One by One

 

Sarah went first, well before the sunset, but it wasn’t a surprise. She was sick. The sick never lasted very long.

Then it was Kevin, snatched away so quickly he didn’t even finish his beverage. It sat, half drunk and quickly warming on the table, forgotten.

Taylor and Thomas were next. It was fitting, since they rarely left each other’s sides. They were twins, after all. Fraternal, not identical, but they still seemed mostly the same to me.

There were five of us left when the sun started to set, and it was decided we should probably go inside. 

For a long time, nothing happened, then Katie had to go to the bathroom. Katie was my best friend. We both had blonde hair and blue eyes, and we were both only children, so we had a lot in common. And just like Taylor and Thomas, we rarely left each other’s sides, but Manny thought it would be safer if he went with her to the restroom. So, I stayed behind with the others in the relative security of the room.

When Manny returned, he was alone. As he walked back through the door without Katie, my heart dropped. We locked eyes, and then I looked away. He didn’t say anything to me, he didn’t need to.

Now there were just three of us left. Me, Manny, and Chaya. We sat quietly in the room, alone together. Manny was behind the desk, writing. Chaya was at the table, reading a book, or at least pretending to. And I was on the floor, with a puzzle, that just a few minutes before I had been working on putting together with Katie. I looked at the picture on the box, a horse. Katie loved horses. With a sigh I started pulling the pieces apart and putting them away. There was no point in finishing it now.

I was trying to shove the puzzle box back on the overcrowded shelf when there was movement by the door. In the blink of an eye Chaya got up and ran, and before I could say anything, she was gone. I couldn’t believe it, now it was just me, left here alone with Manny.

At the front of the room Manny sighed. I could tell he was upset. He stood abruptly, the chair scraping across the floor as he did. Then just as suddenly he sat again.

“Sorry,” he said, “it’s not your fault.”

I just nodded.

Time seemed to be passing slower now. I watched the hands of the clock march around it's face. It was nearly 6:30. Manny was now tapping on the desk with a pencil, an outlet for his exasperation. Then, just as the minute hand settled on top of the 6, the door flew open. It was my mother. A wide smile spread across my face, and I stood to run toward her.

Manny stood too. “Mrs. Cockcroft, this is the third time this month. Daycare closes at 6, if you can’t pick up your daughter on time, you will have to find somewhere else to take her after school.”

 

Step by Step

 

I could just say it I think as I lie there in the pitch-black room, staring at the ceiling, listing to the rumble grumble slumber coming from the pillow next to me. I could just open wide and let the words tumble out. I even tried it, opening and closing my mouth several times, like a fish caught high and dry on the muddy shore, gasping for air. And I realize that is exactly what I am, stuck, and floundering.

I roll over, pull the covers up, and bury my head under my pillow. It works to drown out the snoring, but not the din inside my head. “Tomorrow”, I whisper, “just let me go to sleep tonight, and I’ll start tomorrow, I promise.”

A sliver of sunlight pierced my slumber, and before I even open my eyes, I know I’m going to have to hold up my end of the bargain.

“Fuck” I whisper.

“What’s wrong” comes a concerned voice from downstairs.

Fuck Fuck Fuck! I think

“Honey,” I say out loud, “can you come in here?”

The sweat sprouts from my brow in anticipation of the next words I’m going to say. It’s 64 degrees in the bedroom, but my skin is hot and damp.

I hear footsteps in the hall, then on the stairs. Any moment now. My brain tries to organize my sleepy thoughts, but its no use, everything is still sluggish, thick like molasses. There will be no sugar coating it. Eloquence is not yet awake. I’m just going to have to blurt it out.

My partner steps through the door, he looks more confused than concerned. I take a deep breath, my brain grasping one last time for a way out, but this time my mouth overrides it.

“I have a problem,” I say. My voice is threatening to catch. My brain is threatening me with tears, but I hold them back.

My partner cocks an eyebrow, but otherwise reveals no emotion.

With a sigh of resignation, I reach for the handle to my bedside drawer, and yank it open dramatically. My shame tumbles out into a giant crinkly pile on the floor.

“Wow”, my partner says, stifling a laugh, “that’s an awful lot of candy wrappers.”

I lose the battle with my emotions and feel tears escape, and start to roll down my cheeks.

“Oh no, no, don’t cry, why are you so upset?”

“Because we’re meant to be doing No-Sugar-November. I didn’t even make it a day.”

“Well clearly,” he said, still trying to reign in his giggles, “we’re only five days into the month, but that looks like the remnants of a Halloween size bag of Hershey’s.”

I could feel my lip quivering.

“Wait,” he said, “is that why we ran out of candy so early on Halloween night?”

I nodded

“We had to turn off the porch light and hide from the trick-or-treaters!”

“I know” I wailed.

“Oh, it’s okay honey,” he put his arm around me, “we’ll work though this together, baby steps, we’ll slay those sugar cravings!”

 

Side by Side

 

The pulse of the day is a heartbeat growing louder as the Grey May morning gives way to a bright and sunny summer Saturday. Sometimes I feel like I’ve been choreographing my life. Two stepping through the morning routine, coffee, toast, yogurt, fried eggs if I’m feeling fancy, all while ignoring my neighbor in his kitchen, dancing the same dance as me, separated by single paned glass, and about twenty feet . Briefly our eyes lock, me wielding a spatula, him a frying pan, but we spin away, sashay-shante, I didn’t see you, you didn’t see me. That’s life in the little city.

Breakfast done, chores begun. The Saturday shuffle is in full swing now. But it’s summer, which means at some point in time we all dip into our backyards. A million lives played out side by side in our postage-stamp green oasis. A patchwork of gardens, a patchwork of blocks, a patchwork of neighborhoods, the quilt of humanity.

The kids are first. Yelling in the backyard that backs up to mine. Their brand-new Christmas swing set hasn’t yet lost it’s luster, but then again, summer has just begun. Next it’s the new neighbor in the one bedroom rental next door. She’s throwing a garden party today. Then the raking starts from the other new neighbor on the other side, the one who so kindly pretends he can’t see me in my jammies every morning as I make breakkie in my kitchen because I refuse to close the blinds to the morning sun, but then again, so does he.

I come in on my que, joining the symphony with the rhythmic tinkling of water from my hose, coaxing the plants I had failed to water for a bit too long back to life. From elsewhere in the neighborhood, dogs barking, and more kids, a birthday party probably, and the sound of a basketball thumping against a slab of concreate.

The beat of the neighborhood is an orchestra accompanying my outside chores, while the breeze shakes the leaves in the trees like maracas, where the birds sing their melodies, but then a scream brakes through the piece. It wasn’t part of the song, it was as if the conductor said stop, the mike dropped, and record scratched to a halt. Something was wrong.

The shriek left a rift of silence, but no sooner had it fallen then the murmurs began, and as if on queue the shuffling of feet as we all ran to our front doors to stand on our porch scratching our heads.  Where had it come from, was somebody dead? All up and down the street, neighbors on their stoops, wondering what to do next. Then the sirens started. We shuffled about, exchanging looks of concern, as the wailing drew near, then passed us by.

 So that was it then.

Perhaps this is a musical, off Broadway of course, the script snatched up cheap and destined to become made for tv movie, with an ultra cliche ending. This is the last number, the scene is drawing to a close. The camera pans out to a bird's eye view of the great tapestry that is life in near suburbia as we all head inside, instep, and follow the beat to our own backyards to resume our scripted chores. Fade to black.

But what happened with that scream? Well, stick around to find out because after this commercial break, we'll be right back.

I Can't Wait To Hear What You Have To Say This Time

 

One of my favorite things about Anne was she let me tag along with her, no questions asked. That was rare these days. In general, most people seemed to only want to look after themselves, but even if they were game for a little company, I wasn’t the type of company they were looking for. Not Anne though. Sure, she thought I was on drugs. She never came out and said it, but she called me Druggie Dave, so I had my suspicions. I’ll admit, the rhyme was kinda cute, except my name wasn’t even Dave. I could see how someone might make that mistake though. Not that my name was Dave, but that I was on drugs. The truth was exactly the opposite. It was the lack of drugs that caused me to act this way.

When I was a kid, my mom thought I had an overactive imagination, but when I failed to grow out of my imaginary friends, my mom decided I needed help. It turns out I have a dash of schizophrenia. Not enough to make me dangerous, just enough to occasionally have solo-conversations on street corners. A little bit of medication went a long way, though, and as long as I took my daily pill, I was a-okay.

Like everyone else, I raided every drug store I came upon, you know, after the world ended, but of course the drugs were all gone. Fucking idiots using them to get high, oblivious to the needs of people like me. So now I talk to myself, so what? At least the voices kept me company when no one else would. But then one day Anne showed up, an angle rising out of the winter muck. We made a good team, and for a little more than a year we were inseparable, wandering from little town to little town in the Central Valley. I never asked her why, it didn’t matter to me, being with her was all I wanted.

Sure, in the beginning I thought maybe, just maybe, we could become more than friends, but that ended about the 5,000^th time she called me Druggie Dave. Oh well, a friend who calls you names is better then no friend at all. Or at least that’s how I used to think.

We’d spent the winter in Bakersfield. It was a lovely, small, close-knit community now. Much nicer than it had been before the world ended. All winter long I had asked myself what I would do when Anne decided to move on. The people of Bako had just been starting to warm up to me, and I liked it here.

I think I followed her out of habit. Like a dog I was loyal, even though she kept kicking me. So as the winter warmed to spring I found myself following her along the trail, back up the Central Valley again. It wasn’t long before I realized I’d made a mistake. I tried to tough it out, but I just couldn’t take it anymore. The name calling, the looking down on me, but it wasn’t until we were just outside of Kings City that I finally decided enough was enough. She was singing, a song from the Wizard of Oz, and it made me laugh. She turned to look at me, and the expression on her face, like I was a child.

I screamed, something weird from my schizophrenic brain about the police, and I turned and ran back from where we’d come, trying to get as much distance between us as possible before I could second guess my decision. I just hoped the people in Bako would accept me back.

Come Alone, No Police

 

 Its moments like these I forget that anything has changed at all. The sky is bright blue, the clouds lazy puffs of white, the grass is electric green and the dirt path cuts a seductive trail through it, to the infinite horizon. I’m out for a hike. A vacation. One of the many backpacking trips written in dry erase marker on the whiteboard stuck on my fridge. Then Druggie Dave starts muttering to his hallucinations behind me, and I snap out of my daydream. This isn’t a bucket list trip; this is life. Just me and Dave and an eternity of endless roads, shuffling from town to town, looking for fuck knows what. At least that was my story. Dave was looking for drugs, always. Addicts didn’t stop being addicts just because the world ends.

It was springtime though, which was lovely. There was nothing like velvet hills covered in a watercolor pallet of wildflowers to rekindle my love for meandering. During the dark days of winter, I’d almost considered settling down. The only thing that stopped me was where I’d found myself, Bakersfield, or at least what had once been Bakersfield. Of course it was much nicer now the smog fog of the Central Valley had dissipated with the death of the combustion engine, but it was still Bakersfield. So, I moved on

We were now just passing through King City, and the earth was in bloom. It was like that moment in the Wizard of Oz, suddenly everything was in color.

“Follow the yellow brick road!” I sang, a spring in my step.

Dave giggled behind me

“You remember that movie, Dave?”

He didn’t respond. I snuck a peek over my shoulder to see if he was still with me, or if he had been distracted by one of his hallucinations. He found some mushrooms a couple of days ago, and had been living off a steady diet of them ever since.

I saw he was still shuffling along behind me, neck craned back, staring at the sky. Probably seeing flying monkeys or something. I shrugged to myself, and continued walking. Around the next bend in the road a field of poppies spread out in front of me, a million golden heads bobbing in the breeze. I bent to pick one and when a did I heard a screech behind me. It was Dave, face white as a ghost.

“Now you’ve done it” his voice was deep with fear, “the police, that’s illegal, the police!” he turned and ran faster than I would have believed he could, back towards where we came. I didn’t bother going after him. I could do with some time by myself again. Perhaps I would head to the coast, get out of the Central Valley before the summer heat set in. The last time I’d been near the ocean it was obscured by the smoke of the city burning to the ground, but the fires were most certainly out now. Who knows, perhaps my house was still standing. I thought again of my whiteboard, my bucket list, on my fridge, and I started walking towards home.

I Swear It's Not My Fault

 

I realized I forgot my headphones about ten steps from my house, but I couldn’t be bothered to go back. It was only a few blocks to the bus stop. It was a beautiful morning, the air tinged warm with the promise of spring, and the blue-black sky was just beginning to blush. I figured I could use a little time with the morning birdsong and my own thoughts.

Have you ever been waking down the street when suddenly a childhood rhyme about mothers with broken backs pops into your head? Of course it makes you realize, right at that moment. That you’ve just stepped on a crack, so you do the only sensible thing. You perform an elaborate dance-hop-skip-over-the-cracks, sing song rhyme, ending with a kiss blown to the universe to save your mother, only to have all hell break loose because as it turns out, the superstition was actually true, only you mis-remembered the words, or the dance sequence, or something, and instead of un-breaking your mother’s back, you accidently opened a portal into another timeline? Have you ever had that happen? No? Just me then?

Well, I still maintain it might not have been me. There are nearly 8 billion people on the world, who knows what they were all up to at that exact moment in time. And the portal opening in my town, just a block away from where I was dancing around like I had ants in my pants in the early dawn light, well that was a just a coincidence.

They say it was a magic spell, an ancient one. Of course, before that day magic was something that existed only in children’s books and angsty teen's bedrooms. But since then, many more magic spells have been discovered, or uncovered, or rediscovered, or whatever. Now people are running around curing cancer, or summoning lightening bolts from the sky to vanquish their enemy’s, or eradicating their acne. No one has figured out a love spell yet, which sucks because I really wish the guy who drives the Jetta and lives in the apartment on the corner would finally notice me, but its probably for the best. The world is in enough chaos as it is, without having to deal with the messy moral implications that would come from making whoever you like fall in love with you.

Now, you may be wondering about what happened with that portal into the other timeline. Well, nothing bad really came from it. The earth in that timeline didn’t exist, probably obliterated by an asteroid or something. Mrs. McClatchy’s cat fell into the portal, but some orange cones were erected around it to keep that from happening again, and after a few days the spell to close it was discovered, so that was good. And I’ve sworn off magic since then. I’ve seen what it does to people, to your friends, and family, and those you love. I can screw up my personal relationships well enough on my own, I don’t need magic’s help.

Consider This A Warning

 

Photo by ArrImAPirate (that's me!)

They say “red sky at night, sailors delight”, so as I munched my fresh from the ocean sushi and watched the sky turn more shades of red then there are probably names for, I felt relaxed knowing I had a night of gentle winds and calm seas ahead of me.  That was my first mistake.

My second was being lax on my watch schedule. Normally I’d set my alarm to wake me every 15 minutes, so I could pop my head out of the hatch and scan the horizon to make sure I wasn’t about to careen bow first into a giant oil tanker, but I was out in the middle of the Pacific now, half way between California and French Polynesia, and far from any shipping lanes, so I decided to let myself sleep for a full 60 minutes at a time. I’d been out at sea for 13 days; I needed the extra z’s.

I think I rested too much though, and I missed my alarm. Instead, what woke me was a bucket of water to my face. At first, I was confused. I was alone, so who could be throwing buckets of water? Sure, the hatch was open. I’d left it open so I could pop my head out and look around between naps. It wasn’t the hatch being open that concerned me, it was the change in the view from my bunk. When I’d fallen asleep, I was under a blanket of stars so thick it was nearly impossible to tell where one star ended, and the next began. But now, all I saw was black. The kind of black that makes you dizzy to look at.

I threw the sopping wet blankets off and dropped down from my mattress, into a pool of water. Apparently, the wave that woke me up wasn’t the first to make it in my cabin. Or at least I hoped that’s where the water came from.

“Curse that red sky at night saying”, I muttered to myself as I waded through knee deep water. My mind grasped at straws as if I could collect enough of them that I could drain all the water from my bilge.

I grabbed my life vest and flew up the three wooden steps into my cockpit. Outside, I found it wasn’t raining, at least not yet, but the seas were confused. The wind was howling through my rigging, but something was wrong, the sails were flogging wildly. Just as my eyes were adjusting to the blackness, a flash of lighting illuminated the night, and on the horizon, I saw a great bulk of a ship. The next second the thunder rolled, but there was another noise, my radio. I could just make out a staticky voice over the rumble of the thunder, “small sailboat” it said, “we may have collided with you,” crackle crackle, “changing course,” crackle crackle, “coming back to get you”

Well, that explains it, I thought, and I grabbed my ditch bag to await rescue.