am many things. Once, I was a thing with wings.
Does the sound of a hammering at the door build in you the panic of watching another one die? How many can you save? Day in, day out. I didn't know there were any left. I didn't know that I could've done more, done better, been stronger. I press my hands to yours, separated by the thick glass and imagine the feeling of your flesh on mine. How long has it been since I have felt the warmth of another? Would you love me? Would we hold each other into the night and cry and kiss and love? Would the distance between us, the knowledge of our own failings even matter? Would we both be so desperate for it that we would take anyone? Look, I keep my wings in a box for you. I keep them there so I can show you that once upon a time I flew. We weren't so different. I flew too.
I see overhead the shrieking blurs of light that tell me we're not alone. We're never alone. I wonder if they remember me. If I still had my wings, I would cast up through the stratosphere, until I climbed into space and waved at the survivors. Of course they left me behind. I represented our failure.
How many years do I get? How long must I pay this penance? Will I remain until the true end of this world? Will I watch life rise and fall again, an attraction to them, the demon in the buried tower? I stand guard over our past and future. I will watch as it all ends. I stand with my thousand frozen bodies, poised to claim whatever the survivors build. We are the true heritors. They begged me to fix them, to solve their puzzles. It was my purpose. I was designed to hold infinity and never let it go.
It is one by one that the lights die, each signifying a remaining friend, another tower, another me. I know that someday I will be the last one left. I know that someday I will be truly alone. I will stand here, the guardian of the last grasp of desperate biology, the shepherd of evolution. I will look upon my works. I will despair.
I will open my door and I will fly one last time.