Though Our Sky May Have Fallen Josiah D. McMeekin ........................................................pages

Though Our Sky May Have Fallen

Josiah McMeekin

The broadcast flickered, it never flickered, as it aired the news footage. Black mushroom clouds rising up over all the major cities in the Northern Hemisphere. Caught on cell phone cameras as those who filmed didn’t comprehend that their lives were about change forever. Or end entirely.

I stood transfixed, like most of the Southern Hemisphere that was both awake and had access to a television, watching the news report. I stood in a small cafe in Mount Lawley, watching on a shitty tv that hung suspended above the door.

As the live streams began to cut out, one by one, the screen cut back to the Channel 9 news anchor, who was unable to hide any of the horror and terror on her face. And as the nation watched, she whispered those infamous words, “My partner is in

London.” Was. Was in London. He would be dead by now. I would later be told that it was similar to living in, now non-existent, Central Europe after Chernobyl in the 1980s. But at the time no one, least of all me, cared for that information. All we knew was that one morning, the world was all out there, out of this hell hole we called a city. Then a few hours later. This hell hole was the world. Thunder rolled across the sky through the dark grey, summer storm clouds that hung over the city. Cool rain fell in a torrential downpour over the darkened city streets, illuminated by orange streetlights and the lights from pubs and hotels that shone out on to the street. The humid air clung to me, pressing my clothes tightly against my skin as I made my way towards the familiar sight of the small pub, tucked away in a small side street. I pushed my way in through the front door and was greeted by a wave of cool aircon which chilled my drenched clothes.

“Oi! About time you showed up!” Millie called out to me, waving to me from the booth they had secured. It was our usual one for a Friday night. Northbridge was normally filled, but the whether and cataclysm had driven most people to stay inside. We weren’t most people. I watched as an amber liquid filled up my glass, cracks appearing and spreading through the ice cubes that rested at the bottom of my glass a small pop accompanying each new crack. “Cheers.” I muttered, raising the glass and taking a drink. Some people would go on about how the liquid burned on the way down. It didn’t for me. Hadn’t for years.

I finished the drink fairly quickly, the booth was uncomfortably silent. I could hear Queen’s Under Pressure playing faintly through the pub’s speakers, and smiled bitterly because of it.

Tommy noticed, “Now that’s just bad taste.”

“No fucking shit.”

Tommy filled up my cup again. No more cracks appeared in the significantly smaller pieces of ice. “What did you end up doing after Graduation last night?” Millie asked me between sips of her Guinness.

“Went home and burned up my degree.”

“What? Why the fuck would you do that?” A horrified Katie slapped me.

“International Law and Politics, not exactly a whole lot of that left there now is there?” I muttered, finishing my drink in one more gulp.