The sun peered out from behind the dusky red hills announcing the start to a new day. It climbed slowly up the sky as the latter turned to clear blue. It swam with the white fluffy clouds, peering down upon the quiet glimmering city, noting dull brown areas that had begun to appear.

Birdsong woke the girl from her fitful sleep. Her dreams had gotten strange of late. Perhaps it was from hunger, for she had not eaten but a half bowl of oatmeal and a slice of moldy bread in three days. Or perhaps it was loneliness, for her parents had been gone for more than two weeks already and the neighbors long before that. Or perhaps it was from the combined stress of it all, the slow realization that the world was changed and would continue to pull further and further away from the days of school and friends and plenty.

But yet again, her dreams were often strange now and then, even when the world was bustling loud with daily human life. In the dark quiet glimmering moments of peace, she would dream of gliding through the night over swaths of trees, catching mice to eat, and resting on the eaves of an old abandoned barn.

However, even though the world was quiet nowadays, her dreams had become loud. They were filled with the sounds of panic and desperation, of blood pumping heavily and rapidly through her ears. She was always running away. It smelled red. The smell of blood with the pale glimmer of fresh viscera. Sometimes she would dream of being trapped, surrounded by that smell, by that rush of blood, yet unable to move.

The girl blinked her eyes open, leaving her nightmare and stepping into another. She was lying in the living room on the ground tangled in a familiar old dull green quilt. She must have rolled off the couch at some point. The girl had been sleeping in the living room in hopes that she might be there to greet her parents when they came home. They had been gone for so long that she had thought perhaps she had missed their return and they had left again because she wasn’t there awaiting them. Thus she made it a point to sleep in the living room every night determined to never miss them again.

She got up, wearing a warm dark pink hoodie, and padded over to the kitchen. The power had gone out a month ago, along with running water. Her family had managed to stock up on some palettes of bottled water so there was still enough for around two months. However, due to spoilage, their food had run very low so her parents had gone out to search for more- on foot because their car was electrically charged. They had promised to be back within 3 days.

She poked around the kitchen drawers, lit solely by the cheery sun peeking in through the slitted windows. Her rummaging was the only sound in this quiet house. No, the entire neighborhood.

She found a cough drop. Her stomach rumbled.

As she sat there on the ground sucking on the cough drop she couldn’t help but crave a brownie. Before the power had gone out, they had baked some brownies and put them away in the preservation chest. Taking that first bite out of the freshly baked brownie had allowed her to remember the world that no longer was. The world where she was starting middle school, slightly apprehensive, but excited to live through it with her old friends. The world before school was indefinitely suspended as the teachers suddenly stopped going one day. The world before her friends slowly moved south one by one, to where the spaceships were.

She wanted a brownie.

These are for special occasions, her parents had told her, Without power, you can't make more, so make sure to space them out.

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But they had been gone for so long she had eaten all of them, all in one afternoon. She started to cry. Maybe that's why they hadn’t come back, because she didn’t listen to them and had eaten all the brownies. I didn’t mean to, she thought, sobbing to herself, I was just so hungry.

Everyone had left her. The shuttles, even though they had promised to “bring the future of humanity to the stars”. Her friends, even though they had promised to be together forever. Her parents, even though they had promised to come back as long as she behaved and stayed out of sight at home. She wished she could fly away with the spaceships. Fly like the bird in her dreams. As she cried and wished, she felt lighter and lighter, her braided hair lifting off her shoulders, she could almost feel herself lifting off the ground.

She opened her eyes. Nothing had changed. She was still on the ground in the kitchen. Alone. The cough drop was gone.

It's time to go, little one.

Something inside her spoke to her. It was a voice that often guided her in times of uncertainty. When she was scared of showing her parents a bad test grade. When the big kids at school wanted her to steal from the store. When one time a strange woman appeared at the bus stop offering to take her home.

Papa and mama said to stay here, she replied.

Papa and mama are gone, the voice said. There is nothing here for you anymore.

They’ll come back, she thought, they promised.

Get the coin, the voice responded, the coin will decide.

The coin was a gift from her grandfather a few years ago for her birthday. They used to use coins to buy things, he had said. Before everything went digital.

If you ever have trouble deciding on something, you can flip the coin. He had shown her, tossing it into the air with his thumb. Heads or tails.

She took the coin out of her hoodie pocket and held it in her hands. It was small and silvery. Shimmering in the dark kitchen.

Heads, we go. the voice said. Heads… heads…

That’s not fair, she replied, it always lands heads.

Not always, not always, came the voice

Tails we go, she thought, heads we stay.

Very well, came the voice, Tails… tails…

She weighed the smooth glossy coin in her hand then tossed it into the air, concentrating on it as it spun. Even though she wasn’t sure which side she wanted it to land on. Heads. Tails. Heads. Tails.

It clinked onto the ground, hopping for a moment then clinked again. Spinning slowly down until it rattled against the floor. All was quiet.

Tails. came the whisper. We go.