The Crimson Exhale

The cold pressed in. Always did in January, especially on Burrows Avenue. My breath plumed, thick and white, just like it always did. My hands, shoved deep into my pockets, were already numb, knuckles aching. But something was off. The light. It was all wrong.

It wasn’t the bruised purple of an oncoming Winnipeg snow squall, nor the faint, watery gold of a typical winter afternoon fading into premature night. This was… bigger. Deeper. Like the sky itself had swallowed something luminous and was struggling to hold it in.

I stopped, my worn boots crunching on the packed snow. The streetlights hadn't even flickered on yet, but they felt redundant, swallowed by this intense, impossible glow. The west horizon bled a colour I'd only ever seen in cheap fireworks – a furious, aggressive orange that seamlessly melted into a bruised magenta, then a startling, vibrant violet. It wasn't fading; it was *intensifying*.

My phone felt like a rock in my pocket. Useless. What would I even take a picture of? 'Look, the sky is breaking'? My fingers twitched, a sudden, unfamiliar anxiety stirring. It was beautiful, yes, in a way that twisted my gut. Like staring into something too perfect, too vast to comprehend. Like a wound that was also a wonder.

A faint hum, maybe from a distant power line, or maybe just inside my own skull, vibrated in the air. The silence was unnerving, though. No usual traffic drone, no distant shouts. Just the crunch of my own boots, and then…

Another set of boots. Further down the street, near the empty bus stop. Billy. He stood, shoulders hunched, his hands doing that thing where they picked at the loose threads on his hoodie sleeve. He was looking up, too, head tilted back, his profile sharp against the incandescent sky. His hair, usually just dark, seemed to catch the strange light, outlining it in a faint, alien glow.

He didn't notice me at first. Or maybe he did, and he just didn't react. That was Billy. Always quiet, always observing. I felt a weird urge to say something, anything, but the words caught in my throat. What was there to say? 'Pretty, eh?' No. This wasn't 'pretty'.

I took a slow step, then another, the snow squeaking underfoot. He flinched, a quick, almost imperceptible jerk of his head in my direction. His eyes, when they met mine, were wide, reflecting the surreal colours above. A flicker of something – fear? awe? – crossed his face before he shuttered it away, a habit he'd perfected.

"Hey," I managed, the word feeling thin and inadequate in the vast, still air.

He didn't answer right away. Just looked at me, then back at the sky. Then at me again. His lips parted, a barely audible sigh escaping. "Ben." Just my name, a whisper really. His voice, usually soft, seemed even more muted by the impossible scale of the sunset.

"What… is this?" I asked, gesturing vaguely upwards. My hand, even gloved, felt cold. My chest felt cold, too.

Billy shrugged, a slight lift and fall of his thin shoulders. He pulled his hands deeper into his sleeves. "Don't know." He didn't look at me when he said it, his gaze fixed on the horizon, but his voice had a raw edge, a tremor I hadn't heard before. It made a strange ache bloom in my chest, an echo of his unease.

The cold deepened. A sudden gust of wind, smelling faintly of ozone and something burnt, whipped around us. It tugged at the brim of my toque, made Billy's dark hair dance around his ears. He shivered visibly.

"Bus isn't coming," he mumbled, his eyes still glued to the sky, but a shift in his weight suggested a desire to move, to seek shelter.

I knew that. The world felt too still for buses, for schedules. We both knew it. But the suggestion was a lifeline, a reason to break the paralysing stare at the horizon. "Yeah. Probably not." I started walking towards the bus shelter, a small, glass-walled box that offered little protection but promised a psychological boundary against the enormity of the sky.

He followed, his steps light on the snow. He didn't say anything more. We reached the shelter, the transparent walls offering a distorted view of the world outside, making the glowing sky look like a half-remembered dream. I leaned against the back panel, the cold glass seeping through my jacket. Billy sat on the narrow bench, pulling his knees up to his chest, his arms wrapped around them. He looked small, suddenly, swallowed by his oversized hoodie.

The colours pulsed. Red, so deep it was almost black in places, then searing white at the edges, where it met the deep purple. It felt like the very fabric of the sky was being stretched, thinned, until it vibrated with an internal light. A faint shimmer, like heat haze, rose from the horizon, though the air was freezing. My breath hitched, a small, involuntary sound.

Billy looked up at me. His eyes were wide, the dark pupils dilated, reflecting the riot of colours. He didn't say anything, but his gaze, searching and vulnerable, asked a question I had no answer for. I felt a sudden, fierce urge to reach out, to reassure him, but my hands were still jammed in my pockets, useless.

"It's… kind of," I started, then trailed off. Kind of what? Beautiful? Terrifying? Both? "Something." The word felt stupid, but it was the only one that fit.

He nodded, slowly. "Something." His voice was barely a whisper. He shifted on the bench, making a tiny, almost inaudible scrape of denim against plastic. Then, he uncurled one hand, just slightly, and pointed a hesitant finger towards the deepest crimson part of the sky. "Look. There."

I leaned in, my head tilting, following his gaze. He wasn't pointing at the brightest part, or the most vibrant. He was pointing at a patch of sky near the horizon where the crimson was starting to deepen, to curdle, almost. It was pulling back, shrinking, but intensifying at the same time. Like a bruise spreading, or a slow, internal bleed.

The bus shelter became our temporary world, a fragile bubble against the impossible glow. Minutes stretched into an undefined length of time. The air inside the shelter grew heavy with unspoken thoughts, with shared breath. I felt hyper-aware of him, sitting there, his knees tucked close. The subtle scent of his laundry detergent, faint and clean, reached me. It was a normal smell in an utterly abnormal moment. It was grounding, oddly comforting.

The light outside became so brilliant it hurt to look directly at it, even through the distorting glass. Everything was bathed in the surreal glow – the snow on the ground, the skeletal trees, the frozen telephone wires. They cast impossibly long, dancing shadows, thin and sharp as blades.

Billy shivered again, a longer tremor this time. I saw his knuckles, white where he gripped his jeans. Without thinking, I pushed myself off the glass, moving to sit on the bench beside him. There wasn't much room. Our shoulders brushed. A spark, not of static electricity, but something else, something warm and unexpected, jumped between us. He didn't pull away. Neither did I.

He kept his gaze fixed on the sky, his breathing shallow. "It feels… like a dream," he murmured, his voice so low I almost didn't catch it. "But it's not."

"No," I agreed, the word rough in my throat. "It's… real."

His hand, the one he had used to point, lay on his knee. I found my own hand, without conscious instruction, moving slowly, hesitantly, until my pinky finger brushed against his. His skin was cold. Mine, too. But the contact, slight as it was, felt like a small, stubborn anchor in a world that was clearly coming undone.

He didn't move his hand. He didn't even acknowledge it, really, his eyes still riveted to the sky. But the tension in his shoulders seemed to ease, just a fraction. It was a tiny thing, but it felt enormous.

The sky continued its impossible transformation. The furious orange and magenta began to retreat, pulling back as if consumed by the deeper, more insistent crimson. The violet, too, started to fade, replaced by an unsettling, almost sickly green at the highest edges, where the last wisps of blue surrendered.

"What if…" Billy started, then swallowed, his voice cracking. He didn't finish the thought. Didn't need to. What if this was it? What if this was the last sunset? The question hung in the air, a silent, heavy weight between us.

I looked at him then, truly looked. The strange light painted his face in shades of red and green, making his eyes seem impossibly deep, almost black. There was a smudge of dirt on his cheek, near his ear, like he'd been leaning against something grimy. A small, human detail amidst the cosmic horror. And a sudden, overwhelming protectiveness surged through me, a ridiculous, fierce urge to shield him from whatever was coming.

"Doesn't feel… normal," I said, the understatement hanging like a pall. I felt my own breath hitch, my chest tightening. I glanced at our hands, still touching, pinky fingers barely brushing. It was the only thing that felt normal, anchoring me, connecting me.

The crimson deepened further, consuming more and more of the sky, but now, a new colour was emerging from its core. A slow, spreading patch of impossible, vibrant, luminous yellow. Not a warm, inviting yellow, but a feverish, sickly, almost blinding yellow. It radiated outwards, eating into the crimson, changing the very texture of the light. It wasn't the warm end of a day. It felt like the beginning of something else entirely.

And as the yellow began its inexorable spread, a faint, almost inaudible crackle began to fill the air, like static electricity building, not from the radio, but from the world itself. It was the sound of something breaking, slowly, meticulously, just beyond our sight, beyond our comprehension. Billy's hand, still touching mine, tightened, just a fraction. A silent, shared understanding of a new, unsettling truth began to settle over us. The world was ending, not with a bang, but with a horrifying, luminous, yellow whisper.