A week ago I posed a writing contest, and I've been so busy reading through the mad amount of entries (awesome!) I forgot to write my own. So now, in its final hours, I'm remedying that. Though I have a feeling it's going to be a mini series since short stories have never been my forte-- I'm going for realistic. I mean, really realistic, as in I'm even using real names. I am going to put myself in this scenario from start to finish, and I have no idea how it's going to go, so bear with me.
(Play The Song!-)
You have just been told by a source you trust implicitly that a meteor is going to take out life on earth; there is nothing that can be done to stop it, and they have no intention of alerting the public. You have four days until impact/game over. What would you do with your time?
(Last minute entries can be put in now, I will be posting the winners tomorrow! :)
What I Would Do: Part One
Two hours until Howie gets home. Ethan too. Roughly 1/48th of all the time that is left for life on this earth. It's funny what your mind chooses to focus on when it's traumatized. I think of my sister's shoes.
Her shoes, the ones I borrowed and could never return. Would other people think of something so trivial? I recall wondering that exact thing the last time her shoes occurred to me.
I'm wasting seconds, minutes, and I've never been so acutely aware of time passing in my entire life. I'm in shock of course, just as I was when my uncle showed up on the doorstep of my college apartment- Your sister was in an accident, I'm so sorry, she didn't make it- all of those years ago.
Years. There are no more years. No more months, no more weeks. Only days. Four of them. Less than one hundred hours. I'm not processing it. I need to tell Howie, it won't be real until I do.
I look at the time, an hour and forty five minutes before I can. Zoe's with mom at a movie, they won't be back for an additional hour, maybe two. I laugh, I can't help it, Howie's in the field with no way to reach him since he left the phone with me, mom and Zoe are in the theater. I was in a similar position once, when Dana died. Alone in the house, waiting. Waiting to be the bearer of terrible tidings. Worse tidings? No. Not really. I had to tell Howie his best friend, the man who was like his brother, had hung himself that time. This time it was no one's fault, no one's choice.
I start to wonder if we'll be seeing my sister, Dana, my dad, all of those we've lost, but my thoughts derail. I don't believe in the Heaven of my childhood. That doesn't mean we won't see them, but I have to let go of the snapshots I have in my head. Whatever form they're in, it's highly unlikely for them to resemble the ones I'm remembering now.
In place of the photos that keep flashing across my mind's eye I insert something else, something I've never been able to put in words. Who they were at the core, like an aura but in a feeling rather than a color. Far more substantial then an image of their physicality.
I will know them by that.
And that's enough time spent thinking on the already dead.
One of Howie's favorite sayings, "I live with death on my shoulder", takes on new meaning. I thought I'd understood it before. I'd certainly known that there was a toe tag with my name on it, that I wasn't guaranteed the golden years. But this was different. Because knowing you might not get more time was not the same as knowing you certainly wouldn't get more time. Might holds possibility. Maybe holds uncertainty. Which means you plan for a future because chances are good you'll have one.
This hits me hard. My future is four days long. Not just mine, everyone's. Everyone's future is four more days. Four more tomorrow's.
One hour until Howie gets home.
I need a beer.
source
They're not going to alert the public.
If you had asked me what I thought of that yesterday, I would have said it was utter bullshit. That people had a right to know, to spend their last days the way they wanted to. I've always thought I was a relatively selfless person, or at least not a selfish one. But at this moment I realize I was wrong, that the largest reason I would have been angry at them is because I would have been one of the ignorant. That I wouldn't get to decide how to spend the last four days of life.
So what is the truth? What do I think of it now?
I do think people should know, but not necessarily all people.
Oh who the fuck am I kidding! I never lie to myself, I'm not about to start at this stage of the game. I think... only those with empathy should know. And there's not really a sure way of making that happen, is there?
I finish the beer and open a second, while youtube mocks me with the next song on my playlist. Is it feeding me end of the world songs? I am laughing now, but there's a worrying edge of hysteria to that laugh.
(Again... Play the song)
Thirty minutes until Howie gets home.
I sit down in front of the computer and open steemit, where nearly everyone with empathy I've met in this life have gathered over the past two years. A title flashes across my brain- BREAKING NEWS: An E.L.E Is Occurring in Four Days!
Ha, yeah. Who would believe me when I have no proof? Just information passed to me from someone who has access to that kind of information. Besides, if I were to broadcast it and they suspected he was the leak, would they punish him? Four days would take on different meaning if torture was involved. And considering the sadism apparent in the higher echelons of government I wouldn't put it past them even at the end of the world.
Who would believe me? Those words echo in my head and become my focus. Because there are people who would believe me. Just about anyone who truly knows me, I realized, would believe me, even without proof. Or at the very least, they would believe that I believed it and they would know I'm not the kind of person who would say something like this unless I was damn sure it was one hundred percent, without a doubt, going to happen.
I exit out of steemit and open up MS word. Fifteen minutes until Howie gets home- and I'm going to spend them making a list.
Maybe I can't tell the whole of the world, maybe I wouldn't want to if I could. But those I can tell- they deserve a chance to choose how they spend their final moments here.
I finish my second beer and open a third. I put the first name down on my list...and realize the rest will have to wait a moment while I make a call.
Hey!
Are you at home?
Yes-
Good, I need you to get Mary and the baby and drive out here. Now. Please don't ask any questions, just tell me you're coming.
A moment of silence. But I know my tone is enough. Then: We're coming.
I look at the clock. About ninety minutes until my brother arrives.
I go back to my list.
Mary
Maria
Jeanette
Adam
Scott...
I stop. And realize I need to partition. Those I can get here fast without having to give a lot of details, those I can get on their way without giving a lot of details, then those I'll have to tell on the phone, some who wouldn't be able to get here or shouldn't even try, a few I've never even met in person...
I take a breath.
Fuck it. I'll write the list, then partition.
Less than ten minutes until Howie gets home. I wonder how many names I can type in that time frame.
I'm about to find out.
**
Howie's home.
I hear the Hyundai pull into the driveway. I listen as the doors open- I listen to the animated conversation going on between my soul mate, my son, my brother in law, and one of our oldest friends.
There's laughter. The laughter of people who have no idea that the world is ending in four days...or at all, ever.
Suddenly the knowledge weighs five thousand pounds. I would have thought that time would speed up since there isn't enough of it- that's generally how the world works. But as I listen to them banter time seems to stretch instead.
It is the space between.
In this moment, for them, all is right in the world, and they are going to come inside and comment on the aroma of dinner on the stove.
Except today there is no dinner cooking. The box of ziti, the package of mozzarella, the jar of ricotta- all of it remain unopened.
I wonder if this lack is going to be the lead in to the conversation about the end of the world and I start to laugh with that slightly hysterical edge again, then clamp my mouth shut.
I watch as my brother-in-law backs out of the driveway. He's taking Matt home, I acknowledge. Fleetingly I think I should stop him, but I can't move. Howie and Ethan are walking up to the door now. They come through the porch. They cross the threshold.
I am mute.
Howie is saying something to me, Ethan too.
It is still the space between. It will be the space between until I choose otherwise.
"Mom?"
Ethan takes hold of my shoulders and I look up at him. My son. My beautiful, intelligent, strong- nearing six foot tall- fourteen year old son. Nearing six foot tall. Likely to hit at least six foot four before he was done growing. Except he was. done. growing.
He wouldn't even see six feet now.
A sound comes out of my mouth; a keening, anguished sound; and my boy engulfs me in his man sized arms, holding me up as my knees betray me and try to pull me to the ground.
Moments pass and I'm unaware of them, feeling a loss so great it is swallowing me whole. I have no recollection of being passed from my boy's arms to those of my love until my entire body shakes. It takes a moment to understand that I'm being shaken.
I blink as I come out of it. Howie is shouting my proper name, a name he never calls me. I focus on his face and he sees that I've returned. "What is it, what happened?" He asks, and I take solace in the expression on his face. Because it isn't one of panic or fear, or even worry or concern. Without a word spoken he already knows that whatever caused that sound to erupt from my mouth, whatever just brought me to my knees; was too big for any of those emotions. Without one word spoken he is in leadership, take charge, made-of-steel mode.
But he can't fix this. My momentary solace melts away with the realization.
For over twenty years, since I was still a teenager in fact, he has been Superman and I've never seen anything that even resembled his cryptonite. But it was coming, hurdling toward earth at the speed of light, and there was nothing my superman could do to change that.
My eyes slip from his face. I didn't even have to tell him- just him being here has made it real.
"Mom?"
I glance at Ethan who is kneeling beside us. If he'd grown into a man he might have developed the ability to surpass panic, fear, worry, or concern. But he's still a boy. And all he knows is that whatever has stolen his mom's voice must be bad.
For him I regain my composure. For him I find my own steel.
**
Five minutes. It only took five minutes to eliminate the space between.
To be continued...
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