Blackout Odyssey

by Victoria Feistner

  “That’s super.” I no longer cared if anyone heard me talking to myself. “That’s just fucking fantastic. I will probably die of blood poisoning after this. I hope Dylan fucking learns the day I’ve had at my fucking funeral.” I wiggled my toes. It hurt. But worse than the pain of my feet—well, maybe not worse but still pretty bad—was the vision of Dylan and Camila on my patio, eating my meal, drinking my beer, enjoying themselves together.

  Except, let’s be honest, it’s the middle of the night. That meal is long gone. Dylan’s probably asleep. Hopefully by himself.

  The mental image gutted me more than the bloody blisters or bruised butt and I scrunched up my face to keep from bursting into tears. Camila wasn’t going to win that easily. I was going to get home, I was going to sleep for two days and eat a whole pizza and have a long hot bath—not entirely sure what order, although likely food first—and then I was going to march—stride⁠—hobble—across the hall and tell that bitch exactly what I thought of her and her stupid fluttering eyelashes and her always coming over to reinforce that she could speak Spanish to my boyfriend and I could not.

  I took a few deep breaths, the kind where you inhale smoothly but they come out as shuddering, jagged exhales, one step from ugly crying. My stomach cramped, not even rumbling any more. One more pain in the pile.

  Suddenly from my left was a crunch of feet on the asphalt, and the noise jerked me out of my misery with a booster shot of alarm. But it wasn’t any mobsters or identical businessmen in matching suits or even someone who might have been a schnauzer once upon a time.

  It was a lanky teenager, and they didn’t notice me. They had headphones on as they wheeled out the garbage bin. No one else on the street had bothered; from the sulky expression on the teenager’s face I had a notion they were being told to do their chores regardless of circumstances. They set up the bin, threw a pizza box on top, and walked away, head bobbing to the music.

  The pizza box slid off the top, landing on a corner, the lid flipping open. Something poked out.

  My stomach recoiled and rumbled at the same time.

  My mouth watered and my brain protested.

  Feeling remote-controlled, I got up. I’m just going to see what’s in there.

  This is revolting.

  I’m just going to see if there’s an untouched slice left. That would be okay, right? An untouched slice?

  This is a new low point in the history of low points, Mallory.

  But I kept walking, limping with one heel on and the other in my hand. I didn’t even think about my toes. Hating myself but still crouching, I opened up the pizza box. There were a few crusts left. Not a whole slice; just crusts. I poked one; not stale. Maybe from earlier in the day, before the blackout.

  Don’t.

  How hungry was I, really?

  I picked up one of the crusts.

  How hungry was I?

  A weird growling sound answered, but it wasn’t my stomach. I glanced over my shoulder, startled to find a fat raccoon, maybe a yard from me, under the hedge. It was growling at me, like a cat. Do raccoons do that? Maybe it had once been a schnauzer.

  I swallowed, still holding on to one of the pizza crusts.

  The raccoon didn’t back down.

  “This is mine.” I hissed back at it, and it bared its teeth. “Go get your own.” But then came a rustle. Eyes shining in the starlight. Many eyes. It wasn’t one raccoon, but a mother with a bunch of mostly-growns, and they were all looking at me.

  When I was a teen, we had a neighbour whose cat scattered cat food all over her kitchen every night after she went to bed. She couldn’t figure out how the cat did it because the food was in the cupboard and her pet was not the brightest kitten in the litter box. Since I babysat her kids sometimes, I volunteered to help her figure the problem out and we’d hung out with her one night, sitting on the floor with the lights off, to watch how her dumbass cat managed this feat.

  After the sun went down, there was rustling outside. As we watched, a little clawed hand appeared, managing to slide between the door jamb and the rickety wooden-framed screen door. It slid up under the hook and eye latch, and neatly flipped it open.

  Then the raccoon let itself in. It waddled to the bottom cupboard in the kitchen where the lady kept her cat food, opening the door, pulling the bag out and spilling it across the linoleum, stuffing its face in the process.

  Wordlessly and with wide eyes, she’d gotten a broom and given the raccoon a careful poke. Not hard; a nudge. It looked over its shoulder at us with an affronted expression of “Do you mind? I am trying to eat” before resuming its chow.

  She nudged it again while I grabbed the mop. Together we’d fought the raccoon out the door while it growled and swiped at us. It had made a noise an awful lot like the noise this one made at me. And I did not have a broom or a solid door to close, and my feet were bleeding.

  I put down the crust of pizza and closed the box.

  Mama lunged and I shrieked and bounced to my feet, the pain making my vision sparkle.

  I threw my broken shoe.

  The pump bounced off one of the younger raccoons; it didn’t so much as yelp, merely staggering momentarily before proceeding to the feast. Mama chattered at me in the peeved manner that raccoons have that sounds like a cocktail party from two floors away.

  They watched me retreat, their eyes glittering.

  I might have been hungry, but I wasn’t ‘fight a pack of Toronto raccoons for pizza crusts’ hungry.

  * * *

  Maybe now. Maybe now was the time.

  I took off my remaining shoe and tucked it under my arm, walking down the middle of the street on the pads of my heels, my toes lifted up like my nails were drying. It was slow but it hurt less.

  I walked until I came to a four-way stop, the houses all shuttered around me. And there, in the moonlight, out of the shadow of the leafy trees lining the streets, I took out the cell phone from my pocket.

  I couldn’t ask him to call me a cab since I didn’t know where I was. He couldn’t pick me up; we don’t have a car. He was probably asleep. He’d already given up on me coming home any time soon, probably thinking I was crashing at Aggie’s or something like that.

  I held the little Nokia out into the moonlight so that I could see its tiny blank screen, like a sleeping face, a baby’s, all innocent. I’d been manhandled by TTC officers; incorporeal; nearly trapped in an unreal Honest Ed’s; beholden to who knows who—and I hadn’t yet called in case some ‘bigger emergency’ happened. But I was shoeless and desperate enough to eat garbage, if not yet fight off overgrown vermin for the privilege of doing so.

  Dylan couldn’t help me. But at least he could tell me that it would all be okay.

  Taking a deep breath, I pressed power.

  The screen booted up; still the one bar left. Hard to tell. I had to both bring it to my face to see but also tilt it to get the maximum out of the moonlight. But it looked like there were words—

  —my hands shook.

  Where it usually said ROGERS it said NO SIGNAL.

  I shivered like I was freezing, although the August night was anything but. I clutched at the little Nokia like it was a rope and I was drowning, my knuckles bloodless. NO SIGNAL. I typed in Dylan’s number anyway and pressed the call button, but no dial tone answered me. Not even a beep.

  I pulled the phone away from my ear and stared at NO SIGNAL for an eternity until the battery drained. The screen flashed and the phone powered down.

  All this wandering, saving the battery. Holding off on calling Dylan when I had the chance, because I had the cell phone—and the whole time, there was no signal. Belatedly, stupidly, cursedly, I realized that there hadn’t been since the blackout started; the cell towers would all be down. They weren’t like landlines, that kept working without power. The technology was so new to me that I didn’t think it through.

  I’d been keeping the cell phone back, keeping it as my emergency life-saving and this whole time there’d been no
use. It wouldn’t have worked. A useless hunk of company plastic, and I couldn’t even trade it for streetmeat because it wasn’t mine to trade.

  I sank to the asphalt, legs curled under me, no idea where I was or what time it was or when power would come back to the world. “I’m so sorry,” I said, quietly, my voice thick and my eyes burning. “I’m sorry for whatever I did. Whatever caused the embargo. I just want to go home, please. If anyone is listening.”

  But the only answer was the rustle of the breeze in the tree tops along the sleeping suburban street.

  * * *

  The good thing about being so tired that you can barely breathe is that it turns everything into a sort of fog. A fog of exhaustion and numbness. The pain from my toes receded to a part of my brain that certainly remained aware of it, but didn’t let it stop me walking. Because those were my choices; continue walking or sleep on the sidewalk.

  I suppose one of the houses around me held a nice, kind, loving person who practised the sort of hospitality that sagas and religions are born from, the kind who would not only give me bandaids and a meal but maybe also a guest bed and a long shower. (Or at least a couch and a sandwich.) But there was no way to tell which of these sleeping bungalows had such a respectable, decent person, and which ones held assholes with shotguns.

  That’s where I felt like my night was headed: assholes with shotguns.

  Eventually I walked larger streets that funnelled me to the park. No, not a park, a square; it was paved. From its opposite corner I could hear traffic. Finally an artery to gain my bearings. All I wanted at this point was to trudge in the right direction.

  First I had to weave through the dark buildings, past a plaza with a fountain. People were still out, even though it was clearly the middle of the night. Or was it the middle of the night? I actually had no idea. But yes, there were people, little knots of families escaping their darkened, breathless homes.

  A breeze wove through in the square, and people had brought tiny battery-powered radios and lanterns, spreading blankets to enjoy the rare sight of stars and relief from the stifling humidity. I supposed that if I lived in an apartment building with no cross-breeze I might well have gone outside to sleep too. Someone plucked at a guitar, a real one, not a banjo. Kids splashed in the fountain.

  My head spun. I walked across strips of dewy grass, the cold softness a mercy to my feet. Nearby under the trees were picnic tables. A glow of light. A family setting up a picnic, and I stopped, watching them with longing. The mother brought out sandwiches from a cooler and the adolescents were so bored it was palpable.

  The dad noticed me watching them and I tensed, ready to make my apologies and back away before he took offence. But he wasn’t glaring. The woman and the kids saw me, and she waved me over, even after I hesitated.

  I felt lumpen, like someone trapped in a metal suit. I could barely bend, speak, nod when they asked me questions. Everything about me creaked slow and stupid and I didn’t want to cry in front of these nice strangers, they were clean and pleasant and obviously lived nearby and had never once considered fighting a raccoon off for pizza crusts.

  They were making coffee, did I want some?

  Don’t cry, Mallory, don’t cry.

  They had sandwiches, would I like one?

  Just hold it together a little longer.

  And then the mom smiled at me, said I looked like I’d had quite the day.

  And then she said, just start at the beginning.

  Part Two

  Mallory chewed and swallowed as a profound silence settled over the picnic table. Shelly offered her a plastic tumbler of water, which she accepted, all without a sound. The water was so refreshing that it tasted sweet; although that might have been residual peanut butter. She couldn’t believe how worn she felt.

  “That’s some story, hun,” Shelly said, finally, her arm around her boy, watching the storyteller solemnly with lantern flickers dancing in his widened eyes. “Could have been maybe a bit more… kid-friendly?”

  “Sorry.” Mallory winced. “I guess I just got into it.”

  “It’s not like we haven’t heard the word ‘fuck’ before.” The girl, Dawn, rested her head in her hand, elbow on the rough surface of the picnic table, so bored—or sleepy—that her eyes were at half-mast even while she spoke. “I mean. Come on, Mom.”

  “Still.” Shelly hugged her son. “What did you think of the story, Dee?”

  “What about Dylan?” the boy whispered, blinking back emotion under his thick black lashes. “You never called him.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Mallory agreed, the cell phone pressing against her ribs as both an accusation and a disappointment. “But he’ll understand.” This last was under her breath. A vision of Camila leaning against the door frame, talking in Spanish, ignoring Mallory completely while she did so—came to mind so potently that tears sprang to her eyes.

  “Okay!” Daniel Gabriel clapped his hands together brightly. “I think it’s time for this old geezer to stretch his legs. Who wants to walk around the block with me?”

  Teenage groans answered, while Shelly shook her head, curls bouncing over her shoulders. “You go. Take Mallory.”

  “Oh, Mallory’s done enough walking for a lifetime,” she answered, with a sad laugh. “Mallory’s happy to stay sitting.”

  “Mallory should listen to a good idea when she hears one,” Daniel Gabriel answered with a wink, getting to his feet. Standing, he was head and shoulders out of the light of the tiny Coleman lantern, but Mallory could still see his eyes glinting. “Come on. Walk with me.”

  * * *

  The moon sat high overhead, back to its regular aspirin size, white and full and unimpeded by clouds, dusted with starlight. Crickets sang and chirped around them. Bushes in front yards rustled; branches creaked with the shift of a breeze. Somewhere, an owl hooted softly.

  “I didn’t even know we had owls in the city,” Mallory said, feeling the sidewalk under her toes in a way she remembered from being a kid. “I suppose we must.” She patted a lamppost as they passed, missing both its sodium glow and background hiss. So many noises that she’d never realized were there were gone. In the distance a car drove by, its headlights obscenely bright, the crunch of its tires on the asphalt like thunder.

  “You get used to a way of thinking about the world,” Daniel Gabriel said, his hands in his hoodie pockets. “Takes a special kind of day to make you realize how different things can be. No one gets a day like that very often. Some never get one at all.”

  Mallory wanted to snort cynically, mention how nothing would change, that humans didn’t work like that, but she didn’t. In the dark, such notions were worth considering.

  Daniel Gabriel stopped. They’d come to the far end of the square, through tall buildings looming in the darkness, cut out of shadow against the stars like a cliff. Before them lay a cemetery, headstones and memorials brighter than they should have been in the moonlight. He gestured at Mallory’s pocket. “I think you have something meant for me.”

  Confused, she shook her head, but then—because she couldn’t think of a reason not to—she searched her tiny jacket pockets. In one lay her dead Nokia; in the other a thin rolled joint and a lighter. She held them out, waiting for him to choose.

  He smiled, lighting the joint up with a well-practised flick, and taking a drag. His breath seemed to glitter in the night, as if he breathed the stars out. “You fucked up. You realize that, right?” He held the joint out, still smiling, showing no malice or sarcasm, only bemusement and sympathy. “I told you to be careful of contracts you didn’t realize you were breaking.”

  Her own drag didn’t taste as vegetative as she expected. More floral; delicately tinged with something else. Fruit of some kind. She exhaled out her nose, half-expecting stars too, but no, only dope smoke. She passed the joint back. “It was you at the party.”

  Daniel Gabriel nodded. “You asked for help. So I helped you.”

  “I don’t remember asking.”

&
nbsp; “Maybe not exactly, but you said you were tired and hungry, and you sounded sad. I am a sucker for sad sacks.” He blew out another breath, sighing, eyes half-closed. “And you helped my uncle, which means he owes me.”

  “I don’t see how that works.”

  “Doesn’t matter if you see how it works or not. Connections and contracts. Social structures, rules, conventions, communication. Also thieves and trickery, but that’s neither here nor there right now.” He leaned against a granite memorial, watching a black silhouette land in a nearby tree. The crow cawed once before alighting.

  “Social contracts,” Mallory repeated, sleepy. Her body maintained that weight of exhaustion. But something deep down in the bottom of her mind stirred, as if it had slept too long already. “Rules and communi—oh fuck.”

  “Told you.” He held the joint out.

  “That’s what this has been about? This whole time? Skipping the fucking turnstile? I’d already paid to get in! I was going back to get my wallet!” Her drag caught against her lungs and she spluttered.

  “That’s not the point,” he chided, “and you know it.”

  “I don’t know what else I could’ve done.”

  “Then think harder.”

  She crossed her arms, jamming her hands into her armpits, and rested against a headstone, the name meaningless, the letters carved so deeply they never ended. The awoken part of her mind moved around, stretching, drawing open curtains. Normally weed made her a bit drowsy and goofy, with potential of munchies, but this wasn’t like any joint she’d had before. A cream-soda taste lingered on her tongue and her nose. “I didn’t have a metropass. I’d lost my wallet.” She explained slowly, working through the steps. “The power was out. People were losing their minds. It was a special set of circumstances. Squints should have known that.”

  “How,” Daniel Gabriel asked, the word hanging in the void, suspended and immortal until it dissipated, blown into nothing by his release of smoke, “would he have known that?”