48 Hour Books Writing Contest Winner: "Skybox"

Skybox

by Chris Saper

 The April sun rose over Lake Michigan a little later each day, as it had for several years, not because of the changing seasons, but because of the rising toxic tide whose progress could now be measured in weeks rather than months.

Stepping onto the penthouse deck, Jeffrey Reeves looked across the lake to the east, taking in a brownish expanse of nothingness. The last time he'd been able to see down to the surface, the once beautiful, highly coveted lake shore had advanced nearly three miles toward Michigan. He had no idea what things might have looked like from the Michigan side. 

Jeffrey opened the door to the greenhouse that nearly covered the open area, a tiny 160 square feet oasis that had kept him and Caleb alive for the past two years. He gathered fresh peas and tomatoes, and plucked two small oranges, enough for a light breakfast. Caleb would be up soon, and Jeffrey liked to have breakfast waiting for his three-year-old grandson.

Before reentering the apartment's living room, Jeffrey strode to the edge of the deck and looked down from his thirty-eighth-floor vantage point. He estimated that the cloud had now passed the thirty-sixth floor. The cloud seemed to be rising a little faster in the past couple of weeks, but really, who could say? It didn't matter. Not much did any more.

"Grandpa! What day is it now?" Caleb asked, walking from his small bedroom into the large open space that held the shared kitchen and living room areas. "How many more days?" His flannel pajama bottoms sported little white spaceships on a now-faded midnight blue ground, and were on backwards, as they often were. It didn't matter since he was always so proud to get himself dressed, and anyway, Jeffrey was the only one around to notice.

"Hey buddy, come sit down for breakfast," Jeffrey said with a genuine smile.

"But how many more days? You know, 'til my birthday?"

Jeffrey said, "Hmm, let me think..." He watched Caleb take his chair at the kitchen table, this beautiful tow-headed boy moving so confidently through the open space that an observer would never guess that he was completely blind.

"Grandpa!"

"OK! I've checked and your birthday's in twelve days."

A spontaneous grin graced Caleb's flawless face.

"Oh boy! Four, I'm gonna be four years old!"

Caleb never asked about his mother anymore. While Jeffrey presumed the child had some memories, his mother had disappeared when he was only two, so what few there might have been had likely faded. He didn't see any reason to recreate unnecessary memories or the inevitable sadness they would bring. For either one of them. Caleb's world was populated by a universe of two, one of whom was a seventy-six-year-old man with bad knees and a failing heart.

Caleb reached to the waiting plate in the center of the table and felt the nubby skin of the orange fruit.

"Yay, Grandpa, oranges are my favorite!" His tiny fingers were chubby but nimble. He peeled the orange and carefully felt for the center plate where he set the pieces of rind. He separated the segments, arranging them in a circle on his own plate. The little boy reached for his water glass and took two big gulps.

"Can we go outside today?"

"You bet! As soon as we do our exercises and music lesson."

In this doomed world, Jeffrey's biggest fear was dying before Caleb. But as each day brought the poisonous cloud closer to the penthouse level, it provided a strange comfort. He only needed to live long enough to take care of Caleb when the time came. It wouldn't be a matter of years. Probably more like a matter of weeks.

Jeffrey blocked off the penthouse floor after the occupants of its only other apartment had moved out nearly two years ago. He and Caleb had depleted their canned goods long ago, but the solar panel-clad exterior to the building continued to provide what little electricity they needed.

A retired engineer, Jeffrey had no difficulty setting up the simple condensation system that kept the greenhouse garden alive and provided fresh water almost daily. After the EPA and the Department of Energy were disbanded more than a generation ago, the states were left to sort out their own ways to provide energy to their respective citizenries. Combined with repealed safety regulations, it was no surprise that the mining industry had finally ended with massive compound underground explosions releasing noxious gases into the increasingly dense cloud of smog that surrounded every metropolitan area in the country. As far as Jeffrey knew, the mines were still on fire, vomiting toxins from the bowels of the earth into the atmosphere. Since no one at ground level was alive to keep it growing, it was the only plausible explanation he could envision. There was talk of war before the satellites went out, so maybe there was that. Someone probably knew, but, like mostly everything else, it didn't matter.

"Let's go outside!"

"OK! Get your sweater, Caleb."

They sat on the high deck, bundled up against the cold, dry wind that never seemed to stop.

"What do you see, Grandpa?"

"It's a beautiful day today, just beautiful."

Caleb turned his pretty face skyward, unfocused clear gray eyes seeing nothing.

"There are lots of boats on the lake today, big sails that catch the wind and make them go very fast."

"'Course!" said Caleb. "It's a really windy day. Can you see anyone on the beach?"

"Let me look. Yes! It's pretty windy but the grown-ups are walking along the beach. There are at least a hundred people down there, and it looks like lots of them are playing games with big basketballs and a net." Caleb knew what a basketball was. Its surface reminded him of an orange.

"Are they letting little kids on the beach yet?"

"No not yet, you have to be sixteen years old to be safe when you go outside. That's why we live in this glass box way up high in the sky."

Caleb groaned. "I'm not even four! I'll never be sixteen!"

Jeffrey wiped away a tear and swallowed hard. "You'll be sixteen before you know it, buddy." Caleb would never be sixteen. He would never even be five. Jeffrey wasn't at all sure he would make it to four.

"How many days Grandpa?"

"Hmm, let me check..." Jeffrey tucked him into bed, snuggled under the cozy flannel sheets.

"Grandpa, come on!"

"Your birthday's tomorrow, little guy!"

"Yay! I'm gonna be four!"

"Yep! Here, drink your orange juice while I tell you a story about when I was four years old."

 Jeffrey had dissolved all the remaining sleeping pills and narcotics he'd stockpiled into the little glass of juice.

Jeffrey set the empty glass on the floor next to Caleb's narrow bed.

"So. When I was four, something magical happened." Caleb was listening with every molecule of his little being.

"What?"

"I was walking along the beach barefooted. The Lake Michigan beach isn't like a smooth, sandy beach. It's got lots of tiny little sharp stones that hurt the bottoms of your feet. And the water's always really, really cold, even in the summer. Anyway, when I was four, I met a dragon. A real one. Huge and scary."

"A real dragon? Were you scared?"

"Terrified! He breathed fire and smelled really bad." Caleb scrunched up his nose with the imagery.

"Was it a flying dragon?"

"Yes, of course. All dragons can fly, but some of them are faster than others. He was beautiful, with giant claws and enormous sharp teeth."

"What did you do, Grandpa?"

"I didn't know what to do. I was afraid he would eat me for a snack! All I could think of was to sing a song."

"What song, Grandpa?" Caleb's eyes were closing.

Jeffrey could see him struggling to stay awake to hear the rest of the story.

Jeffrey sang softly. "You are my sunshine, my only sunshine...you make me happy, when skies are gray..."

Caleb was asleep now. His breathing slowed. Jeffrey climbed into bed with him and held his tiny form until the last breath. He cried with great wracking sobs. There was no one to hear him.

Jeffrey stepped onto the penthouse deck. The cloud was now so far above him that he couldn't see the sky at all. He didn't care that there weren't enough sleeping pills for him, too. In a world where now nothing mattered, Jeffrey was grateful that his last moments with Caleb mattered enough to fill a universe of two. Oddly, he felt calm. He settled into the deck chair, vaguely aware of the empty chair on his left.

He let the cold, brownish cloud envelop him, and waited.