Out the window the sun was rising fast. Edward had not sat at the piano all night. He had not been home all night. How long until the monsters chased him down and found him here in bed with Elisabeth, fresh and lively and unwilling to do their bidding? How long until they exterminated him? He knew they were coming. He anticipated it with every breath. They might come as soon as the next second, as late as next year. One way or another though, the inevitability was that they would come. And he would not live past that day.

“Edward?” he heard, as he came out of his thoughts. Elisabeth had awakened beside him and was stirring in her half-sleep

“I’m here,” he answered softly.

She opened her eyes as she sat halfway up in the bed, leaning herself on his body. “Are they coming?”

He shook his head in response. “I don’t know, but as long as we have our own minds there’s nothing they can do to us.” She leaned forward and they shared a kiss. It was the kiss of death. He knew it and he did not care. The rain beat on the roof peacefully, lulling them back into a reverie of long ago before the hardships, before the war, before the monsters had conquered the earth, before the city was in ruins, before the beach had been swallowed. They rested, not caring to worry. They talk softly in the small bed and laughed as they remembered out of their childhood some fond memories—an ice cream cone, roller skates, a bicycle. Such things were not common anymore.

But Edward was troubled, and Elisabeth sense it as the day fully dawned. The rain continued through the sunrise and through the lunch hour and into the dusk when the pounding in his head returned, more severe and malicious than ever before. He remembered the beach, remembered the tin can, remembered the lights and the greasy eyes of the monster who had scooped him up. He remembered the piano. The words echoed it in his brain. We will let you keep your name.

“What’s the matter, Edward?” Elisabeth asked, while he rubbed his temples in a frantic effort to assuage the pain. The pounding racked his brain, made his teeth ache, and strained his eyes. Nothing he did could ameliorate the intensity of the throbbing. He heard the whirring voices in his mind. He saw the oily-eyed creatures speaking to him, telling him he must play.

“The monsters,” he groaned. “Elisabeth, I think the monsters are coming.”

She looked at him, concerned. She touched his forehead. It was soaked with sweat. Gazing into his eyes, she breathed harder and faster, clutching his hand as his eyes rolled back into his head. He was pale as death, as if his soul had left him. She shook him, attempting to pull him from his trance. “Edward!” she called, and then screamed when he did not respond. “Edward, wake up! Snap out of it!”

There was a knock at the wall of the apartment, and then the window went crashing around the room, smashed by the metal hand of a monster. Its whirring voice screeched through the tiny room. Naked, sweaty, and smeared with ash, Elisabeth jumped from the bed pulling Edward behind her as she made her way to the closet. She threw herself inside, dragged Edward in behind her and shut the door. She heard the monster smashing her bedroom apart. Edward groped in the darkness, grabbed hold of her hand.

“My head,” he moaned. “The monster is talking to me.”

“What is it saying?” Elisabeth asked frantically.

“Can’t run. You can’t escape.”

“Don’t listen to him, Edward,” she whispered in his ear, although it was difficult to keep her fear from contaminating her sentiment. It lumped in her throat and in her stomach it congealed like fat off bacon. “I know a way to the beach.”

Her words sparked interest in him. The beach had been his escape before and it had not worked. The beach was swallowed this year as it had been the year of the accident. If he went to the beach with Elisabeth, they would not have to suffer the consequences of their crimes. He reached out to her in the dark of the closet, felt her body next to him and knew there was no other way. They would go this day to the beach. They would escape the clutches of the monsters this day.

Elisabeth removed the panel of the wall in the closet and crawled into a small space between the walls of the complex buildings. Edward could not see where they were going but he followed Elisabeth by feeling for her feet in front of him. On and on they crawled in the dark of the crawl space until they came to a metal grate. The whir of the monster was far behind, yet they still heard the clinking of the mines, the tunnels were the monsters put their human slaves to work. Edward felt the pounding in his brain as he sat in silence, waiting for Elizabeth to pry the gate from the face of the building. She worked fervently, pulling and prying until at last the way was opened. Into the gray evening they went. The ash was falling as it did every evening, mixing with the soft rain before the two lay down on the ground to die.

Elisabeth grabbed his hand and led him out into the open. Edward feared for his life, glancing over his shoulder in nervousness as Elisabeth pulled him along. They ran down to the swallowed beach, the swollen sea, puffed up like a bee sting. The faster they ran the harder the pounding in Edward’s head became, until he could stand it no longer.

He fell on his knees in the sand, still clutching Elisabeth’s hand as if his life depended on it. He craved a cigarette. His mouth was dry and his throat ached and his brain beat with exhaustion.

“Edward they’re coming for us. We have to go.”

As if it had heard her speak, a monster burst from the apartments, running, clanking, all its metal joints creaking as it approached. Its voice was in Edwards head, pinging like a pinball. “Make the box sing for us! Make it sing!”

A new strength flared in him and he rose to his feet forced, his legs to pump, to carry him to the sea, the swallowed beach. All the way to the water’s edge he ran with Elisabeth, the monster chasing, calling, pinging in his head. But Edward was lost in a mad fury. I will not give in to them anymore. I will not play for them. I am through with pleasing them. They took Irene. They will not take me.

The ocean engulfed him as he fell into the waiting tide. To feel the soft caress of the waves once more was a joy, yet the shocking cold possessed him with a rush of adrenaline. He pushed himself to his physical limits to escape the greasy eyes of the monster. He stroked his arms, propelling himself through the murky waters. His heart beat rapidly and his chest and his breath came in short gasps and yet he pushed on into the open sea. Stopping short for only a moment, he turned to see Elisabeth in the water behind him, struggling to keep herself afloat.

“ Don’t slow down,” she choked out, as water and saliva flowed out of her mouth. Her lips were blue, her skin pale in the chill of the water. Standing on the beach was the monster who had chased them down, calling out and its eerie metal voice. It was calling the trash collecting machine.

His final moments around the corner, near his face, and he clutched Elizabeth close to him in the cold water. She found his eyes, and kissed him tenderly as the monster’s trash machine scooped them up and deposited them into the giant metal can. The water still rushed underneath them, the monster still stood on the swallowed beach, the ash still fell from the sky, but the lid came down over them, sealing them inside. They were left in the dark to suffocate together, defiant and naked.

In the din of the chaos, Edward heard the soft tinkering of the piano in his head. He saw his mother smile as she kissed his head once more. The music soothed him into sleep as he curled beside Elisabeth in the metallic prison. Her head was on his chest her hands were on his back and her heart was in his hands. He had never felt so alive with wonder and magic as he felt in those last moments. He smiled. The monsters could no longer touch him, abuse him, or manipulate him. He belonged to himself once more.

And no one would wonder of him when he was gone. The humans left could no longer wonder, for they had forgotten how. Edward smiled again in the hot dark of the can, as Elisabeth’s lips found his one last time—the kiss of death. Death herself pressed her lips to his, the frozen taste of her dying flesh lingering for only a moment as he closed his eyes.