Sacculina

by Philip Fracassi

Jim figured he probably didn’t mind, likely found the old clothes comforting. Like going back and starting over from a certain point, rewinding to when you were nineteen and still harbored thoughts of a brilliant future.

“HELP ME!” she screamed, and reached one deformed hand to her tongue, ripped the thing out, dropped it, looked at him with a mouthful of blood and sea.

They would all die soon, and his only hope was that his soul, or his energy, or whatever it was that lived on, if anything at all, would find something better than all this.

They all tried so hard to live and to feel, desperate to understand the why of it all, time and time again, but they simply lived and died by the billions, and never, not once, did they feel truly alive, were no closer to answering the biggest questions, the ones that mattered.