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The End

This story echoes throughout time and space. Echoes you can’t

help

but

hear.

Whose echoes? It depends when you look. If you looked thousands of years ago, you might see echoes of an ice age—maybe the final breaths of the last of a now-extinct species. Maybe even the echoes of the expanding tectonic plates as the Earth continued to settle into place. Here, though, lies the echoes of a past excursion in the gunfire that rings through the hallways. They echoed like a motif repeating across time as if a celestial creator imprinted it themselves. In this moment, that gunfire scarred screams into the walls that would last longer than any bloodstain.

Outside of the room two bodies had just been cut in half by the high-caliber bullets of the old station set in the vastness of space; far from the Earth.

On a grander scale it was almost the loudest sound rattling across the entire universe. If one were situated on the farthest point from the station it is almost assured that in some form the echo of that fire would reverberate out—whether it be by pure energy or divine will.

Up above the room we investigate inside the station, the residue excreted from the weapons melted the strange metal that comprised the bunker like lava. If given enough time it might spill down far enough to reach them. Then again, it might cool before it ever reached them. Either way, it was their final stand here no matter what. The gunfire hung heavy in the air like they could pick up from where they left off without any source. Any one of these threats would be enough to send anybody into a state of alarm. That much was true for half of the bodies sitting alone in the room at the deepest point of the bunker.

An old man and a young boy sat alone inside the confines of a prison cell with nothing but a vintage tape recorder with an old pair of headphones beside them.

“Lock down is imminent,” A voice called out over the intercom. It was the voice of another old man. There was an air of heavy exhaustion in it. “This is it, our final stand. I’m going to hold them off for as long as I can. It is time for me to face the demons of my past.”

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He nodded his head as if he knew he would be seen by the voice. He then looked over beside him—he was quivering on the floor beside the bench.

“Are we going to die?” The boy looked up at him with a look of dire concern. There was panic behind those eyes.

The old man took a long. deep breath that seemed to restore his voice. Everything around him was eventual. He cocked his head toward the cassette player next to him, “I can’t promise anything. Use it and ease your mind.”

The boy, frail and shaking out of his pale skin looked toward the bench and eyed the old cassette player lying on top. Every movement he made was fidgety. He took frantic steps toward it and grabbed it and the headphones and looked back to the old man.

“Go on, put those on over your head,” the old man couldn’t sound more unenthused to be where he was.

Another shot rang out sending the boy into a screeching jump. He nearly dropped the cassette, but ending up letting go of the headphones. They bounced off the ground as the boy’s chest began heaving heavily. He waited as the echo from the shot continued down the halls—waiting if they would continue and his existence would be put to the end. The anticipation almost made him shake more. It was clear he was having difficulty keeping his grip on the cassette.

The old man sighed and rested his head against the back wall and closed his eyes. “Just block out what’s outside. Let yourself put the headphones on and listen. It’ll calm your nerves.”

The tension in the room was thick like a heavy coat they couldn’t remove. It was an oppressive presence that would end a single way—a way the boy wouldn’t enjoy in the slightest. He was satisfied enough that the boy didn’t fight him on the point. He got back his control over his hands and walked toward the corner of the room and slipped the headphones over his ears. He sat back and closed his eyes as he pressed down on the PLAY button.

There was a moment where the man swore that reality could have stopped. Like everything would just end and in that thought he smiled, but was careful to keep an eye on the boy as to not reveal his inner thoughts. There was a quality to the air that made it feel ephemeral. There was a sort of peace that came when the end of one’s life was coming closer. And no matter how this all ended, the old man hoped he would be alive long enough to be present for the boy’s understanding.

The boy’s eyes closed as the sound on the tape played in his ears. It began as crackling static and for a moment the boy was scared the tape only contained static to try and blur the world’s sounds outside. That would have been awful because he knew that the shots outside were much louder than whatever this static was.

The old man smiled again as understanding filled his eyes. The boy was going to hear it all from the beginning. It wouldn’t be long now...he was going to understand. It was only a matter of time.