#drasa

The Gorge (2025): “If something happens, and we don’t make it out of here, and this is the way the world ends, for us anyway, to me it was worth it because I got to know you.”

Look. All I'm saying is that Levi should've clawed his way out of whatever body of water he landed in and to the cave Drasa was in. Four days pass and they think they're in the clear, they can leave this place behind them and live their lives together.

But the fifth day dawns and Drasa is showing signs of contamination while Levi is not. Levi's eyes well up with tears while Drasa calmly and methodically loads a pistol, and a close up shows that her hands are trembling just the smallest bit.

And then she puts the gun in Levi's hands.

She tells him that she doesn't want to kill herself like her father did, that she doesn't want to die at all, but since she has no choice that she would rather Levi do it so that she can look him in the eye.

His hands shake almost as much as his voice when he tells her that he can't. That if he kills her, he'll have to kill himself too.

She curls his fingers around the gun as she tells him that he's not allowed to. She brings the gun up to her heart as she says that he has to live, and that he has to think of her as he does so that she can live too. She disengages the safety as she tells him to carry the memory of her love in his heart so that it will reunite them wherever they end up next. So that he can tell her all about what a true life could be.

He says I love you. She says I love you back.

They both pull the trigger.

He buries her in the forest and sings a song over her grave before leaving.

Months later, Levi's in a bar. It's open mic night and he announces that he's reading a poem called She Collapsed the Night. It's beautiful. He reads to a room holding its breath and, when he's done, leaves without another word and walks into the night.

At that moment, in a faraway forest, a rotting hand tangled with branches claws through the dirt. Levi might be able to tell Drasa what it's like to live sooner than he thought.