RIP Onwords.Io

 As is sometimes the case with these online literary magazines, Onwords.Io recently shut down. Instead of chasing down another publication and acceptance, I have decided to post the whole thing here while continuing to focus on new stories (coming soon!).

For those who missed it when it was on Onwords, here is "Yes Shelter", the first story I ever published.

"Yes Shelter"

By Alex J. Barrio

The Emergency Broadcast System text message says we have 22 minutes before the nuclear missile hits.

“I’m not coming,” Courtney says when I call her.

“What do you mean you’re not coming?” I walk outside my building to take one last look at the clear blue sky.

“Not enough time. By the time I get my cat and pack up everything and walk over there it will be too late. I won’t make it.”

“You need to try,” I insist, though now she’s got me questioning why. She sounds resigned to dying. Wish I could say the same.

“I don’t want to stress about it. I think I’m just going to read and try to finish this book before it happens.”

“Oh, you’re reading Parable of the Sower?” I bought her my favorite book for her birthday.

“No. I haven’t gotten around to it. Don’t know where I put it actually. Oh well.”

Twenty minutes left. I can barely breathe. “Grab your stuff and come on.” She lives in a brownstone. I live in an apartment building where we have an underground garage with “Bomb Shelter” signs leftover from the Cold War. With me she has a chance to survive but without me? Obliteration.

I look up the street, wondering if I should run to her. Seven or eight minutes to get there, a minute or three of arguing, and then hightail it back together. Even with the bad knees and sore back of a man much closer to forty than thirty, it is possible.

“Please.”

I want to join the screaming around me. Cars are crashing into one another as they race through lights. A woman in gym clothes is bawling on the curb near me, her head in her lap. The corner store employees sprint out, yelling into their phones, “I’ll be right there!” A group of teenagers sprint into the store, grabbing beers and cigarettes, laughing as they post their TikTok videos of the apocalypse.

“I’m going to go,” she says. Sixteen minutes.

She sighs, exasperated; her default mode throughout our relationship. “You still haven’t thought this through, even after all our conversations.” Living in DC, the topic of nuclear annihilation comes up fairly regularly, sometimes over dinner, sometimes post-coitus as we lie in bed struggling to fall asleep.

This is the first place the bombs fall.

“Get over here and we can talk about it again in person.” Fifteen minutes.

“Why do you want to survive? Everyone you know and love will be dead. The world will be a mess. How are you going to make it? You work a fake internet job. You’ll have to fight, maybe kill someone. You don’t even know how to use a gun.”

“We’ll figure it out.”

“No, we won’t.” Fourteen minutes to go. It’s hitting me that she is really not coming. “My mom’s calling me. I have to go.”

“Wait!” I want to find the perfect words.

“Why do you even want me there? We’ve only been dating a couple months. I was actually planning on breaking up with you.” Thirteen minutes.

“Seriously?”

“I just feel like we want different things in life and long-term we’re not the right fit.”

“How are we not the right fit?” We enjoy the same movies, the same books, the same ways to waste our time during the day. What else is there? “I thought we had a real connection.”

“We’re just not compatible. I think the fact that we’re still having this conversation proves my point.”

Twelve minutes. The sky is falling.

I hang up.

I run upstairs to my apartment. My cat Spencer greets me at the door. I pick him up and shove him into his crate. He scratches my hand and instinctively bring the bleeding wound up to my mouth. It takes me a moment to realize what I’ve done. I pull my hand away and spit into the sink, as if cat scratch fever is the worst thing I have to worry about.

I grab my backpack, cat food, Spencer’s food and water bowls, a few bottles of water, and a half-eaten loaf of bread and jar of peanut butter.

I should have been stealing groceries instead of begging Courtney to join me.

Spencer shrieks as we go down the empty stairwell. When we get to the bottom, we see everyone who lives in my building is already in the underground garage. The atmosphere is festive. People pass around drinks and play music out of their cars.

They are all here because they know this is real yet no one is acting as if what’s about to happen is actually going to happen.

Knowing no one, I scamper off to a corner to wait. I look at my phone. I’ve lost signal. I probably should have called someone besides the last woman I matched with on Hinge. Maybe my mom in Jacksonville or my dad in North Carolina. Maybe my brother in Denver or sister in California. Maybe my best friends, one in Miami and one in New York. I wonder if they know what’s happening and if they are worried about me.

Why didn’t they call me?

I wish I had brought a book to read.

Five minutes. I spend them telling my stressed-out, yowling cat everything will be alright. Soon the earth shakes, everyone gasps, and there is only darkness. I hear my cat begging for answers. I tell him everything will be okay because we are still alive.

Alone, but alive.