PostApoc

by Liz Worth

  Possible physical effects could include: LIFE OR DEATH.

  Somewhere in there you’ll say yes.

  P.S. IT’S MY BODY AND I’LL DIE IF I WANT TO.

  Sandy woke me up, drunk on vodka. She wanted me to drink with her and I couldn’t say no, not with all this new knowledge I had in me.

  We blacked in and out, tore the phone out of the wall as we went blind on alcohol, convinced voices were coming through the receiver.

  “Introvert,” one voice said.

  “Suffer sufferer suffer,” came another.

  “You are inversions.”

  We thought these were the voices of people who’d been dying in the streets from the chemical rain, their bodies turned to water and travelling through the wires and cables that ran deep into the earth.

  With one foot against the wall Sandy curled black nails under the phone. I wrapped my arms around her waist and ONE, TWO, THREE we pulled until the phone broke free, the wall spitting cords from the hole left behind. Then, from the balcony, we watched as the phone broke against the parking lot seven floors below.

  The phone booth at the corner was so hot that the dark wads of gum on the floor were peeling off the pavement. We had to deal with it because it was our only connection afterwards. None of the neighbours would let us in to make a call.

  The toe of my running shoe nudged one spot back and bright pink Bubblelicious peeked from underneath the dirty skin. I remember that better than the conversation I had with my mother. Now all the words are mixed up, mangled. Some parts of what I remember are true, but most of them aren’t.

  I wish I’d been able to hold onto the words as they came through the phone, because I know the way I hear them in my head is all wrong.

  ME: Hi, mom.

  MOM: Ang, hi. How are you?

  ME: Good. How are you?

  MOM: Fine. Dad’s fine. We’re both fine. Except we don’t think you are.

  ME: Why?

  MOM: Ang, I can hear you smoking. You’re blowing smoke right into the phone.

  ME: So?

  MOM: So how can you afford cigarettes when you aren’t even working?

  ME: It’s just, well, I find a way. I have to. They’re all that gets me through the day sometimes.

  MOM: —

  ME: And, well, I find it hard to get out of bed some days. A lot of days actually.

  MOM: —

  ME: Maybe I can come over one night. Stay for a weekend, even just on the couch or something. Where it’ll be quiet. Because there are days when I feel like these voices are inside me.

  MOM: —

  ME: But it’s too loud. Everywhere’s too loud, especially the places I stay. But the voices are trying to tell me something, and I think maybe if I hear them, they’ll go away. It’s never quiet enough, though, not even in my head.

  MOM: Those sleeping pills you’re taking make you look like shit.

  ME: I know. They cut crescent moons under my eyes, across the tops of my cheeks.

  MOM: If you come over, I could hold you. You’d sleep then, if you let yourself in between my arms.

  ME: —

  MOM: Well, why don’t you let us know when you’re going to come visit? Maybe you could come this weekend.

  ME: Well, yeah, this weekend’s possible, but see, the thing is I’m a bit short on cash. I might not even have enough for bus fare to get out there.

  MOM: I’m sure we can get your Dad or your brother to come pick you up.

  ME: Uh, okay, but couldn’t you and Dad just send me cash before then? Even just fifty bucks or something?

  I haven’t talked to her since. That feels like it was a long time ago now.

  - 6 -

  DISINTEGRATION

  We really knew it was The End when the fires were no longer contained to our throats and the ghosts got into the margins of the night. Flames had found their way to the city, engulfed entire streets, gated communities, high rise buildings. The biggest mistake people made was believing the government would take care of them, that “they” or “someone” or “something” would stop this from happening before it got too bad.

  But the people running things were just as scared and useless as the rest of us, caught off guard and left with no answers. They told us they could only do so much for so long. They were all dying, too, disappearing or combusting or dehydrating from dysentery. They told us they could not change fate, and fate was bringing us to the downfall.

  My friends and I were lucky in a way, because we were never enough of a part of society to expect anyone would want to take care of us anyway. We knew better.

  From the corner of any eye were other people like us, maybe, lost or moving on or running from something. They were mostly grey movement, so it was hard to tell. Cars were still hulking for miles along the road, but this time some people would never end up getting out of them. For weeks afterwards you’d see their bodies rotting inside. Stubborn corpses. Other drivers’ seats sat empty, keys still in the ignition, passengers sliced into disintegration.

  I was with Aimee. We’d been popping pills all night, that last night of what was left of the world as we’d known it. The only drugs we could find were something new that could numb and stimulate simultaneously. Aimee’s guy had picked them up. We both had lovers then—not boyfriends, just guys with faces as temporary as our feelings. They had names like blank slates: Smith and English.

  The problem with the pills was they’d melt into your eyes. And in that heat, that fire, everything was a squint already.

  The city sucked in every sound, cushioned us in deafness. There was no patterned footfall, no breaking windows, no screams. Even the flames were whispers diminished.

  Only once did a sound break through the insulating void: a sob, quick and unrestrained. Horror, it held, so I let the pills spread from my eyes to my ears, clouding my head in powder.

  My ankles, shins, knees lost their tendons and bones. They rolled over the pavement, which had all turned to rubber. So high, I thought the soles of my shoes were melting against the ground. I bent over to untie them and the street rose up to catch me, lay me on my side. Smith’s hands scooped me up a few times, big hooks curled up in my armpits. I only knew they were there because his hands were so fast and hard that the next day, black rings of bruise rippled out from underneath the sleeve of my t-shirt.

  In bare feet I felt every pebble and piece of glass on the ground, but at the time it didn’t hurt. It was too hot for shoes. I held onto them with curled fingers but they dropped from my hands and broke the sound barrier. The clapping sounds they made on the ground skittered up and over the rooftops around us.

  We’d all been walking around with backpacks, bulging purses for a while before then. In those days no one ever left what they needed at home because we didn’t know if there’d be a home to go back to later on. We all felt The End coming so we carried what we could, what we loved.

  That last night I wore a black faux-fur jacket. My only jacket. It hadn’t been cold in what felt like years but I held onto it, just in case. My underarms soaked the lining. My cheekbones shone with sweat. I could see them from my lower peripheries.

  Aimee asked why I didn’t just take it off, ditch it. I wanted to tell her I might need it, but I had just pushed another pill between my teeth and my throat was raw-dry from the city’s fever. I had to wait through the melt of bitter before I could work up enough saliva. When the pill got past my tongue it clung to my throat, sat like a stone.

  On Sherbourne Street a house shrugged and yawned, its front door wide open and an old red carpet flashed from its insides like a tongue. Its frame was aloof and unattached and right there for us to take, at least for a night.

  From under the push of English’s boot on its wooden porch step came a creak that was almost a cry, a surprised sound like the house had forgotten what it was like to have someone walk into it.

  Inside the air was a shade cooler, the walls panting something musty and anxious, a brushing of mold over top of the as
h and sweat on our skin.

  “Shhh,” English said. “There’s someone here.”

  He went off into another room, where we heard him call out.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi,” Aimee answered. It was the first time we’d laughed all night.

  Smith flicked a light switch up and down, even though we knew it wouldn’t work. All the streetlights were out, power fried.

  There was the aqua taint of Zippo fluid and then the sound of a thumb striking it once, twice, and then we had light. And twenty heads, bald and shining, stared back at us, yellow reflections of the burning lighter fluid bouncing from the sides of their skulls.

  “What the fuck.” The sentiment strung between us.

  English, relieved, sighed for everyone. The place was full of mannequins.

  Aimee pulled out a smoke, lit it off Smith’s Zippo, and said, “You’ll waste good fluid like that, you know.”

  Later, we lay back on the floor in the room to the right. There were no mannequins in there, just a couch and some mirrors, a filing cabinet in the corner. No one wanted to claim the couch for themselves, so instead we’d taken the cushions off to share as pillows.

  Kiss at midnight, me and Smith, lips closed, hard wax against front teeth. We guessed it might have been that time. We hadn’t known anyone with a working watch for weeks and we’d forgotten about calendars, days of the week. We guessed it might have been New Year’s Day.

  Aimee figured the person who’d lived in that house must’ve made their own clothes or something, used the mannequins for models. English made a joke no one laughed at: “I can think of some other reasons,” but could hardly get the words out. His voice was getting thick with the pills we’d dipped into to help us settle in.

  Aimee might’ve said, “You’re a pig.” At least she could still talk after eating pills all day.

  Something dry scuttled across the bare floors upstairs. A second later it was followed by a heavy drag.

  “Holy shit,” I said. I breathed, but barely. Those two words seemed so small they’d needed claws to pull themselves out of my throat.

  English stood, asked, “What do you think is upstairs?”

  Smith stood too, asked, “You want me to go check that out with you?”

  Aimee started to get up. I was hoping to just pass out. Useless. Aimee said, “You can’t both go up there. We need one of you here. Ang is almost out.”

  English and Smith didn’t want to go alone. My fingers went to my lips, shoving something hard between them again, not even thinking about it anymore. My mouth was white sand but somehow I swallowed past it, got the pill down. I held up a hand in the dark. Aimee answered the silhouette, plucked the pill from my fingers, swallowed. Cat’s eyes, we had.

  Aimee lowered herself back down to the floor as English and Smith went upstairs. Both of us then, giggling. I might have started it, saying, “Oooohhh … . spooky. OoooOoooOoooh …”

  Aimee was mellowing. “It’s probably just a raccoon or something,” she reasoned. English was laughing, too, then, said he’d probably be knocked out on that last dose before he even got upstairs. His words came to us with the creak of the first few steps.

  Right then, the speeding side of the pill kicked in for another dose. I didn’t think I’d be able to fall asleep that night. Or maybe ever again. My body was all adrenaline and heartbeat. I looked up the stairs. Smith and English were higher on the steps, taunting ghosts now, too.

  “Oooooooohhhhhh,” Aimee and I answered back, and then the drugs kicked off a caramel ribbon and sent it running through our voices, something sweet enough that I could close my eyes and nearly believe we were just playing games.

  Upstairs, English and Smith’s boots scuffed against wood. As the old floorboards squeaked under the curve of their feet I breathed, closed my eyes, and then, somehow, I slept.

  I dreamt of Saturn and its rings, the whole planet fallen loose from the stars and hanging low over the intersection two blocks down. Around its waist, brass and blade reflected the city lights. Street lamps and neon glow bounced back so bright that Saturn could have been the sun, disguised for centuries. And those rings, they were so big and bright and bursting with heat, bursting through the window, that for a second that dream came true: Saturn’s rings were right outside my window. And even though it’d been hot for days with the humidity slinking around our ankles, Saturn’s heat was clean, something we could almost accept.

  If the next day was really the first day of January, as we’d guessed, it didn’t look like it. There was no snow, no cold. By then, the sky had slipped into a coma and the seasons had disappeared altogether.

  And so had half the city, half the country, half the world. It was the biggest disappearance yet. People were just suddenly gone, and so were Smith and English.

  Aimee and I couldn’t stop saying, “They just aren’t up there.”

  We’d looked in every room, looked outside, walked the block and then done the search all over again. And again. And again. It hurt so much to walk I eventually had to crawl. My feet were black from walking barefoot, could’ve been charred.

  Aimee said, “It can’t be a joke. They wouldn’t joke like this, not for this long.”

  And even though I knew it was true, I didn’t want to hear her say it. But I couldn’t tell her that, because the depth of silence behind those words was even worse. I needed Aimee’s voice beside me because there didn’t seem to be anything else. There wasn’t even anything left of them. No blood, no bodies, just gone.

  We wondered if anyone we knew remained. We wondered if we were the last.

  It didn’t take us long to find out we weren’t.

  - 7 -

  THIS IS HOW WE LIVE

  If you want quiet, go outside. There’s no prowl of motors, no stress of brakes. No lawnmowers or blaring stereos. This street is as empty as all the others. Oh, there are other people around of course, just a lot fewer than there were before. If we’re still here, there have to be others, except they’re all reduced to brutal instinct and a pack mentality: protect your own at all costs.

  My face is the proof of scarce sleep with a bare floor against my back, sucking off my spine. Under my eyes are fat slugs, the blush of puffy eyes.

  What keeps me awake in here isn’t anything from out there. The only voices that rise up from outside are animal. No other sound creeps through the drafts of these old windows, except for once, maybe, just a few days after we found this place when we heard a baby crying outside. It lasted a few seconds, and might have missed our ears altogether if it hadn’t gotten caught in the hairs of our arms, brushed them back until skin and follicles stood cold, puckered.

  Otherwise the quiet slouches against the windows, hugs the corners of the building, but never slips through the cracks. Maybe it stays outside because it knows it isn’t heavy enough to cover what’s within, no competition for what we externalize, or for what’s broken, disrupted under our tread.

  In here, sounds spill from one room to another. Just now, a knife drops in the kitchen downstairs and the thick of its handle goes right through the walls.

  And beside me every night Aimee keeps a tattooed arm over her eyes and talks in her sleep, mumbles omission, infection, admission.

  This sprawling Victorian has its own sounds, but we aren’t sure if it’s the house’s own spirits or things that have followed us in. Our mattresses, freed from empty houses, still hold the shape of the people who slept in them before, the shape of the dead. At night they sigh into us, spooning.

  From above comes the scrape of claws. Tiny moans under the weight of the ball of a foot. Or a stiff sole, maybe.

  Two girls, Brandy and Camille, went up there the other night drunk. We watched from the bottom of the stairs as Brandy’s deflated mohawk and Camille’s brown dreads hung like dirty tails along their backs. Climbing up, up, they giggled all the way, expecting an animal, a raccoon maybe.

  “Nothing,” they said when they came back down the stairs. Not giggling n
ow, but faces full and red, nervous hands reaching to hold smoldering cigarettes. Camille hasn’t come out of her room since.

  And from below, agony. We never go into the basement because that’s where The Shouting lives—a man’s voice, but bodiless. Cam and Trevor, also drunk, went down there a few nights ago, baseball bats in hand, thinking there was perhaps an intruder down there.

  “Nothing.” That’s what they said when they came back up, faces as plain as white tshirts.

  Later that night there was no yelling, finally. Nothing, finally. And we could have forgotten about it, probably, would have wanted to, but the boys’ boots had stirred the subterranean air. It took a few days before the disruption of dust and atmosphere settled down before another shout shot up, the coarse underwing of a black bird.

  This is how we live: in ancient old rooms with others like us, just as we always did. We came to this place after running into Trevor outside City Hall, lining up for rations. He remembered me and Aimee from the Mission and we remembered him from Kohl, the old goth club at Queen and Bathurst, where he used to perch on a newspaper box wearing the same torn lace top and tight black jeans every night, posing in the hopes that someone would take pity on his tentative prettiness and bring him inside for a drink.

  Trevor’s black dye job has grown out now, his lace top replaced with a black t-shirt, faded brown cords on his legs. We almost didn’t recognize him, except that the look in his eyes is the same: part puppy, part lost boy.

  But whatever collectivity we had before The End has fallen away: some here have had more primitive urges surface, creating change, clashes. Protecting what they’ve got, except it doesn’t feel the same as when I moved in with Valium. The other girls here, Brandy and Carrie and Camille, are made of amber eyes and sharp shoulders. Me and Aimee only take our knives with us when we leave the house, but the other girls tuck blades into their boots all the time. At night they sleep between the guys, covered only by the shells of leather jackets and wiry arms. They catch me staring at their faces, trying to summon a name or a place I might have seen them at before. When our eyes meet, though, they tell me to say nothing, stay quiet, look away, so that’s what I do.