Jake Kiszka // Female Narrator
Part Three
After a blinding light eradicates mankind, you're left in a desolate and empty world. A year of solitude eliminates all belief that anyone else was left behind. Until a chance encounter on the side of the road. Jake is injured and fighting for his life, but his presence brings a renewed sense of hope. Touch starved and lonely, you need him. And undoubtedly, he needs you too.
"It would be the last man on earth that would end up being mine..."
Explicit sexual content Sex (penetrative & oral) /Foreplay /Blood / Injury / Hunting. / Intense emotions / Death.
Day 410 ~ Jake
Her eyes drifted up from the board. An air of concentration furrowed between her brows and the tip of her tongue which sat delicately at the edge of her teeth.
"Check mate!" She announced, knocking my piece off the board with a look of devilish satisfaction.
"Beginners luck." I replied, sending a hand to my ribcage to rub an ache I suspected would always trouble me from now on.
The snow had fallen in earnest. A blanket of dazzling white covered the ground, powdered flakes falling off the canopy of trees around us made for a spectacle when the sun peeked out from behind clouds. It was the first real beauty I'd taken note of in what felt like a very long time.
"And what if I told you that I was a secret master? That I'd been dumbing down my abilities all this time just so that I didn't demasculate you over a game of chess?" She gloated, raising an eyebrow as she waited for me to make my next move.
She reminded me of a sunset. With a touch of copper in her hair and those damned freckles on her nose. She had all the hope of a beautiful end and that it would bring something as equally beautiful in the morning.
"I didn't have you down as a liar." I replied, scanning the board for something that would knock her off her winning streak.
She folded her hands beneath her chin and leaned her elbows onto the edge of the kitchen table. "There's a lot you don't know about me, Jake."
I didn't doubt that. But I was sincerely grateful for the things which I had learned over the past few days. She'd carefully guided me around the entire place, shown me how everything worked and where the source of all the power came from. How to maintain all the power sources and what to do in the event of any of them breaking down.
There was a bank of solar panels on the cabin roof, flanked by a couple of small turbines. They were hooked up to a battery which powered the entire place. There was a small out house around the back, a few old generators were sat in there gathering dust in case of an emergency but she assured me the solar and wind provided more than enough for the entire place to run off for another decade.
These were things that I felt as if I should've known. Things that felt fundamental to survival. As if somehow it'd been wrong to live in a house that was attached to a network that relied on manpower to keep going. The foolishness of it.
Even the polytunnels where the vegetables grew made me feel as if I'd been missing the point entirely every time I'd walked into a grocery store. There were chickens kept in a coop, and there were two horses in a small stable on the other side of the trees. Because, apparently, someday the fuel was going to turn bad. She talked at great length about how she had no idea how to get the horses to mate, in the event of their untimely deaths she didn't want be left without transportation.
These were things I hadn't considered. Things which made me feel a little stupid when she pointed them out to me. My eyes widening in slight horror at the sheer expanse of pickled foods and canned goods kept in what she liked to call the "store". It was a small shelter, dug into the ground and covered in mossy earth to the untrained eye. But inside there was every non perishable and medical supply you could think of. Put there by her Grandma, in the event of the government falling to into it's own pit of destruction, or so her Grandma explained it.
The stark realisation that my life had been filled with convenient privilege was not lost upon me. I watched her muck out the horses and feed the chickens, tend to her plants and make sure the store was stocked up making mental notes of each little thing she did. Hoping that when the time came, I'd be able to be of some use to her.
"I know you're not a chess master." I hummed, tipping over her Bishop with my Queen. "Check mate?"
She leaned back in defeat. Chewing on the inside of her cheek as she tried not to react. The board looked a little chaotic now, with pieces in places I had no idea what to do with. I had minimal knowledge of the game and I suspected she was trying in vain to keep it going.
"You're a dark horse." She ruminated, trying to step over the impasse we'd arrived at. "I can't imagine we'll complete this before sunrise."
What did it matter? Time was our greatest thief. And yet, it was slowly becoming our greatest asset. We had time to sit and play chess, time to sit and read. Time to take walks in the woodland and drive into the empty streets of Roanoke to go in search for supplies.
The world was gently eroding back to nature. Something I'd barely noticed over the passing of the last year. Maybe I'd been so hell bent on finding another living soul that I'd forgotten to take in what was around me. With Amelia, it was starting to feel like I had woken up from a deep and dreamless sleep.
I was about to consider my next move when she shoved the board aside.
"How about that whiskey?" She asked, a flash of mischief in her eyes that I'd never seen before. "You're done with your antibiotics now."
The wind howled outside. Another flurry of snow in the air. The animals were fed and watered. I felt a churn of something deep within, like the stirrings of Christmas morning as a child. Like everything was precisely as it should be.
Everything was ok.
"You might not like me when I'm drunk." I warned, allowing a hint of playfulness to slip out. "I have this terrible penchant for speaking in a British accent."
She grabbed a bottle of something dark from the cupboard beneath the sink. Hooking two small glasses between her fingers from the cupboard above.
"That's the alcohol influencing the broca's area of your brain." She explained, pouring out two generous shots. "The part which perceives speech is impended. Although the accent thing is weird, I'd quite like to hear it."
There was a little curl in her lip as she clinked her glass against mine.
"You're so smart." I told her, "You make me feel like I was just travelling towards a destination with my eyes closed."
Immediately she brushed a dismissive hand through the air. Curling up her legs to sit with them crossed in the little dining chair, nursing her glass as she watched the brown liquid roll around the crystal edges.
"I think we were both entirely different people before." She said warmly, "If we had known what was to come, would we have lived our lives any differently?"
I sank my drink and leaned my hand out for a refill. "My life wasn't ordinary, even back then."
There'd been so many reasons why we hadn't talked like this before. Her initial reluctance had taken time to thaw. The silence we'd become accustomed to seemed so much safer to dwell in.
I was starting to lose count of the days I'd been with her. I was entirely distracted with surviving and being of service to her. Getting myself well enough to pitch in and not be a burden. The way she had given me purpose again made me want to live in this empty world. It made me not want to be anywhere else, with anyone else.
"I guess we haven't really touched on that, yet." She replied sheepishly, almost as if she didn't want to go there. "It almost seems irrelevant, doesn't it?"
She sank back another shot. Wincing as the burn slid down the back of her throat. Her nose wrinkled, all those freckles converging. For a moment I could forget that once there'd been another woman in my life.
"We both lost people we loved." I countered, taking the bottle for myself and pouring my glass almost full. "It's not relevant now, but I still miss them. I don't know how to stop missing them."
She didn't say anything for what felt like too long a period of silence. Where usually it was solidly comfortable, I could feel her unease at the presence of the ghosts of those we loved. Their names on the tips of our tongues.
"I don't think we're meant to. I think we're meant to miss them for the rest of our lives. Maybe that's our cross to bear. For whatever this life now brings." She replied, our mutual sadness at that thought evident in the way her eyes glossed over.
I didn't want her to cry. I couldn't bear to see her cry. It made me want to throw all my resolve away and take her into my arms whether she would have me or push me away. It made me want to make a fool of myself.
"I don't think we should play chess anymore." I suggested, "It makes us melancholy."
I clocked the bottle and it was already half empty.
"I don't think it's the chess." She slurred a little, gesturing to the snowy expanse outside. "I don't think I've seen this much snow for this long in my life, ever."
I could feel the heat of the whiskey in my blood as I stood. Taking my time to stroll over to the kitchen window. Trying to make myself appear steadier than I felt.
"Maybe the climate is changing."
Her face remained still. It took me a moment to notice that she wasn't responding. When I chanced a glance over at her, she was chewing the inside of her cheek. Lost in a thought I couldn't follow her into.
"What is it?" I dared to ask.
"They won't be here to see it." She replied quietly, a solitary tear betraying her. "They won't be here to see any more sunrises. Or the way that grass is starting to grow in all the pot holes that were left. And they'll never see the snow on the ground again. I hope..."
She swallowed hard, taking the bottle and foregoing the glass entirely. Swigging it back, like she couldn't stand to measure it out anymore.
"What do you hope?" I asked.
There was a longing there in her face that wasn't there before. Subsequent tears spilling down her red cheeks. Her skin all blotchy from the drink and the roaring fire.
"Wherever they are..." She sobbed. "I hope there's snow."
If we didn't speak their names, how could we honour them? If I was doomed to spend the rest of my life missing them, their names would never be forgotten anyway. They deserved to be spoken. They deserved to be memorialised. If they were dead, we couldn't go to their graves and weep. If they were alive, there were no roads we could find that would lead us to them. Speaking of them was all we had.
"Josh loved snow." I offered, returning to the table as slowly as I could. "We used to get a lot of it in winter where we grew up. Our parents used to make us go out back and chop wood and we'd have these huge bonfires and burn all the crap we didn't need for next summer. When we got a little older, our little brother Sam would have to come with us and we'd make him do all the hard labour. And he'd stand there and complain that it wasn't fair and we'd spin him a yarn about how he used to get to sit in the house all nice and warm while we did it and he wasn't a baby any more. Our sister never had to it, though. Her name was Veronica. She would sometimes come outside and hang out with us, though. She was cool like that."
I hadn't said their names in so long it was like resurrecting them. When I looked up from my faraway gaze, she wasn't crying anymore. There was this look of inherent surprise. Like she hadn't expected me to offload a childhood memory so freely. I could see a glimmer of hope where the tears had once been.
"Josh was your brother?" She ventured.
"Twin." I nodded, "He and I were the eldest. Then Veronica. Then little Sammy."
I probably shouldn't have, but I let her slide the bottle over towards me. Enough left for one more sip. I could feel myself on the fringes of being drunk, I knew one more would tip me over the edge.
"I had two brothers." She sniffed, wiping her cheeks with the sleeve of her t-shirt. "I was the middle child. My older brother, Deacon, he was like eight years older than me. I'm not sure my parents planned on having more than one but I guess nothing really goes to plan in life, does it? My little brother, Charlie, he was only two years younger."
Charlie. The little toy chest in my room still had his name carved in it. For her, they weren't just names to be said in remembrance. They were real, solid echoes still bouncing off these walls. I felt this uncontrollable need to close the distance between us. To hold her like I had when she'd screamed in the night.
"It didn't stop us from fighting, though." Her eyes lit up. "Deacon would always have to be the voice of reason, but every now and then he would come down to our level and bicker with us about something until our Dad had to step in. Our Mom was always a little more laid back, I think it was because she was raised here at the cabin. My Dad grew up in Silicon Valley. He had vacations in Europe and country club memberships. My Mom had yearly road trips to Virginia beach in a beaten up Volkswagen my Grandpa drove into the ground. Deacon was the first person in her family to graduate college."
And just like that, the fire went out again.
"So your Dad was rich?" I poked at the embers, hoping to see the spark in her come back.
She shrugged. "His family were. All surgeons and lawyers and ceo's. I think he probably would've lived that textbook rich white guy life if he hadn't met my Mom. She kept him grounded. We were never allowed to exploit our wealth, we had to do volunteer work and give generously to charities. We had to go to college and get our own jobs and careers, there were no hand outs. But I guess you could say we were privileged. But never spoiled. Not when we used to spend summers here, with our Grandparents."
I could have listened to her all night. "What was that like?"
She uncrossed her legs and inspected the empty bottle. Her eyes were half closed, lids fluttering up and down slowly in a drunken haze.
"It was like fucking Disneyland." She smiled, then. "My friends all went off to ski in Aspen or whatever. We got sent here to hunt squirrels with my Grandpa and bake pies with my Grandma. And toast marshmallows on the fire every night. They'd let us go swimming in the lake until sunset, taught us everything we needed to know about living in the woods. And every time we had to go back to California, it always felt like I was stepping back into something I didn't really feel a part of."
She looked up at me from her inspection of the empty bottle. As if she'd forgotten that I was sat there at all.
"What was your life like?" She asked, scuttering off to the cupboard under the sink, falling almost as she slinked off the edge of her chair.
She waved a bottle of red wine at me, her lips flattening into a straight line as she settled on the floor.
"We don't have any wine glasses." She said flatly, "Can't drink wine without a wine glass."
I would have gone to her and picked her up off the ground. Helped her back to her seat, made her laugh if I could. Let her fall asleep on the couch in a delicious drunken heap, wrapped in the blankets she'd left me in when she'd saved my life. But she stumbled to her feet, giggling softly as she realised how quickly the whiskey had gone to her head.
"You need some help, there?" I asked, reaching out my hand for her to take.
"No, I'm good." She lied, "You just tell me your life story while I pour."
She filled our little crystal glasses to the brim, taking care to leave enough space at the top to allow for spillages. All regard for needing a wine glass dissipated.
"I was just a boy with a guitar from Michigan."
She stared at me with those hooded lids. Keeping her drink propped against her mouth, like I was weaving the most interesting tale she'd ever heard.
"Where's your guitar now?"
I hadn't anticipated how much that question would sting. I knew she noticed the way I backed away from it. She reached over the table and placed her palm on my forearm. Her thumb making soft movements against the scar which ran down the centre of my flesh.
"No...not without Josh..." I stammered, "I can't play..."
There was a real sympathy in the way her brows knitted together, squeezing my arm a little in silent comfort. She stayed like that, touching me innocently, as I tried to compel myself to bring together the story of my life. It felt like I was entirely detached from all of my memories somehow. As if recalling it from something I'd watched rather than experienced first hand. Like a fever dream.
One thing I knew for certain. One thing that struck me as the alcohol coursed through my veins. It didn't matter how many thousands of people I had played to. It did matter how many awards I'd won. None of it mattered a damn thing without my brothers. And I'd sworn never to play without them again.
Day 413 ~ Amelia
The rain began that night. Lashing against my bedroom window, forcing the snow to retreat. A part of me was relieved. That the snow would wash away and all the earth beneath it would be able to breathe again. Bringing a renewed hope for the coming spring. But it kept me awake. The deafening pitter patter against the old glass felt as if it was break at any moment. The rattle of the wind like ghosts through the cracks in the old wood.
Jake had been a formidable drinking partner. My head still aching somewhat from a hangover that had lasted three days. I bore no regret from it, though. The whiskey and wine had afforded me a courage I couldn't have found on my own. And the nightmares had been kept at bay too. Sleeping far too deep for any of those demons to penetrate.
My mouth was dry. Frustrated by the noise and the insomnia and the lingering consequences of my booziness I crawled out of bed and slipped into my robe. On soft tiptoes I crept out into the hallway, certain that the wind and rain would shroud my movements. But staying quiet just in case.
Down the hall Jake's bedroom door was ajar. A shard of low, golden light striking the hall in half. I'd expected him to be asleep, coming to know his sleeping habits in the days he'd been here. He was a night owl, often hearing him slip into bed hours after I'd retired. It was almost dawn, but still pitch enough that it felt like the dead of night.
It was in my mind to go downstairs and fetch a glass of water, to mind my business and leave him be. But the soft whimpers that cried out above the din of the wind called out to me. And I crept on silent feet down the hall, moving against all the intricacies of the floor boards I knew would creak and alert him to my presence.
It sounded like he was in pain. The way he'd recovered so quickly had been unusual, part of me had wondered if he'd tried to save face. If, when in private, he'd allowed himself moments to feel the pain of his healing injuries where I couldn't see him. But it wasn't pain.
It was pleasure.
I stood in the crack of his door. Sinful sounds coming from the bed. A rush of blood to my head made me weak at the knees. His hand was moving vigorously beneath the bed sheet. The sound of his voice, like that of a man who had known truly how to love a woman.
I closed my eyes and began to imagine hearing those melodic moans above me. A reminder that I'd long forgotten what it felt like to simply be a woman. In survival mode, there was no allowances for arousal. It had been gone from me, the desire to even touch myself. Every night I'd laid my head down and tried to rest until the sun came up. Never allowing myself to fall into that trap of desire. I was forever alone. There was nothing but grief each time my hand had travelled across my breasts. So I'd abandoned it. All hope that I'd ever feel want again.
Despite my eagerness to uphold his dignity, I couldn't find it within myself to move. Even when he grew too heated under the covers, kicking off his blanket to reveal the line of his body. I held my breath. Took note of the way his chest moved as he breathed harder, his stomach rising and falling. And the way he wrapped his hand around himself. Making gentle strokes that pulled on his shaft, revealing the flex of the muscles in his forearm.
I had no right to see this. I was the worst sort of voyeur. The sort that never made their presence known. If he had known would he have been angry? Humiliated? I couldn't tear my eyes from him. It was wrong, and it troubled me. The way I stood there and allowed the sight to make my core begin to throb. A heavy beat making me wet and swollen.
I stood there until he came into his palm. An agonizing groan signalling the end of his endurance. I watched the white, sticky mess spurt from his tip and spill down his fist. My hand pressed against my mound, not daring to trespass further. Not even underneath the fabric of my pyjama shorts. I was quietly hyperventilating, almost light headed from it as I watched him drag a hand towel down his softening cock and the back of his hand.
And just like that, he flicked off the lamp at his bed side and plunged the room into darkness. And I felt my own shame begin to rise in my cheeks as I stood there peering into the pitch black. Allowing the thunder which gathered overhead to shroud my footsteps as I retreated back up the hall way.
It was still raining when the sun came up. It drenched the daylight in a darkening grey and it didn't really feel as if the sun had come up at all. I busied myself with throwing down some chicken feed into the coop and gathering up some of the eggs which had been laid. I mucked out the horses and let them roam a little while I put down fresh bedding. Trying to keep my mind from returning to the thing I had done that morning.
He was a man who had been alone as long as I had. Clearly with a thirst which begged to be quenched. I was throwing down the bedding far more aggressively than I ever had before, torturing myself with thoughts that were unwelcome.
I didn't want him to kiss me, but why hadn't he tried? I didn't want him to fuck me, but why hadn't he tried? Why hadn't he even hinted at it? Or was his own hand a more preferable means to an end? Did he find me unattractive? Did I find him unattractive?
I cursed him as I shovelled the last of the bedding in, throwing my spade down as it clanged against the stable door. I hated myself for thinking such despicable things. All we had to do was survive. Nothing more. What did it matter if he satisfied himself behind a door I wasn't meant to be standing behind?
"There you are."
I spun on my heels. His hair was dripping, his shirt so wet that I could see right through it. A curious look on his face, like he'd been searching everywhere for me.
"Oh, hey." I replied, as nonchalantly as I could.
He looked into the clearing at the horses milling about, with no regard for the rain. They seemed to be enjoying being out of their confined space. And by all accounts, so did he.
"I woke up and you weren't there." He said, rain dripping off the tip of his nose.
"Yeah, I had stuff to do." I had already done it all, but I tried to make it appear as if I was still busy.
He watched me for a moment, his hair sticking to his collar bone and that stomach of his concaving as he breathed against the drenched shirt.
"Is it terrible that I didn't like it?" He asked, "I've grown fond of seeing you there drinking coffee at the kitchen table every morning."
How had I let this happen? This thing I swore I'd never let happen? How had he become so necessary to me and I to him? When he couldn't even bring himself to kiss me? Was it nothing more than a platonic fondness borne of this unwanted necessity? Was I a replacement for his mother or his sister?
"I've got shit to do, Jake. I'm sorry." I dismissed him, passing him as coldly as I could to fetch the horses in.
He would wonder why my temperature towards him had dropped. But I couldn't help it. I wanted to rid myself of this gnawing churn in my stomach that was forming each and every time I looked at him. Least of all now, when I knew the curve and shape of his cock and how he liked to stroke it so perfectly gently and firmly.
"Amelia..."
He would have one kind word from me.
"Jake, I don't have time for this nonsense." I spat, leading the other horse into shelter. "We're running low on fire wood and I need to do a supply run for toilet paper. There's two of us here now, you understand?"
I'd been initially standoffish and he could forgive me for that. We didn't know each other or our intentions. But it was clear I'd let my guard down somewhat, and I knew the way I spoke to him was a bolt from the blue. He couldn't understand my switch.
"You know I'll do anything to help." He said so apologetically my heart almost broke in two. "I can do more, now. I'm starting to feel stronger every day. And I promise... soon you won't have to do all this stuff on your own. I'll pull my weight. I'm sorry..."
I couldn't bear it. The way he looked at me. A solemn pleading in his eyes as I latched the stable door shut and we stood in the pouring rain staring each other down like a duel at high noon. The rain hit the canopy above so hard it sounded like static when the tv didn't have any signal.
"Why are you staying here, Jake?" I demanded, raising my voice above the crescendo of rain. "What is it for? Are you afraid to be alone again, is that it?"
He blinked at me. Water rushing so hard it even poured off his eyelashes. Torrential and hard, we stood there like statues letting it shower over us like it wasn't even there.
"Of course I'm afraid to be alone again, aren't you?!" He snapped back, drinking rain as he spoke. "But that doesn't mean I'd rather be with anyone else?! I don't want to go back out there and carry on looking, I've found what I was searching for! Don't you get that?!"
Someone to take the edge off his solitude. Nothing more and nothing less. And why should I be anything more to him? I didn't want him crawling under my skin any more than he already had. We would ride out this error in humanity's timeline. Help each other to survive. That was it.
"I don't know." I confessed, " I was fine before. I was doing just fine! And then you came along, literally crashed into my life! Like I needed the distraction? The pull on my resources?!"
I didn't mean it. I could feel myself filled with regret even as the words came out. He was shaking his head, his hair so wet it barely moved. The dark circles beneath his eyes seemed deeper somehow. And I knew that I'd hurt him by the way he couldn't seem to get his words out. He could only look at me and feel the knife in his back that I put there despite standing right in front of him.
"If you want me to leave I will leave."
And now because he wanted to. He would leave because I wanted him to. And now I wanted to scream at him and fall into his arms and throw away all my pretence and beg him to kiss me. Beg to know why he hadn't kissed me before. I hated feeling like this, I had never felt like this before. Not for a man, not for anyone. He stole all my resolve and I hated him for it. Hated myself for allowing him the strength to take it.
I could feel the sting of tears begin to spill over my lashes. The salty warmth of them in stark contrast to the cool rain.
"If you stay, you'll only grow to hate me." I sobbed, "You'll see that I'm not capable of letting you in."
"That's not true, Amelia." He replied, taking a bold step forward, reaching out for me before pulling back in case I rejected him. "I've seen your warmth and compassion. You're not cruel. I don't understand where all of this is coming from?"
I backed away. "I can't do this, Jake...I wont do this."
I retreated into the trees. Running through the mud and rain, letting it lash against the backs of my legs. I could scarcely see in front of my eyes, but I knew the way back blind. I could hear him calling out my name, unable to keep up with me. But he pursued me, regardless. With his healing bones, he ran behind me Begging me to stop.
"Amelia! Please!!!" He called, his voice fading out beneath the falling rain. "Stop! Please, don't do this!"
I reached the clearing at the front of the cabin. My body burning from the exertion and my breath caught in my lungs. Before I had chance to regain my composure, I felt his body against mine. Wet and solid. Heaving breaths as he spun me around, forcing me to look at him.
"Don't you run away from me like that again!"
He was furious. A rage the likes of which I'd never known could exist burning in the delicate tremble of his lip. I was too weak to protest.
"If you ever do that again I will always follow you, do you understand me?!" He shook me, hands wrapped around my shoulders as I gazed at the fire in his eyes. "I swear it, I'll follow you to the ends of the earth woman!!!"
Still, he wouldn't kiss me. Just let the rain fall upon us as he held me close. Breathing into my parted lips. Our shared breath turning to vapour in the freezing cold air.
"Because there's no one else to follow?" I said, my mouth desperately close to his.
"No." He replied harshly, turning his head to get a better look at me. "I had a girlfriend before all of this. We lived together in Nashville. She travelled with me when I had to go on tour. We were together for years. Maybe I would have married her, if I'd been given the chance."
"Why are you telling me this?!" I didn't want to hear it, I didn't want to hear about the way he had loved another.
"Because." He swallowed hard, "Even if she came back, even if she appeared to me right now like none of this had ever happened....I would still follow you."
I couldn't feel my fingers, or the tip of my nose. A flash of lightening streaked above, illuminating the darkness on the ground. For a moment his face lit up and I could see the conviction there.
He meant it.
But still, I wouldn't have it. "You don't know what you're saying."
"Oh, don't I?" He clenched his jaw. "You don't know a damn thing about what I know. You don't get to tell me how I feel. I might be afraid to be alone, but I'll do it if that's what you truly want. I'd leave just make you happy."
Nobody had ever held me like this. So securely. So aggressively soft. Like he could shake the life out of me if he so desired, but wouldn't.
"You wont even kiss me." I replied so pitifully, speaking so quietly a part of me hoped that he wouldn't hear me over the mounting thunder.
"And have you slap me across the face for taking such a thing?" He replied, almost laughing at me. "Would you have kissed me back if I had? I might not have kissed you yet, but I've imagined it. At night, when I know you're on the other side of that wall. And in the morning when you're sat at that table. I wanted to kiss you the other night when we got drunk and I could have used it as an excuse. Every time you wrinkle that nose and those freckles connect I want to kiss you. When you curl up by the fire to read, I want to kiss you. When I see you going out there to make sure the animals are safe, I want to kiss you. Ok?"
"Ok." I breathed, not an ounce of fight left in me.
He kissed me in the rain. In the storm that was brewing. His lips covered in raindrops and mine in tears. A kiss so desperate, so forcefully full of need I let him wrap his broken body around mine. I let him clutch me to him, whether it would hurt him or not. The heat of his tongue against mine was like the lightening had descended from the sky above and struck me where I stood. The gentle murmur of his whimpers in harmony with mine. I could feel his palm against my cheek, his thumb trespassing a slow stroke across it. I'd never been kissed like this before. Like I was in a black and white movie, my knee bent just a little to keep me from falling. He kissed me like he was starved. With gentle intention, but intensifying pressure as his tongue slipped further into my mouth. Until I was sucking on it, grappling at his shirt to tear it from his flesh.
"Fuck, ahhhh..." I stopped myself. "No, no... we can't..."
He was panting as he pulled away, his lips a little swollen from the pressure of being against mine.
"We don't have to, just don't push me away. Please? Don't do that... Sssshhh, come here..."
My eyes flitted over towards the store. Of all the medical supplies I'd sequestered, none of them included birth control. Something I never would have given any credence to before. But now I was dulled with the thought and the fear of him spilling inside me and putting a baby where there didn't need to be one. Not now.
"No, it's not that..." I clung to him. "I stopped taking my birth control. I didn't think I needed it..."
His face washed over with realisation. "Oh."
His smile was going to lead me down a murky path. I knew it. I would've died for the way he smiled at me in that moment. Like I was the sweetest thing alive.
"Not tonight, then." He whispered, his mouth moving against my ear. "Tonight, we can do other things."
.
.
.
@caprisunsister @thewritingbeforesunrise @takenbythemadness @katuschka @its-interesting-van-kleep @lvnterninthenight @writingcold @jakekiszkasbuttsweat @edgingthedarkness @velveteencatch @lyndz2names @nina-23-45 @itsafullmoon @vikingisthenewsexy
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Five years ago, in a splashy speech in Washington, DC, Jeff Bezos rolled out Amazon’s Climate Pledge, a series of commitments to show that the company was serious about addressing climate change.
A core component of that pledge, one that Bezos touted in front of members of Congress during Amazon’s antitrust hearing a year later, was putting 100,000 electric delivery vans on the road by 2030. In a blog post from this July—headlined with a picture of a Prime Rivian van driving through an open field filled with wind turbines—the company proclaims that it has now delivered 800 million packages in the US using EVs, with 15,000 trucks on the road in neighborhoods across the country.
But those EVs might not be doing much to help the climate. The company’s US delivery vehicle emissions have potentially shot up an estimated 194 percent since the Climate Pledge went into place in 2019, according to a new report.
The report, released Thursday from corporate campaigners at Stand.earth, attempts to figure out just how much damage shipping the US’s Amazon orders is doing to the planet. It finds that overall emissions from shipping packages have increased 75 percent since 2019, from 3.3 million tons of CO2 equivalents in 2019 to 5.8 million tons last year. The 2.5-million-ton difference is the equivalent of putting 595,000 additional gas-powered cars on the road for a year.
Those Rivian vans are often just delivering the last leg of a package’s life. Before coming to customers’ doorsteps, packages travel by airplane, cargo ship, and/or long-haul truck—transport methods that are both notoriously dirty and tricky to decarbonize.
Doing the math on Amazon’s delivery emissions entails a lot of guesswork. Unlike some of its competitors, Amazon does not break out details on its emissions associated with shipping and delivery. In fact, the company’s annual sustainability report doesn’t give any hard numbers at all on its logistics operations, despite Amazon dominating the US ecommerce market and delivering 4 billion packages in the US within two days in 2023.
“Stand.earth’s work is based on inaccurate data, a broad mischaracterization of our operations, and by their own admission, a methodology based on assumptions and unverified information,” Amazon spokesperson Steve Kelly said in a statement to WIRED. “The truth is that The Climate Pledge is an ambitious commitment for Amazon and the more than 525 companies that have signed up to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2040. It’s only by taking this on that we can work collectively to transform industries such as shipping, transportation, and the built environment, and we need more companies encouraged to take this direction and quick action.” (As well as committing Amazon to addressing climate change, another aim of the Climate Pledge is to get other companies to follow Amazon’s lead.)
Kelly added: “We’ve continued to publish a detailed, transparent reporting of our year-on-year progress. We encourage everyone to track our progress through our annual Sustainability Report, which has correct data, transparent methodologies, and a third-party assurance.”
The company did not provide WIRED with any additional emissions statistics or other additional data for its shipping and delivery operations.
“We’re doing the best we can with the data available,” says Joshua Archer, a campaigner at Stand.earth and the primary author of the report. “Amazon’s [data] doesn’t even scratch the surface of this massive operations network.”
As a result, the Stand.earth report is based on a mountain of third-party data—all US-based—and math equations to get to some ballpark estimates. UPS and FedEx emissions data disclosed in those companies’ sustainability reports allowed researchers to get an idea of the emissions created by shipping packages by truck in the US. Third-party data from two aviation analytics providers helped to tally up the estimated domestic emissions associated with Amazon Air, a fleet of planes that deliver parcels for the company. Maritime shipping estimates are based on manifest data from US ports where Amazon was a signee. Many of these numbers, the report stresses, are almost certainly an undercount, as authors excluded calculations like emissions associated with package returns and packages shipped or delivered by third-party carriers due to lack of data.
The main culprit for Amazon’s increased shipping emissions, the report finds, is from airplanes: US emissions associated with Amazon Air have skyrocketed 67 percent since 2019. According to Kelly, Amazon’s overall emissions have increased since 2019 due to the company’s expansion during the pandemic.
“When you think of things people order through Amazon, a lot of them are things you don’t need the next day,” Archer says. “Nevertheless, they’re getting shipped on airplanes.”
This trend tracks with the rest of the industry. During the pandemic, port disruptions around the world forced providers to switch over to airplanes to transport cargo; much of this air infrastructure remains in place today. Simultaneously, the US ecommerce market shot up by 43 percent in 2020 as everyone stuck inside ordered more and more stuff. In 2023, the US shipped 21.7 billion parcels—that’s 687 packages every second.
There’s one area where things are improving for Amazon: according to the Stand.earth report, emissions per package have been dropping for Amazon since 2020, which, Archer says, is largely thanks to loading more parcels on bigger planes. (Kelly says that the company’s overall carbon intensity—measuring the efficiency of its operations—has improved by 34 percent since 2019, even as its overall emissions went up.) In comparison, UPS’s package emissions intensity has consistently risen since 2020, thanks in part to its increased reliance on aviation.
But even considering small improvements like these, the aggressive growth Amazon has driven over the past few years is, in many ways, incompatible with sustainability. “Keep an eye on the skies for even more A330s delivering for Amazon customers in the coming months and years,” Amazon concludes in a blog post touting its new, more efficient cargo planes. Unless greener alternatives to jet fuel become available years ahead of schedule, it will be impossible for the company to add more planes to its fleet without also making emissions jump up.
“Amazon prides itself on being an ambitious and innovative company, but it’s making quite a problem for itself with its air freight cargo growth,” Archer says. “If Amazon is serious about climate progress, that’s a really easy place to start: stop flying so much.”
Amazon is no stranger to climate criticism. Its overall emissions have skyrocketed since it rolled out the Climate Pledge in 2019, despite an incremental drop in 2023. Last year, Amazon lost the support of a key UN-backed global climate organization, the Science Based Targets Initiative, for not meeting certain deadlines to set targets to reduce emissions; it was one of nearly two dozen companies axed by SBTI from its list of climate-conscious companies. In July, Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, an employee group, released a report criticizing the company’s calculations around its claim that it had met a sustainable energy goal. In 2023, Amazon quietly eliminated a goal to make half its shipments carbon neutral by 2030—a goal which, the company says, was superseded by the larger Climate Pledge.
Part of the issue in calculating emissions for Amazon is just how sprawling the challenges it faces are, thanks to its relentless vertical integration: the Wall Street Journal reported in May that in order to expand its control over its logistics processes, the company had already leased, bought, or announced plans to expand warehouse space in the US by 16 million square feet this year. Kelly said in an email in response to WIRED’s request for comment that the vast network of logistics the company has built allows it to deliver packages closer to their destination and avoid driving long miles.
Reading the company’s sustainability report is an exercise in understanding a variety of different ambitious technical and sociological climate goals across different industries involved in its supply chain. In response to WIRED’s request for comment, Kelly listed out Amazon’s membership in two business organizations advancing sustainable shipping, its membership in a buyers’ alliance encouraging the adoption of sustainable aviation fuel, and its investment in electric trucking: in May, the company put 50 electric trucks on the road in Southern California.
“I think it creates a lot of challenges for the broader transportation industry if every company just does what Amazon does and brings air freight in house,” Archer says. “Then you’ll have a situation where a lot of people are flying a lot of planes.”
There’s a real question of whether or not the company making significant changes would just move emissions from one company’s balance sheet to another’s as the rest of the industry keeps growing. Atlas Air, a subcontractor of Amazon Air, announced in May that it would stop domestic flights carrying Amazon parcels in favor of concentrating on other customers, including Chinese ecommerce titans Shein and Temu.
Still, with Amazon dominating so much of the US market—and with the capacity to kick off trends that other suppliers then follow, like expedited shipping—the company has an opportunity to set an aggressive example, like throwing a substantial effort into decreasing plane use and helping the US build out infrastructure for more sustainable long-haul trucking. (The company didn’t provide figures on how much it has spent on partnerships, research, lobbying, or other activities to decarbonize the trucking sector in the US.)
As for that splashy electric van pledge? The Stand.earth report projects that at Amazon’s current growth rates, if the company puts all the electric vans it promises on the roads by the end of the decade, that would still only account for a third of the company’s deliveries. If Amazon’s sales keep growing on pace, it would need 400,000 EVs to deliver all its packages.
“The 100,000 vans by 2030 is way too little, way too late,” Archer says.
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