Obsidian Worlds

by Jason Werbeloff

  “I … I can’t take up more of your time. Your space.” He glanced around the bunker. The room suddenly felt tiny.

  “Nonsense,” said Mantel.

  “Stay,” said Fuchsia. “Please.”

  He cocked his head to one side. Considered us silently.

  “What were you doing in Mea She’arim?” asked Lottery 7.

  “It’s none of our business,” said Mantel.

  “Touring Jerusalem,” said John. “Was having drinks with friends up on Ben Yehuda Street. Had a few too many. Guess I walked the wrong way down King George.”

  “I bet he’s American,” whispered Fuchsia to ourselves.

  “I thought you liked Italian men,” said Lottery 7, loud enough for John to hear.

  Fuchsia blushed.

  “Lottery!” barked Mantel.

  A boyish crease spread across John’s brow.

  “He’s gorgeous,” whispered Fuchsia. “Even with the slash across his eye.”

  “We could use the company,” said Mantel.

  “Alright,” said John. “My submarine doesn’t leave till next week. I guess I could stay a little longer.”

  *

  In the days that followed, we tried not to watch him sleep. It was strange to hear another’s breath. Strange, but comforting. We tried not to watch him cook – he made an omelet so savory, it sang. We tried not to watch the way he ate with only two hands. Tried not to stare at him hobble about the bunker on one-and-a-half legs.

  But Fuchsia watched everything.

  “I like his hair,” she whispered. “And his legs … only John could make a cast look sexy.” Our eyes rested in the fleshy nook at the back of John’s knee. Supple. Smooth. Vulnerable.

  “Jesus,” muttered Lottery 7. “Get over it.”

  “Hmmm?” asked John. He was cooking the omelets with peppers this time. Fuchsia drooled.

  “Thank you for making lunch,” said Mantel.

  John bent over the stove. “Least I could do. It’ll be done in just a minute.” His shoulders undulated under his shirt as he tossed the omelet.

  Fuchsia sighed through the electric sizzle. She guided our eyes to the fine hairs at the nape of his neck. Traced a line down to his biceps. His delicate hands.

  “Where do you get the eggs?” asked John.

  “Hover-delivery,” said Lottery 7.

  “Why don’t you just go out and buy some?” John pointed to one of the monitors with a buttery spatula. “Looks like there’s an egg stand just the other side of the street.”

  A drop of butter plopped onto the linoleum floor. Lottery 7 cringed.

  “Lottery 7 …” said Mantel. “… he likes things a certain way. Doesn’t like the outside.”

  “‘Like’ has nothing to do with it!” blurted Lottery 7. “It’s not safe. Not since the Sixes took to –”

  “It’s best not to ask,” said Fuchsia. “He gets upset.”

  “I see,” said John. He returned to the eggs.

  Fuchsia placed a hand on his back. “Sorry. We didn’t mean to snap.”

  John turned, and looked at the hand. It was Fuchsia’s. Our bottom-left hand. Of course it was all of ours, but unless one of us needed it for something, it was Fuchsia’s. She painted the nails on that hand. ‘Three Shades of Shimmer’, it read on the bottle. Lottery 7 wasn’t impressed when she’d put the order into the hover-pharmacy. “We can’t just order things willy-nilly,” he’d complained. “This is the apocalypse. Orders are risky. Nail polish isn’t exactly top of our priority list.”

  But there was Fuchsia’s hand, her nails painted in Three Shades of Shimmer, resting on John’s chest. His eyes traveled up her forearm, slid along her shoulder, and down our torso. Mantel’s torso – a man’s torso.

  There was curiosity in his gaze. John didn’t remove the hand. “Omelet’s ready,” he said eventually. Fuchsia melted at his smile.

  We sat at the workstation. John on the couch. We’d never thought to have a dining table.

  “So … uh, how long you lived here?” asked John. He crunched on a pepper.

  Mantel and Lottery 7 had learned not to interfere with mealtime conversations. Fuchsia did all the talking, while doing her best not to spill omelet everywhere.

  “Mantel was a doctor during the Water Wars,” she said. “He was in this body first. Lottery 7 joined him after the Bomb. Then I joined them about six months ago. Mantel’s been here almost eight years. Lottery 7, three.”

  “Sounds like a good … person – Mantel,” said John.

  “He is. He never explained it – why he took in Lottery 7. And me.”

  “You enjoy it? Living with them?”

  “Yeah,” said Fuchsia. “It’s okay.”

  John dropped a sliver of omelet on the floor. Struggled to stretch past his broken leg to retrieve it. Fuchsia reached for the yellow dollop. Bumped our head on John’s cast as she came up.

  John nearly fell off his chair.

  Fuchsia giggled.

  Lottery 7 sighed internally.

  “What were you … you know, how did you live before joining Mantel and Lottery 7?” asked John, righting himself on the chair.

  “Uh … I don’t remember,” Fuchsia said quickly. We blushed.

  “We found her on a pavement three blocks from here,” said Mantel.

  Fuchsia’s hand stroked the Magen David hanging from our neck. Its slim golden angles worked their way between her fingers.

  “She was dead,” said Lottery 7.

  Fuchsia’s fingers froze around the golden symbol.

  “Lottery!” chided Mantel.

  “What? She was …” said Lottery 7.

  “But not long before we found her,” said Mantel. “Recently enough that we could bring her back with us. Into us.”

  Fuchsia resumed stroking the Star of David. “Where you from?” she asked.

  “United Europe. West Six,” said John.

  Fuchsia nodded.

  “You know it?”

  “Uh … I …”

  “Western-most sector of the continent,” said Lottery 7. “After the British Empire fell to th–”

  “Alright,” said Mantel. “I’m sure John knows where he’s from.”

  John stood to get a second helping.

  “His submarine is leaving tomorrow,” Fuchsia whispered.

  “I know,” whispered Mantel.

  “Do you think he likes us? Umm … likes me, I mean?”

  “I think,” whispered Mantel, “that you’ll find out soon enough.”

  John couldn’t hide his smile, as he sat down to eat his omelet.

  *

  Maybe it was the exhaustion of having to censure ourselves around our guest. Or the relief of having company. Maybe it was the joy of a home-cooked meal other than Mantel’s limited repertoire. Most likely it was the joie de vivre that stole Fuchsia’s breath whenever John so much as glanced our way. (Fuchsia may have been a different person, but she shared our body. Her endorphins were our endorphins). Whatever the reason, we fell asleep after lunch. A deep, slack-jawed sleep.

  When we woke, we felt the world had changed.

  A hot, nuclear breeze dusted our cheek. Radiation tickled our nostrils.

  The airlock was open.

  “Emergency decontamination protocols!” screamed Lottery 7. A siren shook the bunker.

  “Where’s John!” wailed Fuchsia. “John!”

  Lottery 7 sprung us from the bed. Dashed to the airlock. He stretched for the “EMERGENCY LOCK” button, but his hand never reached it.

  “John!” yelled Fuchsia. She exerted every ounce of her willpower to stop Lottery 7 from shutting the door. “We must find John.”

  Lottery 7 strained against Fuchsia. “Clearly, you scared him off. He’s run a mile,” he said through clenched teeth.

  Mantel placed his will behind Fuchsia’s. Held the hand away from the button. It was Lottery 7’s hand. Nails chewed down to their cuticles. A callus on its thumb.

  While the hand jerked back and forth
with the strain of competing wills, the nuclear wind lathered our eyebrows in a fine layer of obsidian dust. Lottery 7 felt the radioactive particles eating into his epidermis, passing through his skull, boring into his brain. And the microbes. Who knew what bio-weapons the Tens had released into Jerusalem’s atmosphere? The poison could be coating our lungs this very moment. Scratching and burrowing into our alveoli. Clawing through our bloodstream.

  “It’s not safe!” Lottery 7 bawled.

  “We’ll close the door if –”

  “We need to find John!” screeched Fuchsia. “He could be hurt.”

  “We’ll close the door,” said Mantel, “if you agree to go outside to find him. After we’ve armed ourselves.”

  Lottery 7 took a shallow breath of Jerusalem’s radioactive air. “Alright,” he said. “Alright.”

  It took Lottery 7 under a minute to flush the bunker with ultraviolet light to eliminate any bio-toxins. We donned the gas mask, grabbed three pulse rifles, and snapped on our force-shield. With violent readiness, we sprung out the airlock, rifles ready to blow away anything that twitched with the wrong intention.

  But instead of facing a posse of grumpy Sixes, or an armada of hostile Tens … there was a gaggle of Eight children. They scuttled along the pavement, their payot bobbing up and down as they bounced on their eight legs. “Children!” called a woman hurrying after them. “Menachem, don’t step in the street.”

  That’s when we realized it was Friday afternoon, and Mea She’arim was readying for the Shabbos. With only an hour before sunset, the streets were clogged with countless men, women and children, all clad in black suits or dresses, all hurrying to find last-minute items before synagogue.

  And here we stood, guns ready, but without pants. There’d been no time to throw on anything over our boxers. Lottery 7 hadn’t thought to include a dress code specification in the emergency protocols. We glanced down at our bare knees. Their pale flesh shone in the afternoon sunlight.

  The children brushed past. The small stones they kicked up as they ran pinged off the translucent force-shield that coated our naked legs like a second skin. We felt … ridiculous.

  “There’s John!” said Fuchsia. He was standing at a grocery cart, haggling with the seller.

  He was buying eggs.

  Mantel lowered the guns, and assumed control of our legs. Lottery 7 was quiet.

  Mantel walked us over to John, attempting to appear relaxed. Casual. Insofar as that was possible without pants. “We were looking for you.”

  “Are you okay?” asked Fuchsia.

  John beamed. “Fine, thank you. Love this market. And the sunshine is fantastic.” He leaned inexpertly against a crutch. “Have you tried these? I think we call them loquats in West Six. Hard to come by. Delicious. Simply delicious.”

  John lifted the gas mask from our face, and placed the fruit between our lips. Its skin was cold and yellow on our tongue.

  “Loquat,” said Fuchsia, savoring the syllables.

  “I thought I’d buy some before my sub leaves tomorrow,” said John.

  The pip was sleek. Shiny. A perfect organic marble, iridescent in the sunset.

  “The loquat is a species of flowering plant native to –”

  “Shhh,” said John, placing a finger to our lips. Lottery 7, for once, complied.

  “Kiss him,” whispered Mantel to Fuchsia.

  She could hardly hear Mantel over our thrumming heart. “He’s leaving tomorrow. Kiss him.”

  And so, nestled among the throbbing masses of Mea She’arim, clad only in our orange boxer shorts, with three pulse rifles slung over our shoulders, we lowered our force shield … and kissed him.

  F**king Through the Apocalypse

  When Harold heard the news that the world would be ending in twenty-seven days, he wasn’t surprised.

  “Fanny,” he would say while she flipped the butterscotch pancakes on Friday mornings, “the end is coming.”

  “Yes dear,” she’d say, and serve up the plate of steaming pancakes. Fanny wasn’t what you’d call paranoid. She was the sort of woman who answered ‘NO NUMBER’ phone-calls, heard the telemarketer’s pitch all the way through, bought her perfume from the local street-merchant, and ate gas station pasties.

  Fanny was the love of Harold’s life. And when Fanny died, Harold wasn’t surprised. Everything good that had ever happened to Harold, died.

  “I see,” he’d said when he’d returned the Coroner’s call – Harold, unlike his late wife, never answered ‘NO NUMBER’s. “A stroke … I see. No, that won’t be necessary. She … she’s all yours now.”

  That scorching Monday was the last time he’d left the apartment. So hot it was, the beef jerky he’d left out on the balcony that morning had dried by sunset. Fanny had never cared much for beef jerky. “You eat it, dear,” she’d say, and kiss him on the crown of his head.

  Harold stared at that spot now in the dim light of the bathroom. Spat out the used toothpaste. He was convinced the continuous friction of her kisses were the sole reason for his vertex baldness.

  He fumbled for the aftershave, and knocked it off the vanity.

  “Hell Goddammit!”

  Can’t see a thing in this fucking light. Not since they cut the power two days earlier.

  “One spray is all you need,” Fanny would say. More than that, and she’d sneeze. You know the way some women sneeze. Three times. Always. “Bless you,” he’d sigh. “Bless you. Bless you.”

  The stench of the shattered bottle of aftershave was unbearable in the tiny bathroom. He spluttered as he unlatched the window, and suckled the fresh air. Broken glass crunched under his slippers.

  “Jesus hell,” he muttered. He swept up the shards and dumped them in the trash. Too full to close the lid. He checked the cupboard. Only one trash bag left.

  Harold had planned for everything long before they’d announced the impending asteroid impact. “It’s coming, Fanny,” he’d say as she served up his Friday morning pancakes. “Zombies, comets, nuclear bombs, or famine. I don’t know what’s coming, but it’s coming.” He’d stocked up the spare room. Where Jesse used to sleep. “He left,” Harold had shouted when Fanny pushed him on the point. “He fucking left. Why not use the room?”

  So when the news of the asteroid spread, Harold was already prepared for the shortages and the hoarding. Harold had thought of everything. Everything except trash bags. Trash bags and flowers.

  Since the first day of their marriage, fifty-nine years ago, Fanny had kept a vase of flowers on the dining table. Lavender, irises, and chrysanthemums; sunflowers in summer, and roses in winter. Always the same. Every Monday around lunchtime, she’d make her way to the florist at the base of the building. She’d be back up the stairs twenty minutes later, arranging the flowers in the vase as she caught her breath from the climb – took longer with each passing decade.

  Harold had received the call from the Coroner four months ago. It was a Monday. Lunchtime. He’d placed the receiver on its yellowing cradle, and walked down to the florist. “Lavender,” he’d said to the wizened woman. “Lavender and sunflowers.”

  “Where’s Mrs. Humphrey? No irises?” the florist had asked.

  Harold had stared into the old woman’s face. He opened his mouth to answer. Yes, that’s right, he needed irises. But when he opened his mouth, nothing had come out. His tongue wouldn’t work. His eyes ached.

  That was the last time he’d left the apartment. And the last time he’d almost-cried. The four-month-old flowers still stood in the vase on the dining table. They didn’t rot for long, thanks to the summer sun that baked the west-facing apartment in the afternoons. Crisp as chips those flowers were by the next week.

  But still, thought Harold as he hobbled past the dining table, he missed smelling fresh flowers.

  Fanny had died in the heart of summer. But it was winter now, and something uneasy stirred in Harold’s chest at the sight of the desiccated sunflowers in the vase. “Don’t like ‘em in winter. Small and mean,
” she used to say. “Roses better in winter.”

  He collapsed into a chair at the table, and traced the cold floral outlines on the vase with his finger. The vessel’s water had long since evaporated, along with the fragrance of its contents.

  “Fuck it, Fanny.” He stomped his eighty-six-year-old feet, and grabbed his faithful army coat from the rack by the door. Slapped the dust off its shoulders from last winter.

  December gnashed at his careful cheeks as the door creaked open. “It’s time for roses,” he said, and stepped into the frigid corridor.

  *

  The world received the news eight days ago. Although Harold thought the worst of humanity, or thought he did, he never quite expected what he saw when he reached the downstairs lobby.

  For starters, he’d assumed the florist would be there. The woman with the gnarled hands had been a fixture, tucked away just inside the entranceway, ensconced in rose thorns and daffodils. But when Harold traipsed down the staircase in his slippers – the fluffy, green slippers Fanny had bought two winters earlier – there was no florist.

  Harold gazed at the shards of glass and rotting leaves. He avoided stepping on the larger spikes as he wandered into the looted store. Decomposing pot plants lined the walls.

  “Hello!” he called out.

  His eyes strained to follow the shelves as they stretched into the obsidian darkness at the back of the shop. It wasn’t a large store. But in the dark, every room seems bigger than it is.

  “Hello? I’m looking for roses. The orange ones. But I’ll take yellow if you have?”

  There was the counter. Naked. Nobody stood behind it. Not the gnarled woman. Nobody.

  Jesus Hell. He couldn’t stand the dark. Fuck the electricity, thought Harold. Eight days, and the power was already gone. This generation had no pride at all.

  Harold sighed, and retreated from the ruined shop.

  He looked back to the stairs he’d descended. Contemplated the breathless return climb to his apartment – lumbering back up the eight flights of stairs, and waiting out the next nineteen days in his apartment until the end. Or perhaps … yes, perhaps he could walk two flights further. To the rooftop. A fall of five stories would do it. Hell, at his age, one story would do it.