"The Chasm" by Nikolai Afonin

We walked down the central street of the small town. Two sisters, the older holding the hand of the younger. The town, like all others before it, was deserted. Abandoned single storey houses, sporadically placed on the flat expanse. Black soot around broken windows from the long vanished flames. Bullet holes in their walls. Casings under our feet.

Silence. The kind of silence that comes long after the explosions and gunshots have faded. After the killers have left and the dead have been buried. After the survivors who could leave were gone. After those who couldn’t leave were also gone.

“What is there to hold on to?” my little sister was mumbling, a thousand yard stare in the dust. “Where is the scaffolding? Where is the scaffolding? Where are the doors? How do we lock the doors without handles, without frames? How can we keep ourselves safe when the houses are open? Where are the windows? How do I make decisions? Where do I go? Knowing there is no free will. No agency. No self. Nothing. Just emptiness. Emptiness that consumes everything. Everything is empty now. Everything is gone. Where do I go? What do I hold on to? There is nothing here. What do I hold on to? What do I do? What do I do?”

On and on she mumbled like this. Vacant stare, stumbling over the casings. Shuffling next to me wherever I took her. For now, I was all that she could hold on to.

She’s been like this for a long time. The war has taken its toll. I had to act strong, keep my head up high for her, look above the rubble and point out shapes in the clouds. That I could do anything other than mumble at the dust, it’s because I need to save her. I have to get us to the chasm. If we were to survive, we had to make it to the chasm. Before I too descended into catatonic despair.

The sun was setting over our ruined world. We were its last human eyes as it’s orange fire shifted red and cast shadows over our path.

But we didn’t have to die with it. Not yet. If only we could reach the chasm, we had a chance. Maybe. Or so I wanted to believe. Not for myself, but for my little sister. She was born during the war, and I didn’t want her to die knowing nothing but the war. I wanted her to know that another way is possible. I wanted her to know that another world is possible.

Out in the distance, beyond the overgrown fields of what used to be farmland, I could see the forest. I could see the trees. Still and graceful, they were everything we humans were not. A part of me was happy for them. Happy knowing they will soon take over the land we humans once occupied. If our lives and suffering were for nothing, then at least our bodies and everything we left behind might become their food and home.

But the chasm really was near. Like a sinkhole that didn’t belong in these flatlands, it appeared as a thin line of darkness ahead of us. Past the ruins, past the abandoned farm fields, it was there. I clutched my sister’s hand harder and walked faster. “We’re almost there.” I said. “Hang on just a little longer. We’re almost there.”

She didn’t seem to hear me. Staring at the ground as before, she kept on mumbling. “Where is the scaffold? Where is the scaffold? Where is it? There is nothing to hold on to. I am falling. I am falling into the emptiness. I can’t hold on. I am falling.”

When we reached the edge of the chasm, the sun was already half way behind the horizon. Looking into the chasm through my exhaustion, I felt a faint hope. It was a vertical drop into nothingness. Absolute darkness. Bottomless infinity. I could see the chasm’s opposite edge on the

distant horizon that swallowed the sun. A vast river of nothingness that separated the two shores. A crack that divided the earth.

I walked up to the very edge of the chasm and embraced my sister. Looking in the direction from where we came, I saw the last rays of sunlight fall onto the world I knew. Pale crimson light illuminated the ruins, the abandoned fields, the forest. It lit the cracked roads on which we travelled. For the last time, it lit the crumbling cities where we scavenged and survived.

I pressed my sister tight against my chest and jumped.