by Lilah Boone
“Yeah, what is it Gorgeous?”
“No more pet names. No more Baby, Sweetie, Honeyass, or whatever weird combination of bizarre sentiments you feel like using this week. We’re not a couple so we don’t do terms of endearment. Okay?”
“Yeah, okay.” His eyes were wounded as he took another sip of his beer. “I understand.”
“Great. I’m going to bed then. See you in the morning Roomie.” She emphasized the last word on purpose, hoping to get it through his head that they shared an apartment now and nothing more.
Once in her room the determination Abby had felt in the living room started to fade fast. The bed looked too big and cold to sleep in alone. She hated sleeping by herself with no one to throw an arm over in the middle of the night. And how would she dose off without hearing Alex’s rhythmic breathing and subtle nose whistling?
She walked into the connected bathroom to brush her teeth and take her anti-depressants like she did every night. She opened the medicine cabinet, screwed the cap from the orange bottle and took a pill from top. With the little white capsule sitting in her palm she began to wonder. Why wasn’t she more upset? She had lived with Alex for over a year, had even thought she might be able to love him at one point. Why wasn’t she crying in agony and reaching for the nearest pint of chocolate ice cream?
Had she ever really cared for him the way she was supposed to, the way he wanted her to? No, Abby had let Alex into her life because he could make her feel something, if only for a time. She realized then that since she had started taking the pills five years before, she hadn’t felt anything really, no true emotion. Her life had become little more than one big apathetic blur.
The only upside had been her work. She was able to paint without being governed by her moods or emotions. And surprisingly people liked to buy art that was dead and unfeeling. In the last three years alone she had sold enough to make a nice life for herself and for the most part she had been happy. At least, that’s what she thought it could be called.
Life should have meaning, she thought. She wanted to know what it was like to feel again, to really experience the gamut of human emotion. There was more to life than a career and decent sex. She wanted to laugh sincerely and cry at the end of sappy movies. She wanted to know what it was like to love someone and really love them; love them so hard that you couldn’t imagine life without them.
With a mix of determination and uncertainty, Abby walked to the toilet and dumped every last pill into the water. As the little capsules swirled around the porcelain and finally disappeared, she let out a sigh. Her therapist was going to be pissed.
CHAPTER TWO
Thursday, December 13th 2012, 7:52am
Abby did a lot of dreaming and usually knew how to recognize a dream from reality. But she rarely had nightmares or dreams of a real serious nature. Typically her nocturnal adventures were made of talking kittens and sexy movie actors. Which was why she was so surprised to find herself in the whirlwind of chaos that filled her sleeping mind.
People ran all around her, circling like frenzied, panic stricken sharks. Towers of fire sprung up from the ground like geysers out of the pits of hell. The earth shook beneath her feet. Piercing screams invaded her mind. She pressed her hands to her ears to block out the horrifying sound.
As she looked up on top of a high, grass covered hill she saw a fair skinned man dressed from the waist down in leather breeches. Pieces of metal jewelry wrapped around his neck and wrists. Tattoos stood out on the pale skin of his upper arms, moved over his shoulders and spiraled onto his neck. With a wooden staff in one hand, he raised his arms above his head, and looked straight into her. His eyes glowed like liquid jade as he opened his mouth to speak. Over the sound of the entropy around her, Abby heard his melodic voice ring out clearly as though he were standing right beside her.
“The Destroyer comes. The end is near. We must prepare for the arrival of the Ancient One. The Destroyer of Worlds approaches! Prepare yourselves!”
His tone turned into a chant as if he were reciting a song he knew all too well. His arms rose up higher towards the turbulent sky. Light glinted off the stones that hung from his staff and clouds swirled angrily above him.
“When blood drops upon the Earth, the Destroyer will appear, and mountains will open up and belch forth fire and ashes. Trees will be destroyed and all living things engulfed. Land will be swallowed up by the waters, and seas will boil.”
Behind the man a storm raged, but it was a storm like no other Abby had ever seen. The sky was red and glowing as if the sun itself had begun to surround the planet. The heat was overwhelming and Abby suddenly realized that the people who were once running around her in terror had begun to collapse at her feet. She was gripped with the sudden urge to save them all but didn’t know how. She had no idea what was killing them or how to stop it. A sense of hopelessness overcame her making her knees feel soft under her weight.
She ran, stumbling over fallen stones, to the children and cradled their limp bodies. Blood stained their angelic faces and Abby let out a grief stricken wail. Tears sprung to her eyes before she could stop them while a petrified scream escaped her lips. Then all at once the world went black.
* * *
When Abby awoke the night had gone. Rays of sun streamed in through the window and right into her olive eyes. It took only a second for her to realize she was not alone in her bed. It took another second for her to remember that was no longer the norm.
Alex’s familiar arms wrapped around her waist and she could feel his early morning arousal pressing against the curve of her backside. She quickly pushed his heavy arms off of her and slid to the edge of the bed. She turned fiery eyes on his sleeping face before smacking his cheek just hard enough to sting. Alex’s eyes flew open immediately.
“Jesus Abby. What’s gotten into you?” He covered his face with his hand, his jaw hanging in shock.
“Are you serious? Really? Are you just tuning in to this broadcast? Yesterday I find out that you slept with another woman, which by the way is a pretty huge deal. So we split up. Was I the only one who was clear on that? We broke up Alex! Over. Done. Finished.” She paused for effect and continued. “Then I very kindly agree to let you stay on the couch, my couch, so you don’t have to be turned out on your ass. And yet this morning I somehow manage to wake up being greeted by your… little friend.”
Alex flashed those eyes at her again. “Come on Baby. The couch was stiff and lumpy. The TV was supposed to keep me company but the cable went out. So I got lonely and I missed you.”
Alex smiled all too sexily and inched a little closer. Abby knew very well that he was completely naked under her green gingham, low thread count sheets. She leapt out of bed with the agility of a gymnast before he could get too close.
“Oh no you don’t. Come on Alex. I thought we had a deal. If you can’t stick to it you should pack up your things and move into the gallery. I don’t care if there’s no shower and no TV. I don’t care if the whole place starts to stink from you and the buyers start running away. I can sell my work somewhere else. I sleep in the bed alone.” She took a second to catch her breath. “And stop calling me Baby.”
Abby saw the look on Alex’s face and suddenly realized she was standing in front of him in nothing but a pair of red thong panties. She instinctively brought her hands up to cover her breasts.
“Hot.” He mouthed the word with a mischievous look in his eye before breaking into a laugh.
“Damn it,” Abby said under her breath then spun on her heels to run into the bathroom. She slammed the door behind her with a theatrical bang.
“If you don’t get the hell out of my room I am coming out there to beat the ever living shit out of you with the heaviest object I can find.” Her voice was sharp and serious as she yelled through the door while simultaneously scanning for the nearest projectile.
“Okay okay. I’m going back to my exile on the sofa. Don’t get those unbelievably sexy candle apple red panties in too t
ight of a bunch.”
“What an asshole,” she mumbled then shouted through the door. “Shut up Alex!”
Abby heard his muffled chuckle, listening as he shuffled around and pulled on his jeans. She could hear his belt buckle jangle loosely, clanging against his zipper as he walked through the bedroom door and shut it behind him.
Abby leaned against the bathroom door and sighed. She seemed to be doing that a lot lately. Apparently Alex wasn’t going to make this easy on either of them. But she refused to give in to him and his stupid sexy grin. She didn’t love him and was done with empty sex. Forever.
As a sign of her dedication to avoid the tempting man currently camped out in her living room, she made a silent vow to start wearing her ugliest baggy sweat suit to bed.
CHAPTER THREE
Sunday, December 16th 2012, 2:14 pm
Days passed and Abby was beginning to think she couldn’t take any more. After experiencing the same extreme apocalyptic dreams night after night, and dealing with the enticement of her sexed up quasi ex-boyfriend being around twenty-four-seven, she was simply on the verge of breaking into pieces.
She cursed herself every day for dumping her pills, but in the next second reminded herself that she was feeling things again and she was grateful for that. She was finally Abby again, un-medicated, slightly miserable, Abby. She told herself the misery was just part of being a person who could feel the full spectrum of human emotion and it would be worth it in the end.
Some space and some time to think would make all the difference. There never seemed to be enough time in the day to get things done and she couldn’t remember the last time she sat down to watch TV or read a book. She was always moving, always running.
And always making art. She was completely obsessed with painting and drawing all sorts of images from the dreams. Each one was different and the more she worked the more detailed the paintings got, revealing new parts of a story she couldn’t yet begin to understand. Every time she completed a painting she recorded her work by taking high resolution pictures of each canvas. Something other worldly or out of the scope of her everyday life was telling her that those paintings would serve as some kind of documentation or diary. She was sure they would be necessary eventually. She just had no idea how she knew that.
The real kicker - the real icing on Abby’s proverbial, three tiered crazy cake - was that when she wasn’t painting or dreaming about the end of days, she was hording food and water. She crammed it all into the back of her old Jeep along with anything else she thought could be used as survival supplies.
Abby was totally stumped as to why she was acting so nutty. In fact, she was starting to worry about herself. She drank way too much at night with the empty hope that she just might be drunk enough to skip out on one of those horror movies her subconscious mind kept playing on a loop. Life had gone from apathy to one big consistent act of fear for Abby. She was always afraid, always thinking about her own self preservation.
She could tell Alex was starting to get concerned because he was dropping comments about the paintings and saying things like “That’s nice Abbs. You trying to relive the glory days of art school or something?”
That was Alex’s polite way of saying he didn’t like what she was doing; that he thought it had been done before and looked like non-visionary student work. Alex hated bad art the way a rich woman in Beverly Hills hated no-name clothes. At least she could be grateful he didn’t say it belonged on the wall of a motel room.
She could admit that the dream paintings were not her usual style. They were more realistic than she usually liked to work, but that didn’t matter. In this case she was not painting for art’s sake. She was painting to create a record of what she was seeing and experiencing during the night because it was important. Abby thought maybe they were the most important pieces she had ever painted in her whole life.
As for the hording and nightly binge drinking: Alex had asked a few questions but otherwise he seemed to be ignoring it as part of some weird artist behavior. After all, artists were quirky and weren’t to be taken seriously regarding anything other than their work. Odd shifts in mood and routine were not to be paid attention to. It was all part of the delicate process of making art. At least that was Alex’s theory. It was easier for Abby to just play along, keep her head down, and carry on.
The whole thing was pretty crazy to Abby on some level where she remembered what it was to be normal. But something inside of her was being driven. She was constantly filled with a sense of purpose; that something significant was going to happen all too soon. Abby was sure her life was about to get pretty scary. Scratch that. Downright terrifying. And she was going to have to fight through a bunch of obstacles to survive whatever was coming her way.
The painting Abby was working on at the moment was a close up of the man on the hill. He was tall and carried a long stick with feathers, bones, stones, and other talismans hanging from it. From what Abby had read in books and seen on TV, she recognized him as a holy man, a priest from some ancient time.
She dipped her brush into a deep shade of red acrylic and moved it over the canvas with deliberate strokes. With the short brush clenched between her teeth she stepped back to examine her work. Her blonde hair was pulled up at the nape of her neck, her long bangs and other stray tendrils falling towards her face. She pushed a wayward strand from out of her eye and nudged the tortoise shell reading glasses up on the bridge of her nose before adding another stroke of blood red.
“Hey Abby!” Alex called from the living room. “You need to come have a look at this.”
Abby continued her painting without looking up. “Can’t right now. Too busy. Painting.”
“Come on Abbs, you can work on that bizarre series later. This is really important.”
She threw her brush in the water can with a huff then wiped her paint spattered hands on the old white button down she used for a smock. When she walked into the living room Alex was propped on the edge of the couch staring open mouthed at the flat screen.
“Have you seen this?” Alex pointed to the fuzzy, flickering screen with the remote. “Damn, I wish the picture would clear up. Every now and then you can see something though. And the audio is coming in fine.”
Abby glanced at the screen not expecting to see anything relevant, when suddenly her heart rocketed into her throat. One paint stained hand covered her mouth in shock as she listened to the middle aged female news anchor speak.
“Iron rich, red rain is falling in the south of France and earthquakes, ranging from minor to catastrophic, have been reported all over the world. Scientists are theorizing volcanoes may also soon start erupting across the globe. This seismic activity proposes the real and severe threat of tsunamis. National governments are assuring all citizens that the reports are most certainly exaggerated and they are encouraging everyone to stay in their homes and remain calm.”
“It’s crazy right.” Alex turned in the sofa to look at her. “I know natural disasters are more common these days, but this is like… biblical. I keep waiting for the plague of locusts to swarm through Manhattan.”
“Oh my god,” Abby whispered. “We’re too close to the ocean. There’s no safe place to hide. We can’t stay here. We have to go. We have to go now!”
“What? Go where? What are you talking about? You heard the lady. She said to stay in our homes. Wait, is this about the compulsive hording you’ve been doing lately?”
Abby removed her glasses, closed her eyes, and recited the words she had come to know by heart over the last four days.
“When blood drops upon the Earth, the Destroyer will appear, and mountains will open up and belch forth fire and ashes. Trees will be destroyed and all living things engulfed. Land will be swallowed up by the waters, and seas will boil.”
“What the hell was that?” The look on Alex’s face was one of complete horror. “You’re really starting to freak me out.”
“I don’t know. I’ve been having dreams and ever
y night I hear those words. That’s what the paintings have been about. They’re the images I see every night.” She pulled on her ear anxiously. “I have no idea how I know it, but I just know this is really bad. I think it’s like end of the world type stuff or something. We have to find shelter somewhere else because… well because I’m pretty sure New York is about to be swallowed up by the sea.”
“Jesus Christ! What? Are you serious?” He jumped up from his place on the couch and began to pace nervously. “This is nuts. It doesn’t make any sense.” He continued to pace, cracked his knuckles out of habit. “There’s no way you could possible know that.”
“I know. Believe me, I think it’s crazy too. But what’s the worst that happens if we leave? We go on a trip, the apocalypse doesn’t come, and we go back to our lives. But if I’m right, and I hope I’m not, then we stay here and die.”
After a momentary anxiety attack he faced her. “Seriously this is bat shit crazy, Baby. Sorry.” He took a deep breath. “But on the slim chance that I have not been living with a total whack job for the past year, I’m going to believe you. Basically because it’s better than biting the big one in a giant, deadly, and what I can only imagine could be classified as horrific, tidal wave. So yeah, a vacation might be nice. Let’s get out of Dodge.”
“Good. I know a place where we will be safe. Get packed up. I have a call to make. Oh, and pack light. Nothing that’s not completely necessary. We’re leaving here in exactly one hour.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Sunday, December 16th 2012, 4:24pm
“So why does your uncle have a bomb shelter in his back yard?” Alex sat in the passenger seat of Abby’s Jeep as they drove down Interstate 78 towards Pennsylvania.
“It’s in his front yard. Well an acre or so to the side of the house really. And it’s there because the guy who owned the farm before him was sort of the paranoid type. He lived there during the whole Cuban Missile Crisis thing and got wrapped up in the crazy fear propaganda. Kind of sad when you think about how much he must’ve shelled out to have it built and then Armageddon never showed up.”