“Promise me you’ll come back safe.” Her eyes were too bright with unshed tears.

In reply, her husband kissed her.

“I’ll come back to you,” he said, his dark eyes serious and earnest at the same time. “No matter what.”

She held on to him tightly, refusing to let go. In the end, he had to pries her hands gently from him.

“Your arms are the doors to my home,” he whispered in her ear. “So I will come back.”

***

No one really knows exactly how the war started. The whole world has been divided for centuries; tensions running high, each side building up their armies and navies. Scientists have forgotten about helping the good of Mankind, abandoning research in medicine and cures. All they do now is try to find out the best way to blow the Others, the enemies up. There are now enough nuclear weapons on the planet to destroy this solar system. There are satellites in space, filled with missiles, lasers, every kind of weapon of mass destruction a science-fiction writer from the past could dream off.

Then it happened. Someone pushed the button. A whole country was obliterated. Six million lives. Maybe more. The enemies, the Others, deny they did it. Maybe they didn’t. It doesn’t matter. The fuse, sitting in solitude and gather dust for decades was lit.

They quickly realised that nuclear weapons could not work. The Government wants the Other’s lands whole and healthy. They did not abandon the nuclear technology though.

Before my mother died, she told me why. She said that the Government, both the governments kept the nuclear weapons for a reason. If they saw that they were going to lose, they would blow the planet up; destroy every living thing as well as this entire world before they admitted defeat.

Then the letter came to us, intimidating black letters on thick heavy paper. My husband was “called to his duty” to serve the country and he had to leave me. We had only been married six months.

After he left, I stopped holding back my tears. No matter what he said to me, I doubted I was going to see him again. So many had died in just the first month of this war…

Holy Mary, mother of God, sweet Jesus, watch over your son, see that he comes home safe to me, oh God please.

***

Only a week after her husband had left, she began throwing up every morning. She started to watch the dates more carefully, and a month after, she was certain.

It wasn’t a good time to be pregnant. Food was scarce, as it had been for years and the war rations were small, barely enough for a small child, never mind a pregnant woman. She was able to get a friend to stay with her, and it was a good thing that the elderly lady next door had once been a nurse.

They said that the war would end by the end of the year. But she remembered her history lessons; that was what they had said about the first World War, and the second, and the Vietnam war and the Gulf war and all the thousand of countless wars that had happened since. She knew this on would continue for years to come.

Sometimes, when she looked in the mirror, she would see how her cheekbones protruded, how tightly her skin seemed to stretch over her face. There was no colour in her face, her skin was as white as a corpse. The only thing animated about her was her eyes, and even then, only sometimes.

She worked in an arms factory every day, as it was her Duty. She continued going even as her waist swelled and she grew so thin and frail she looked as if she would be blown away by the slightest wind, until she looked nothing more than a living skeleton.

***

At times, when I look at myself in the mirror I wonder if he were to come back, would he even look at me twice, would he still want me? I can’t help these thoughts.

And they continue from there. Sometimes, I think the fetus is killing me from inside, just as this life is cutting me as surely as a knife.

Then I remember him, my love’s words. We had been discussing parenthood, before the war.

“If the first child is a girl, I want to name her Helena.” The old-fashioned name was sweet on my lips.

“Gerard, after my father, if a boy,” he stipulated.

Gerard and Helena. I hoped that I might have twins, a boy and a girl. But I would have been happy with either, as long as it was my child, mine and his, our flesh and blood together.

“Please let him come home to me safe,” I whisper as I pray, my hands clasped and my knees sore and aching as I go through this hourly ritual every day. “Let him come home to me and our child.”

I only get silence.

***

She was seven months along when she felt it.

She was in the kitchen at that time; Marie, the friend staying with her was covering the kitchens with blackouts. The heavy black materials were pointless, what with heat-seeking technology these days but the Government still insisted on the blackouts to be put up.

One moment she was holding a glass of water. The next, she was on the floor gasping, there was blood streaked on her palm and there was shouting, not just Marie’s voice, but rough coarse yelling, the voices of men –

Her heart thudded to a stop when she heard his voice, a sound she hadn’t heard for over six months but she recognised it instantly.

“They’re using bio weapons!” he screamed over the cacophony of shouting, the screams of pain and the unmistakable sounds of gunfire. The kitchen, Marie’s face, they all faded away to darkness as the sounds of warfare went on and on until she thought she would scream.

Slowly, like an old television flickering to life, she could see colours. Moving images. The first thing she realised was that everything seemed strangely blurry, and was tinted a poison green; as if she were looking through a green glass on a misty day.

There were men in uniform, Our uniform – she realised with a jolt, recognising the dark blue, almost black colour.

They were falling to the ground, choking, clawing at their skin, leaving bleeding scratches behind. The man closest to her coughed and retched. She stepped back in horror as blood spewed out.

“Wake up!” Marie’s panicked voice was loud, but distant.

Wait –

She saw his face, saw him writhing in the mud like an animal, his features contorted with pain. He wasn’t screaming though, but muttering something. She choked back a sob and leaned closer to hear his dying words –

Her name, whispered over and over again as a litany.

Someone else was calling her loudly. Not Marie, not her husband, someone else –

His face seemed to blur as his body jerked to a stop and his eyes rolled inside his head until only his whites were visible. She knew he was dead.

She blinked, and she was back in the kitchen, Marie’s and Mrs Dubose from next door’s anxious faces above her.

“Are you alright?” Marie asked softly.

“Of course not!” Mrs Dubose snapped in reply. The old lady pulled her to her feet, and forced her on a chair. “Drink,” Mrs Dubose ordered, pressing the hot milk to her.

She obeyed, going through the motions even though her mind was far away. One hand stroked her swollen belly absently, and when she blinked, she wasn’t surprised to find tears in her eyes.

***

The newspapers say nothing, that the enemy has discovered a new weapon, that They have gained the advantage, that our men have lost, that my husband is dead.

There is nothing about losing this war; every page has hope and optimism in it, that this war will come to an end soon and we will be victorious.

I smile, say nothing, do nothing to take away the hope that seems to shine in face. I am too busy grieving for my love, for my child that will grow up fatherless.

Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night with some memory of him; his smile, his laugh, how he had gotten on his knees in the restaurant to propose to me. Tears stain my pillow as I cry for him. There are times when I think about following him –

But I can’t. I have to stay alive, for our child, for him.

Mary, Mother Mary, give me the strength to live. And my husband, I know you watch me from above. Keep us safe, your wife and your child. Please.

I love you.

***

It was only a few days later when she felt a sharp pain in her belly and knew the time had come. She collapsed on the floor with a gasp.

Marie half-carried her to her bedroom before running for Mrs Dubose. She didn’t know how long it took, she could only recall a painful, sweaty blur.

With a final shriek, she knew it was over.

“A boy,” Mrs Dubose said.

She closed her eyes and sank back with a smile and a sigh of relief. Gerard, as he had wanted. She managed a weak smile.

“Give him to me.”

She opened her eyes when they didn’t. her smile froze at Mrs Dubose’s expression.

“What is it?”

It took her only a split-second to realise what was wrong. It was too quiet, the sound of a new-born child’s howling absent.

“Dead?” The whispered word felt heavy on her lips.

“Still-born,” Marie answered, not meeting her eyes.

She closed her eyes again. She wished she could close them forever.

***

First my husband, and now my child. Everything is taken away from me.

Why? Why do you do this to me? I ask every night. What do I live for now, what hope do I have now as this accursed war drags on?

Take me with you love, I whisper into the darkness before sleep carries me off. Take me to the Garden with you.

***

It was simple. So simple.

Flick the switch. Like turning the lights on. So much simpler than using a knife to kill, or shooting with a gun. Both were messy, they required nerve.

Anyone could flick a switch.

***

“Love, I’m so sorry,” she whispered into the shadows. “You are gone, Gerard is too, I don’t know if I ca – “

***

I open my eyes and the first thing I notice is that the sky is blue.

Blue, the colour of the sapphire on my engagement ring. Not orange, red, or even yellow, blue like in the centuries past when chemicals had yet to taint the atmosphere.

The second thing I notice is grass, like fields of emerald sloping gently up and down the landscape. I have never seen grass outside a television screen before.

Then there are the trees, their trunks not charred black, but a rich dark brown, their branches seeming to stretch for the blue heavens, their leaves a healthy green.

It smells different; there is no smoke, no perpetual stink of burning. The wind feels light and cool, scented with pines and grass and the rich smell of fertile earth.

“Where am I?” I whisper. I have to be dreaming. There is no place on Earth like this, not any more.

There is a light tap on my shoulder. I spin around, surprised, but not afraid. And there he is, giving me the crooked smile that is meant just for me.

I blink back the tears burning in my eyes, and the next thing I know, he is holding me tightly.

Thank you thank you thank you. I cannot think of anything else, my catechism, my prayers, the Bible. Just those two words as I thank God.

I knew where I was.

Home.

***

Far away, in a universe with only one star, a small blue planet disappeared from existence forever.