THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED, we lost our power first as lights and machines shut down like stale organs folding into their lives without blood. Mucus membranes settled in the trenches of my eyelid and produced chemical tears.
“It’s okay,” we told ourselves. “I am not afraid.”
After a few hours, lungs couldn’t take it, clawed their way out of our rib and sacrificed themselves to the noxious gasses. My nuke tipped fingers counted the columns remaining down our spine. We only got to three before the vapor consumed us.
“It’s okay,” we said again. “I am not afraid.”
Other bodies collapsed around us -- metal bodies, furry bodies, red meat bodies were starved by lasers and flooded out with a mix of water and dust from monuments collapsing. We do not shut down alongside them because we have to be strong, we have to eat their remains to sustain the infrastructure of our being. Our skin shed like orange peels and left a sweaty smell.
“That’s not any smell,” we said. “That’s explosive pixie dust and sweat.”
Lumps filled with sewage make tumors on what remains of our flesh, satellites to monitor bones for any sign of decay. Our bellies swell with water, and fish take shelter in the tissue until we are of egg and fetus, ready to repopulate once the disaster ends.
The building around us begins to fall in plastic sheets, like it were never reinforced with brick or mortar or the human hand. We watch the sun safe in the sky, mocking our imminent downfall.
“It’s okay,” we tell the sun. “I would mock us too.”
Everything stops and we are quiet until the Earth puts its head in an astral lap, throwing the continents and all its inhabitants like toys into a bright pink bin. Of course, at the point, we are mostly zombie, clung to life only by the stem of brain. China and Seychelles, France and Timor-Lest, the Koreas, Eritrea, Maldives, the States are names in a ground mouth housing us all like cars in a parking lot. We are all displaced. We have no home now because today, the world decided to pack us in its bags and end. Land is chipped at the corners, chemicals nibbling at their corners like rats. Like the rats that are, somehow, surviving, that we have to eat until everyone else dies.
The Earth continues to rotate while explosions liter its back. A dusty hand the size of a globe reaches up, and counts its spine the way I did. It gets further than three, but no further than five. The hand eroded off, and any second now, we know that we are next and will die alone.
Because God is alone the day he makes the universe out of nothing at all.
And there is nothing left when the planet implodes -- at the end, there is only us and light, cowering behind a pyramid snapped in the middle like a twig. Earth is formless and empty, fat lumps of sand and warm water and no life, no sign we were ever here.
When we want to forget it, succumb to the apocalypse and lay ourselves out for the horses to dine on, our guts twitch and jerk. Our navels implode, and suddenly, the ocean is full of baby fishes.
The sea lights up again and becomes alive, a vault of blue and golden stars to fall into at night. With this vision, we step out from the wreckage. We see the world; it’s beautiful. It is over, but able to be rebuilt.
“That’s something,” we say. “Really something.”
We pick up the countries like puzzle pieces and put them back in place around the fishes. We look around at the new world, and rest in the knowledge that it may be good, someday.
The day the world ended was the day it began again. The toxins were flushed and we woke up in a hospital bed, ready to work and rebuild.
Patrice walks into her kitchen, opens the cupboard, pulls out a box of Kraft macaroni and cheese, and sighs. She’s wearing a matching set of duck pajamas with a thinly rolled joint clamped between the corner of her lips. She runs the tap to fill a half-washed pot and lights the joint on the stovetop before setting the water to boil.
The clock on her microwave flashes twelve. The power went out last Wednesday and she just can’t bring herself to reset it. Her anxiety calms as she smokes and watches the bubbles start to collect at the bottom of the pot.
What the hell do you think you’re doing? The voice comes from nowhere and is husky like it’s had one too many Virginia Slims.
Patrice brushes a stray hair back around her ear and mumbles, “Making dinner.”
A stray tentacle creeps out from behind her back. It’s slimy and has thick black hair covering it. It’s wearing a gaudy wristwatch, which it holds unnecessarily close to her face.
Bitch, it’s 7 o’clock.
Patrice dumps the bag of noodles into the boiling water and turns down the heat. She takes another drag of her joint and grabs a can of beer from the fridge. “And your point is?”
My point is that we told Jessie that we’d meet her for tacos and tequila at 7:45 and you haven’t even taken a shower today.
In the blink of an eye, another tentacle appears and pulls the joint out of her lips, stubbing it out in an ashtray on the counter. A third removes the boiling macaroni from the burner and a fourth smacks Patrice directly in the cheek.
Get your game face on, girl. We’re gonna get it in tonight.
Patrice grimaces, trying her best to overcome the beast on her back.
“God dammit, Franny, stop that.”
She manages to strain the macaroni and dump in a pad of butter and the packet of Nickelodeon-orange powdered cheese into the pot. She dodges another smack from the fourth tentacle and gets her pathetic dinner into a chipped ceramic bowl. She gathers the bowl, ashtray, and the beer and brings them with her into her living room.
Franny is a gigantic parasite that latches onto Patrice with hundreds of tiny suction cups. Patrice has to cut holes in all of her clothing so she doesn’t suffocate, which has proven awkward in professional settings but works alright otherwise. Franny’s been around for as long as she can remember, but the two still can’t manage to agree on anything.
Patrice, it’s fucking depressing in here. We’ve gotta get out.
Franny and Patrice’s living room is covered in unopened mail and discarded takeout containers. There’s a Trainspotting poster on one wall and a shelf full of books on the other that were all Randy’s, but he hasn’t lived here in months and never came back for his stuff.
Patrice turns a Making a Murderer on Netflix. She settles into the pleather couch after kicking aside her electric blanket and says, “Franny, I don’t care what you or Jessie or that guy Chet you made us bring home last week have to say about it. Nothing is getting in between me and that murderer tonight.”
I’m not so sure about that.
Patrice snorts and grabs a throw pillow, putting it behind her head and muffling Franny’s voice. One of Franny’s tentacles starts to slither out from underneath her, but she bats at it with her fork before taking her first bite, followed immediately by a huge swig of beer.
“Ahhhh,” she moans, burping, “that hits the spot.”
Come on, Patty, you’re not gonna really live until you get outta those ducky pajamas and into something much less comfortable.
“Fat chance,” Patrice says, relighting the roach and turning the volume up on the TV.
Franny gives Patrice a few minutes. Even lets her think that she’s going to get her way, letting those sweet-talking Wisconsin lawyers lull her into a false sense of security. The minute Patrice’s guard is down, all of Franny’s tentacles are on deck.
With the first, she knocks Patrice’s beer into the bowl of macaroni and cheese, ruining it.
With the second, she throws the remote at the television, cracking the glass, and knocking it off the wall.
“What the fuck!” Patrice shouts.
Franny, laughing, takes her third and fourth tentacles and inserts both of them into Patrice’s ears. The woman’s eyes glaze over with a milky white film and she stops resisting. She stands and walks like a zombie to the bedroom; Franny chuckling the whole way there.
When Patrice comes to, they’re in front of the mirror and Franny is putting the finishing touches on her make-up. The tentacles on the left tending to her foundation and lipstick while those on the right do their best to do anything with her hair.
“Come on, Franny, next week. I promise”
Jessie’s been blowing your phone up. We’re already late. Let’s go.
Patrice glances down and notices the hideous dress that Franny has them in. Bright turquoise and covered in hideous sequins and low cut in the back, so the parasite can be the center of every conversation like she always is. “I look like a fucking clown.”
Mmm mmm mmm, girl. You look good.
Patrice tries to seize control for a second, grabbing a bottle of rubbing alcohol and makeup wipes out of the medicine cabinet, but Franny notices and slides two her tentacles back into Patrice’s ears.
After what feels like moments, the two of them are walking into Harry’s Burritos. The Weeknd is playing over the loudspeakers and Jessie is sitting by herself, a plate of half-finished-half-congealed nachos in front of her.
“Where the hell were you two?” she spits.
Patrice goes to speak, but Franny pipes up, pulling out the tentacle with the watch and pointing at her heavily rouged cheeks: Someone tried to bail on you.
Jessie rolls her eyes and slurs, “I ordered us margaritas, but you took so long that I had to drink them both.”
“That’s alright,” she says. Patrice’s voice is so soft compared to Franny’s that she isn’t even sure if Jessie hears her.
This is my song, Franny says, her tentacles waving in the air. Patrice takes a sip of water and glances around the room. She catches the bartender’s glare as he’s staring at them. It’s Chet. She’s had a crush on him for months, and she really should thank Franny for helping her seal the deal, but she has a hard time thanking Franny for just about anything when she’d usually rather be at home sleeping.
Chet grabs a bottle of mezcal and four shot glasses. He fills them up and sets them on a tray, abandoning his post to join them.
“What’s up girls, how’re you doing tonight?”
Chet! My favorite man in the world.
Jessie gives Patrice a little wink, “Oh, we’re good honey, how’re you?”
Chet smiles at the three of them as he passes out the shots, saving Patrice’s for last. He grazes her hand as he says, “I’m doing great. Shift’s just starting, but I’m taking this one with you anyway.”
Patrice’s face goes flush, but she raises her glass with the rest of them and whispers, “Good to see you too, Chet.”
I’ll bet it is, Patty.
Franny and Jessie cackle and one of Franny’s tentacles reaches out and smacks Chet on the ass. Now it's his turn to blush.
“Look, ladies, I’ve gotta go get back to the bar, but don’t you go anywhere on me,” he says, stacking the glasses and throwing a towel over his perfectly lanky shoulder, “stick around long enough, Franny, and I’ll let you eat the worm.”
I’ll bet you will, she whispers, Jessie cackling even louder this time.
“Be careful what you wish for,” Patty says, speaking up, “you keep talking like that and Franny’s got a worm of her own to show you.”
Chet shoots her another glance as he walks away, smiling with only half of his mouth. Patrice fucking hates how right Franny is; Steven Avery’s got nothing on Chet and she knows it.
For the next hour and a half, Jessie and Franny inhale twelve tacos between the two of them. Patrice enjoys two. Chet keeps sending them drinks and they keep drinking them, and before any of them know it, Harry’s is closing. Jessie stumbles outside to call a cab and Franny, for the first time all night, keeps quiet and lets Patrice do the talking.
“You wanna come by tonight?” she says, looking up into those big grey eyes of his and biting her lower lip.
Chet doesn’t say anything. He just turns the lights off in the bar and grabs Patrice by the wrist, leading her out to his car. He doesn’t even make a face as Franny slides her hairy tentacles all over his hips. He’s got one thing on his mind and one thing only: Patrice.
Back at home, Patrice is nervous for a minute that Chet’ll say something about the mess, even though it looks exactly the same as it did last week, give or take a room temperature pot of mac’n’cheese. Netflix asks if she’s still watching Making a Murderer, but she pushes Chet into her room and leaves the lights off. Franny hasn’t made a peep since they left the bar, only occasionally groping Chet, but still letting Patrice stay in control.
The three tumble around in the dark in her bed and Patrice wonders, for a minute, if it’s the part of Franny that’s snuck her way inside of Chet that gets him off, but she doesn’t mention it. Just lets the two of them pass out in a tangle of limbs and tentacles and sweat and condom wrappers and grabs her phone. It’s three o’clock in the morning on a Wednesday and she’s gotta work in a few hours, but she’s wide awake. She lights up another joint from her bedside table and looks at Instagram, immediately finding her way to Randy’s profile. She can’t stop obsessing over the new girl in all of his photos, even though Chet is still ass naked and only two feet away from her.
Franny, who Patrice is convinced is sated for the night, mumbles one last time before snoring: Aren’t you glad we went out?
Patrice, still scrolling through pictures of Randy’s new, slightly younger, slightly thinner, definitely more blonde version of her, answers: Yes.
Slide through the doors of the convenience store. Live a little in your skin. This skin was given to you in about 1975. Friendship Wolfcheese made sure you got the kind of skin that earned you favor. Ask for cigarettes. Carefully enunciate the vowels and the consonants. Friendship Wolfcheese was very particular about sounds.
Marlllllborooooo Liiiiiights.
Feel the heat in your cheeks. Why the heat in your cheeks?
Marllllllborooooo Liiiights.
He doesn’t understand you. This boy of fifteen, with the fresh coat of paint on his face. Squints in your direction. He’s speaking, but the speaking isn’t happening in your ears.
Friendship Wolfcheese lived on a boat. He hunted for fish with a stick and string, and then he fried the fish in a sea of butter. Fish eyes popped because of the heat. Because of the way they were being cooked.
Marllllllboroooooo Liiiiights.
This boy of fifteen. He doesn’t know you. He doesn’t care for you. He’s got the phone to worry about and the hair to worry about and he doesn’t know you.
Point.
Marlllllborooooooo Liiiiiiiiights.
Point again, hitting the plastic separating you and the boy.
Marlllllborooooooo Liiiiiiights.
Fish eyes popping. More of a melt, really. Friendship Wolfcheese could melt a fish in butter whole. A whole melt.
Marlllllboroooooo Liiiiiiights.
Until the fish was just butter.
Marlllllboroooooo Liiiiiiights.
You could live without. Friendship Wolfcheese could live without. Fish could live without water for nine days. Flipping and flipping. On a chopping block.
You walk back.
Corporate encourages that we ride to work on company pogo sticks. Company bicycles and unicycles are also okay, but everything else is frowned upon. “We can't force anyone,” the CEO laughs. Sheryl hates to bounce, rides in on a skateboard every morning. Everyone used to adore Sheryl, used to throw morning glories at her in the staff parking lot. Now co-workers spit on her as they pass her new office in the broken elevator full of fax machines. I remain a loyal employee, a pogo commuter covered head to toe in Band-Aids. My bruises and scabs are the only things that make my wife laugh. I take a pogo stick to work every morning and my poor balance never wins. I fall four of five times before sunrise and my work is only two blocks from my bed. My boss loves the commitment, adores the blood. Can't stop giving me raises.
You’ve come to cherish the fragility of snails, come to love them in a small sort of way. When you see one attempting to cross the sidewalk, you pick it up—and it shrinks from you—and you move it to the other side. When it rains, you become more careful, you walk home with the light on your phone on. When you step on a snail in the dark, the shape and timbre of that sound taps something deep within you, and you imagine paying someone to take a needle and ink and carve colored lines into you, marking your own skin with a rendering of a snail as a sort of penance for all you’ve crushed. You think about what meaning could be assigned to a snail shell: home, vitality, retreat. You imagine a snail your own size, and wonder how strong the shell would be then.
/
Your parents have a corner lot with a sizeable yard, on which for years they’ve grown fruits and vegetables. You had corn when you were young, blueberries too, and raspberries, cherries, squash, and grapes. Many of the plants and trees had to be wrapped in black mesh so that the ever-present birds, snailkind, and deer wouldn’t make off with everything.
You’d heard, likely from someone at school, that salting a slug or a snail would cause it to shrivel and vanish, and you wanted to try it—not out of maliciousness, but because you are, always have been, insatiably curious. You knew nothing of the chemical properties of salt, and that you could pour salt on something in the world and cause it to disappear seemed a form of magic, a formula that tapped into something hidden about the rules of existing. Likewise, for some time as a child, you thought that spraying water on wasps would kill them, extinguish them as though they were flame, but you discovered one summer that this was untrue.
Once, when your mother was working in the beds behind the house, and she’d removed a slug or a snail from a plant, you asked if you could salt it.
She said no, and reminded you that salting the slug or snail would kill it. You hadn’t considered the implications of ending a life, that snuffing out a being so small and inconsequential was still killing, and her response stopped you short.
You’ve never salted a slug or a snail, but you imagine them bending in upon themselves, as might someone in the throes of vomiting, shrinking, becoming less pliant, contorting like a receipt tossed into a fire.
/
You think of your manager, the one who’s vegan and has a pupil shaped like keyhole. You think of how he was heartsick for so long when they couldn’t get the baby bird out of the walls of his office, couldn’t lure it down through the air vent. You think of how he told you about an injured animal he picked up on the side of the road—a blackbird, or a raccoon, you can’t quite recall—and you remember how he’d been quiet one day because the sanctuary had called to say the animal didn’t make it, that it had died, and even he was surprised at how broken up he was. You think of how you asked him about the shape of his pupil, and you even had the word ready, coloboma—a word, incidentally, that appears in a story by one of your instructors, a story you return to again and again, even-though-slash-because you’re convinced you’ll never understand all the pieces in play, a story that you’ve had your own students read—but you come to your manager armed with this word, and he says no, that’s not it at all. He tells you about how he was wilder in his youth, how he and some friends had been on the banks of a river, when one of them lobbed a beer bottle from a distance, and it struck him in the face, exploding on impact. Your manager has scars on his forehead, and a nose that never straightened out. He tells you that some of the glass entered his eye, and he had to be awake when the doctors attempted to remove it. Each time the surgeon brought the utensils up close, his eye twitched instinctively, seeking escape, trying to evade being touched. The cycle repeated once, twice, again, until finally the surgeon told your manager to quit fucking moving his eyes unless he wanted to go blind.
/
Your manager, who was nearing fifty when you worked for him, had an older brother who died in his twenties. It might’ve been suicide, it might’ve been a drunk driver—another thing you wish you could remember. But his brother was involved in theater, like your husband, and your manager tells you that your husband reminds him a lot of his brother.
You saw Alejandro Iñárritu’s film Birdman with your husband, and when it was over, you looked at him and said, Don’t ever do that to me.
/
You bought a shirt recently and a pair of jeans, both massively marked down. One tags reads Made in Madagascar, the other Made in Indonesia. You think of a conversation with your brother about the $6 H&M t-shirts advertised as being eco-conscious, made with organic cotton, Made in Malaysia. Your brother says something like, Mmp, yep, child fingers made that.
/
When you were younger, but old enough for your parents to leave you and your brother at home unsupervised, you went to one of the cupboards and took down a repurposed butter tub filled with salt. You carried it through the house to your brother’s room, and said, Look, I found sugar. He licked a finger and dipped it into the white mass, stuck it in his mouth.
Years later, he still brings this up.
/
Your husband won’t touch pecan pie. Hasn’t since he was a child, when his grandfather made one and substituted the sugar with salt by accident. Your husband and his sister complained, said, This doesn’t taste right. Their grandfather was furious and forced them to finish their pie. He was a man steeped in the belief that food on a plate is a contract: you finish what you take, you finish what you’re given. When your husband tells you this, he says, Because that’s a great way to teach a child about obesity. There are things you sometimes forget about your husband: that he was not as slim as he is now, that there are years of his childhood he’s blacked out.
Your husband’s grandfather cut himself a slice of pie, ate one bite, and threw out the rest without saying a word.
/
A member of your cohort tells you no, you’ve got it wrong, salt doesn’t dessicate snailkind, just the opposite—they bubble up, boil over, and melt.
In a way, both are right: as salt removes the water from the body, a snail emits a slime in order to protect itself. The bubbling, the boil—that’s the air leaving as the snail shrinks, compresses, has nowhere else to hide.
JORDAN
To imagine what Jordan’s dad looked like, I pictured Jordan’s face stripped of his mother’s features. It was like clearing away layers of earth to find the remains of some unidentifiable structure. The scavenged and featureless result was the face of his invisible dad.
Jordan planned on changing his last name when he got married. The disembodied and scarred face of his father heard about it and showed up in Jordan’s dream the night before the wedding. “The name was fine for twenty-something years,” he said, “and now what, it’s not?”
“I learned how to wear your name,” Jordan said, “I wore it kind of hanging off my shoulders so that my neck wouldn’t be constantly sore. But Lindsay doesn’t deserve it, look at her, it would destroy her.”
“You’re right,” said the disfigured tiki mask that was Jordan’s dream father. “Let her keep her own name.”
“I can’t do that. She asked me for a name. I’ve got to give her something to make sure she’ll never run away.”
“Do you know how hard it is to love a baby all of the time?” The face asked.
Jordan woke up, got married, and they took his mother’s name. It was a good name and the right decision; his dad’s name was cursed. That’s what he told Lindsay when she asked, it’s what he told his mother, and it’s what he told me. The name was cursed, and the wedding was the perfect time to get rid of it.
He and Lindsay had a little boy of their own a year later. That little boy began asking for a name. They gave him the pure and unspoiled name they’d taken at their wedding. Jordan couldn’t help but tremble as he gave it to the boy. He trembled because he knew that if he’d given the child his father’s name instead, the curse would have turned him invisible and buried him beneath countless layers of earth.
#
LOGAN
I never met Logan’s dad, but I saw a picture of him. He’d been sick for a long time, and everyone knew he’d be dead soon. In the picture he was wearing a hat with military pins. He was young and handsome and looked the way all dads should look before they become fathers.
His dying didn’t make me worry for my own father, it just made me sad for Logan. He was quiet through it all, and that made it so much worse. I wished he would cry, and yell, and refuse to go to the funeral. I would support him. We’d run away into the woods behind his house. We’d bring the picture of his dad and tape it to a wall of a cabin. We would talk like his dad was still sick, and by that I mean we wouldn’t talk about him at all. We would ignore the picture. His perpetual sickness would afford us the silence Logan wanted. We would keep death close at hand, but never at our door. And we would be happy like that. We would ride snowboards in the winter, break branches off of trees in the summer, and listen to Blink-182.
My dad was healthy, but I’d tape a picture of him to the wall anyway and pretend he was sick as well. We’d teach each other to shave with BIC razors and be dads for one another. Two thirteen year old dad-boys living in the woods, that’s what I wanted for Logan. But instead he got a viewing, and a funeral, and all the sympathies he never asked for.
#
AARON
I don’t know exactly why I think Aaron's dad was an asshole, except that Aaron never talked about him, and Aaron’s mom seemed sad. His mom was the only mom I knew who wasn’t a Christian, but she was so sweet you’d never have guessed it. She kept alpacas in their backyard and made scarves out of their fleece.
Aaron changed his last name, but he didn’t wait until he got married. He did it as soon as he went off to college and stopped believing in God. God was trying to talk him into keeping the name, saying to him, “Aaron, come on, everything happens for a reason,” and, “Aaron, buddy, we need to forgive.”
Aaron told God that it seemed unfair, and he didn’t want the name anymore. He wanted his mom’s name, because she was sweet, even if she didn’t love God (which really, he reiterated, made the sweetness all the more genuine).
“Think of it this way,” God replied, “sins are like buildings, some are big (i.e. your father’s) and some are tiny (i.e. your mother’s). But Me, I’m in heaven, and in heaven, looking down, all I see is the tops of the buildings, I don’t know which ones are tall or short, I just know everyone’s got one.”
Aaron didn’t saying anything back to God, in fact he quit talking to him altogether. Before God goes to bed at night, and before He eats a meal, he still sometimes talks to Aaron, hoping to make a difference, hoping to get a response.
#
DEV
Dev’s dad is going to lose his foot. The doctor’s gave him special shoes and said, “If you don’t wear these shoes, you’re going to lose your foot; we’ll cut it off.” He calls Dev sometimes to ask for help moving furniture (on account of his foot hurts).
“Are you wearing the shoe?” Dev asks.
“Every once in a while, but it’s pretty uncomfortable.”
So he’s going to lose the foot. Dev thinks he wants to lose the foot. Not that he wants it gone, but it would give him an excuse to move less, to stay in his chair and watch television.
He calls Dev on Dev’s birthday while he and I are walking around Meijer with my daughter. He tells Dev the usual stories—stories from a childhood that Dev doesn’t remember. The stories are from before he and Dev’s mom got a divorce. Dev looks at me like, I’m sorry, and like, This will only be a minute. My daughter is looking at the fish in the Meijer fish tank, pointing to a dead one and making noises like she’s pretending to snore.
I only know about one of Dev’s birthdays (aside from the one he spent shopping at Meijer with me and my daughter). It was the only time he had a real birthday party. Somebody bought him a VHS video tutorial for Tech Deck skateboards—the miniature skateboards you control with your fingers. After opening the gifts, all the kids went outside to play, but Dev stayed inside by himself and practiced Tech Deck maneuvers. Tech Decks are great for kids like Dev who want to stay inside, but they’re also great for people who only have one foot and are still interested in skateboarding.
My daughter waved goodbye to the dead fish and blew it a kiss. Then she ran to Dev and let him hold her while he forgot (again) the stories he could never remember.
I imagined Dev without a foot, standing in the aisle with a nub at the end of his leg. It was frightening. I knew my fear was insensitive, and I hated that I was frightened of it. Stop staring, I thought, it’s impolite. How would he get around though? How would he ever leave this town with only one foot? I’ll go with him, I thought, and he can set his hand on my shoulder while we walk past the county line and on toward wherever. But no, I can’t go. I have a daughter, and she loves the fish here, in Meijer. Remembering her, I got nervous, because he was still holding her, hobbling down the cereal aisle, and what if he fell over?
#
STEPHEN
When my dad was in college he drank too much. His apartment was filled with empty bottles, and his stairwell was filled with drunks passed out and strewn along the walls. He drank and drank but always remained thirsty, and his friends said, “Drink more, we highly recommend it.”
One day, after drinking his normal excessive amount, he got into the driver’s seat of a car. The car, too, was filled with empty bottles. He knew he shouldn’t, but he began driving down the interstate, doing his best to keep the car between the appropriate lines. Blue lights flashed, and he saw a State Police in his rearview mirror. He pulled the car over and waited for the end of his life.
He wanted to think, It’s been a good life, but he couldn’t. It’s been a life full of empty bottles and drunk bodies, he thought. It’s been a life half-lived, and I still have never fallen in love. The State Police was knocking on his window. The aroma from all of the bottles and from the beer soaked into the fabric of the cushions drifted out the open window and crawled into the nostrils of the man come to end his life.
“You were swerving a little back there.”
“I know. It’s because my life has only been half-lived, and I’m only half a man.”
“I see. I don’t think I can write you a ticket for that.”
“No, you can’t. It’s not against the law to live a half-life. I wish it was. I wish you could write me a ticket, and I could take it to the courthouse and pay it, and my half-life would be remedied. I’d finally get rid of all of these bottles, and I’d fall in love, have a child, name him after me.”
“I’m going to let you off with a warning this time. But, on a personal note, I’m worried about you.”
Just like that, the man who had the power to end my dad’s life returned to his car and drove away. It was this strange act of mercy that carried my dad home that night, and laid him in his bed, and woke him in the morning. It was this strange act of mercy that recycled all his bottles and woke all of his drunk friends, hugging them goodbye. It was this strange act of mercy that pulled him from New Jersey to Indiana and arranged a date with my mother’s sister and then later with my mother. And it was this strange act of mercy that whispered in his ear, “A half-life can be a whole-life if you need it to be.”
I arrive at 6:55. I climb the stairwell to the main lobby, swipe my badge to access the elevators. I wait. I have earbuds in and keep my eyes dipped so that no one acknowledges me. I enter the elevator. I exit the elevator at my floor. I begin my work day in silence. I attempt to spend as much of my workday as possible in silence.
I arrive at 6:56. I climb the stairwell to the main lobby, swipe my badge to access the elevators. I wait. I have earbuds in and keep my eyes dipped. I say nothing to the hellos and good mornings around me. I enter the elevator. I exit the elevator on 39. I begin my work day in silence. I attempt to spend as much of my workday alone as possible.
I arrive at 6:47. I climb the stairwell to the main lobby, in front of me is a man wearing a jacket just like mine. He swipes his badge to access the elevators. I swipe my badge. He wears a smile on his face. I wear my earbuds and dip my eyes when he turns to see which elevator doors will open. He greets the other workers congregating for the elevator. I remain silent.
I arrive at 7:03. I walk briskly to swipe in. The man with my coat is behind me. I drop my badge and he retrieves it.
“Thank you,” I say.
His hair is cut the same as mine. He wears the same shoes and the same pants. His black sweater snug around his pinpoint collared shirt. He smiles and says, “You’re welcome.”
Around us are several people waiting on the elevators. The elevators are always so slow. I wonder what it takes to say hello. To say good morning. To begin my work day in this other way.
I arrive at 6:54. I climb the stairwell to the main lobby. The man who looks like me is already waiting for an elevator. I swipe my badge. I remove my earbuds. I do not dip my eyes. I breathe out. He smiles. I say, “Good morning.”
He turns his back to me and doesn’t say anything. I look away and catch my distorted reflection in the closing elevator doors.
Orel Gammon stopped wearing his cup the second day he played in the "majors." This wasn't the Major League Baseball. The rec center named their little league for ages 10-12, “the majors.” For all who played in “the minors” before it, this new league was a big deal. It meant kids pitched, and the kids pitched harder than the pussyfoot dads, who were notorious for tossing slow balls to make their kids feel like all-stars when they knocked a homer over the fence. League rules in the majors required that kids wear cups over their crotch, something all the preteens got a kick out of, except Orel Gammon, gangly and doe-eyed as if everything around him could be a danger.
The snug cup hijacked Orel’s mind when he stepped up to the plate, causing him to whiff bad. It was all he could picture when he didn't reach up in time to snatch that line drive inches from his head at shortstop. He could hear his dad groan from the stands. Quickly he was getting a reputation as a space cadet, and was looking at a possible rotation out in left field, or a permanent role as a bench warmer if he didn't nip it in the bud, not to mention a silent ride home with a dad unsure of what to say if he couldn't say “good job.”
That cup could wreck his 3 year stint in the majors if he didn't ultimately shirk the rule. The constant pressure of a hard plastic dome around his genitals could be much more damaging than the thrust of a catcher's mitt into his groin during a slide into home plate. His teammates continued to mock this accessory. Big Scottie, tall but rain-thin, his mouth stained red by a raspberry chewing gum, made a clicking noise with his bright tongue as he drummed between his legs. Big Scottie looked no different than a ghoul after feasting on flesh.
Rewind 5 years: when a much smaller Orel went to his first real Major League Baseball game. He was in awe as they entered the massive stadium where electric organ jingles buoyed the wafting of hot dogs and popcorn. It was souvenir cup day at Wrigley Field, all beverages came with a reusable container showcasing a century’s evolution of the Cub’s uniform. After the 4th inning, Orel's dad led him to a set of empty seats he’d spotted closer to the 3rd baseline. It was an overcast and windy day in late April, and the sold out game wasn't brimming to its capacity. A few specks of rain prompted a smattering of blue ponchos in the bleachers they could see across the field, but the precipitation held off. As they settled into their new seats, Mr. Gammon watched intently as the Cubs went up to bat, but Orel was distracted by the braying in the row behind him, a few feet to his left.
Two teens with pube stashes and sleeveless jerseys retrieved discarded souvenir cups from among clusters of peanut shells on the ground, and then stuffed them down their sweat pants, not even stopping to drain the backwash. Orel heard their yelps and heehaws as beer soaked through the gray cotton. They'd position the cups over their privates and point its shape outward like a long sawed-off beak. When a batter hit the ball the two would rise and cheer and pound on the hard edge of their amplified phallus. They would bark and Orel was terrified at what these two beasts behind him might be capable of, and Orel got a taste of it when a foul ball came his way. He reached up, thinking he could catch it, not realizing the two teens were closing in right behind him. They were also going for the ball, edging him out. A brunt force slammed into his elbow. The cup behind the fabric had made contact, igniting the throb of a thousand fiery pins across his funny bone.
The two teens didn't acknowledge the collision, neither did his dad. Everyone was so engaged by the ball bouncing in the stands above them, the racing of drunk men to get it.
One of the teens adjusted his cup, inches away from Orel's face. He could smell the beer that was dripping down the boy's leg. The rumbles and the roaring all around him only reinforced them as monstrous. Prior to this he had heard ball games on the radio, seen some on the TV. It was as if now he had been sucked into the static pop of crowds and so he recoiled, thinking this thing was going to come at him again and it'd be nighty night for good.
His dad heard him shriek and looked down, disappointment stretching all corners of his face. "You enjoying any of this? If you want me to take you home, you're going to have to wait another inning. We paid a lot for these tickets." Orel was at a loss on how to describe what it was that bothered him and why he felt so icky. It wasn’t the game but brute shapes beneath some gross kids’ pants!
After the next inning, without even asking him if he still wanted to go, an agitated Mr. Gammon yanked his hand and led him out. As they went up the aisle, Orel could see the two teens had each found another cup to cram down and form a double headed schlong. The sweat pants appeared even wetter.
It was a few years before father and son went to another baseball game, but Orel had begun reassuring his dad of their shared interest with long sessions of catch in the backyard. When they did go to their next Cubs game, Orel was relieved it wasn't on souvenir cup day. He was bigger now, but he was still on the lookout for horseplay that might make him shudder. When they saw Ryne Sandberg hit a grand slam it was the happiest he'd ever seen his dad, and Orel hoped to make a big play on the field someday to elicit the same intensity of glee.
When Orel saw his teammates knocking their cups to show how hard it was and how invincible their balls were, his sense memory conjured up the cup’s bottom edge bashing into his elbow, the shrill pubescent voices echoed in his ears, and he was aware that at any minute, something nasty could poke at him and ruin all the fun of a favorite pastime. A knuckle would rap, then another would call out a response and it was an endless loop until the coach made some changes and sent everyone out onto the field except him. The coach waved him back and said he thought it best for him to take a breather and get his head back in it. As the other kids took their positions, Orel could hear his dad say to his mom, “looks like Orel’s not playing anymore.” And Orel wanted to call out through the green cinder blocks, “no dad, I'm still playing! Just taking a breather, trying to get my head back in it! Trying to shake the smell of damp grass and gotta remind myself the field out there isn’t a mess of sweaty, matted pubes!” He tried to summon the courage to excuse himself to use the bathroom next to the concession shack, where he could reach down his pants and dispose of his musty cup in the trash.
A kid on the other team named Trevor hit the ball into the outfield and made it to second base. He would've been out had Reggie, or as the 12-year-old supposed superstar deemed himself, the Regginator, actually set his foot down on the base when he caught the ball that was thrown back from left field, instead of the dirt several inches to the side of it. The Regginator tried to protest the call, but the ump repeated his original judgment: safe.
"Know how to use your feet?" The runner teased.
Offended, the Regginator reached out and tried to pull off the runner's helmet. Despite the ump pointing to Trevor moments before and shouting safe, Orel could see that protective apparel was only an illusion in this game, easy to peel away before the pounce.
"No touching other players!" The ump ejected the Regginator. The dismissed second baseman kicked the dirt but obeyed. As he returned to the dugout, Orel asked his coach, "am I back in?"
"No, sorry guy, we got Ben warming up out in the bullpen. Ben! Go cover second!"
The Regginator took a seat next to Orel and cussed the ump under his breath. “Dick bag!”
“Learn to settle down, guy!” The coach gave him a friendly, though aggressive, squeeze on the shoulder.
Orel was caged with an animal. His desire to flee was now amplified. But he didn’t want his dad to see him walking away from the field while the game was still being played. So Orel tried to slide away from the Regginator to a spot further down the bench, until his teammate turned and asked “wanna help gangbang that bitch of an ump in the junk?”