In a Glimpse

She smiled at him. He wanted to smile back but hesitated. He was a different person now. Before the burn, he was confident, unshaken, and on top of the world.

Life was beautiful before he lost Kara. The wealth, the prestige, the privilege. He loved it all. He smiled and recalled the night he proposed to her, the love of his life, replacing the heart-shaped locket he had given her as teenagers with a sapphire engagement ring his mother wore before she died.

Her hair, her eyes, the nape of her neck…she was exquisite. Almost as exquisite as the piercing glares coming from the crowd surrounding them in that big moment. Full and fiery daggers, lacking love, full of envy.

Yes ….envy, and he basked in every moment of it.

There they were, in the center of the room. Everything was perfect. Kara was the perfect girl from the perfect family. A trophy to complement all his achievements, an accessory any digital broker of his caliber would kill to have.

Briefly, he caught a glimpse of the crowd that looked on. The family, the friends, and her awkward roommate...

That damned roommate followed Kara around like a lost puppy and always seemed to have a reason Kara shouldn’t go out, or always needed something at the worst times, or became so ill that Kara had to stay and take care of her…every…single…month. Always in the way.

He occasionally wondered what that was about but didn’t push the issue because, after all, he had everything he could ever want, and it all centered around Kara. In that second, he could hear, smell and feel Kara. He pined for those moments and would hold onto them whenever they came. Since he lost her, moments like this came few and far between.

One week after their engagement, Kara and her roommate disappeared. They offered vigils, then ransoms, then incentives to join the daily search parties until one day, Kara's body washed along the riverbank.

He saw and heard her in everything. Her face glimpsed upon the girls dancing along the sidewalk. Her voice eluded him in the moments before he woke. Her smell lingered in his bedsheets, his shirts, and his baseball caps. These instances became so unbearable; he would drink to numb the pain.

Then one day, we noticed he had no thought of Kara all day. Instantly, the shock of losing her engulfed him. The same pain that came from her omnipresence now came with the realization that these glimpses would come less…and less over time.

Since that day, glimpses of her face went from a constant presence to fleeting auras, vanishing as quickly as they came. Replaced by moments like now, when the dank, musty odor of his surroundings came back to him. And sitting in the corner smiling as if the world around them wasn’t in utter chaos was her...

“Bartender can you get us another and whatever he’s drinking, “ she said.

Now, back in the only place for forty miles that resembled a bar, looking at the first woman he’d noticed since the digital burn, he hesitated, then eeked a crooked smile in her direction.

Before this time, she was no one he would notice. Girls like her could never be in his focus. Her indelicate skin, stubby hands, and apple-shaped body left little to be desired before the “Digital burn.”

Five years ago, the world became catatonic as a virus swept through country after country, leaving towns, homes, and workplaces desolate. The virus was airborne, impacting anyone within six feet of an infected person. Many people perished, but those who sheltered in their homes and kept their distance from others survived. Some thrived, learning to trade cryptocurrency as a means of wealth. Others, known as “Burners,” didn’t trade; they just stole.

They became so good at stealing; they devised a system that robbed mogul after mogul of their cryptocurrency. The world watched in awe as the Burners pillaged the rich, digitally delivering them from their greed. No one's wealth was safe, Not even a digital broker with expertise in crypto asset protection. Inevitably, he too became a victim. This phenomenon known as the Digital Burn caused thousands of millionaires to plummet into poverty.

Men who owned corporations, never knowing what it was like to live without means, jumped from penthouses and high-rises, welcoming death as billions in untraceable crypto were stolen from the wealthy, heads of corporations desperately ravaged their employees in an effort to spare themselves the same structural poverty they created for the lower class. In turn, the lower class resorted to stealing for each other, finding food, shelter, and water wherever they can. This spiral of morals resulted in undoing the little civil decency remaining after the viral pandemic left communities everywhere with mental impacts of isolation, followed by extreme poverty.

Savagery became the norm, and scarcity of spaces where one would feel safe became a reality. It was rare to find relief from the chaos outside, like this dank old bar with moonshine made from rotten, ill-grown vegetation, filtered by whatever mesh apparatus available. Every time he stumbled upon a hole in the wall like this, it did his heart good.

So, here he sat, searching for relief in a glass of dirty moonshine and this one, mediocre woman.

Casually they ordered drink after drink. Each glass leading them closer to the back alley, where they would find more relief in each other's arms. And after what seemed like an eternity of sleepless nights, they both had a moment they could both close their eyes and rest deeply.

Deeply, that is until he awakened to the burning of his stomach and the damp, cold shiver of his limbs. Looking down, he could see the blood puddling out of his body.

He thought to himself, how could this happen? Then inwardly laughed at the irony. Even after all the prestige and wealth were gone, and he somehow survived five years of destitution, savagery, and chaos, he still succumbed to his greatest weakness.

His ego and the need to have someone stroke it.

After all the things that happened to him, after all the time that passed, he was still the same. But not the woman he was with…

He looked around in shock and found her face. That face, with glaring daggers of fire and fury. That damned roommate.

Older, but today holding all the confidence he once had. Around her neck was the sweet-heart locket he had given Kara. The woman stood over him with a bloody blade and declared, "You wanted her; now she'll be yours."

And, his response? Not anger, or rage, or hopelessness, but contentment and peace. He smiled a genuine smile as the locket took him back to the room where he proposed. As Kara's smell, sound, and taste returned to him, he knew it would no longer be a glimpse. He would no longer struggle to hold on to that moment. This time, he drifted peacefully into it.

Forever