In Which Gerald is Not Sure How to Feel

There had been no one in the house, thank God, when the letter bomb had exploded, but Gerald didn’t feel anything resembling relief as he stood outside of the building, watching scattered papers and sparks drift out of the shattered window where his room had been. He felt, in fact, quite the opposite. He felt a looming sort of dread, not at all glad that he had in fact avoided the explosion, instead feeling like perhaps he would have been better off, no, should have been better off, in his room, spread out across the walls and floor as an ashen smudge to be later collected and disposed of.

The package had arrived about an hour earlier with no return address and a name only superficially resembling his own, but the phone had rung so Gerald had grabbed a cigarette and left, standing out on the sidewalk and pacing. It was his girlfriend, Susan, and she had called and said hello with the uncomfortable gravity that a speaker takes before saying something truly overwhelming.

“Hello Gerald.” Susie had said.

“Oh God,” Gerald had replied, and then a noise like nothing either of them had ever heard, like a team of trucks all colliding head on like an asterisk, or maybe like a safe, falling from some great distance through a long series of plate glass windows. Gerald had been thrown off of his feet and yet somehow the cell phone landed next to his head so he could hear Susan say, her voice the very encyclopedic example of bewilderment, “What the hell was that?!”

Gerald took the phone up, still lying prone on the ground. He ignored his injuries as best he could. (His estimation: one twisted ankle, two, maybe three broken ribs. Numerous cuts and bruises.) “Susie,” said Gerald. “I think my apartment just exploded.”

In a rush to say her piece, Susan either didn’t hear or simply ignored his words. “I’m breaking up with you.”

Gerald paused, unsure of what to say, and then repeated himself. “Susie,” he said. “I think my apartment just exploded.”

“What?”

“My apartment. It- it exploded.” He suddenly felt very ridiculous and unsure of how to continue, tried to further emphasize his point, saying “As in, like… boom.”

She said nothing in response, but Gerald could hear low, throaty noises and the tiniest sounds he imagined was the sound of her grinding her teeth. He thought about how her face scrunched up when she was angry, how her eyebrows remained level as her eyes squinted, the mouth a thin line below. He imagined she was doing the little twitchy thing she did with the corner of her lips that he found extremely cute for no reason apparent to him and had learned to never mention.

Susie hung up the phone, and Gerald, lying on the ground, gave it a look of utter and complete confusion before shutting the clamshell with an audible click.

He didn’t get up, choosing instead to continue lying on the ground as the breeze scattered ash and soot around him.

At the End of the Day

"Things were better before,” Roxy said, sitting on the ground and poking at the coals in the makeshift fire-pit with a sprig of bent metal. “Before the sun exploded, I mean.” She prodded at the smoldering lumps, turning them over and over again in pointless motions until the chewed logs above them collapsed, sending flecks of red-hot sparks up to wheedle and disappear into the air.

“Oh you mean, do you?” Roxy’s mother was standing above a scratched and dented steel counter some short distance away in the tiny metal box of a room, impatiently stirring the too-hot soup she had taken off of the now dying fire. She didn’t turn to Roxy as she spoke. “I suppose you’d have us back out there in the freezing cold just for sentimentality’s sake.”

Roxy sighed. “It’s not that it’s, just, you know.” She lay the stick down now and drew her legs up against her chest, wrapping her arms around her knees. “It was better.” Though she couldn’t see it, her mother’s head dropped a few inches, her neck bent into a nearly ninety degree angle. She said nothing.

“At least the bamboo was alive,” Roxy continued, which was not altogether incorrect- though the bamboo was not dead, it was dying slowly in the ceramic basin in the corner of the room, and though the bamboo had been livelier under the last bits of sunlight, it was unfair to blame the UV lamps that now stood above it. Roxy had slowly lost interest in the plant as the sun faded, watering it less and less often, and she had ceased talking to it altogether. The case once was where she would tell the plant everything (especially after the baby had died), but in the cramped tin of their living quarters her mother’s near-constant proximity discouraged her.

Before her mother had woken that morning, Roxy had spoken to the bamboo, the first time in months. She had crouched low, and whispered something secret.

Roxy’s mother put a hand close above the pot, and sensing that it was cool enough, poured two portions out into bowls, and carefully covered the pot over before placing it into the freezebox. Passing a bowl to Roxy, she sat down next to her daughter on the floor and the two of them sipped carefully at the thin soup, and stared into the glowing coals.

They ate their soup in silence, and Roxy's mind fidgeted. She finished her soup set her bowl aside, and putting her hands to the back of her neck in fear and frustration, she spoke.

“I think we should do it.”

Her mother said nothing, looked nowhere and was still. She blinked slowly, watching the coals of the fire hiss and snap and finally she stood up and placed her empty bowl on the counter.

“No.”

“Why not?!” said Roxy, turning her head towards her mother, fast as a whip, as though her mother's response had not been unexpected but unimaginable. “This place is empty. No one is here anymore and no one is going to-“

Her mother cut her off. “They will,” she said, not sharply but quietly and slowly, a new gravity in her voice. “They will figure something out.”

Roxy said nothing. She had nothing to say. Defeated, she turned her head back to the fire, and again taking up her scrap of metal, she pushed the coals around and watched as the sparks scattered into the air.

In Which Derrick Refuses to Watch Blade Runner for the Sixth Time

“Come on,” says Derrick. “This is ridiculous.” The look on his face is a cautious, like he’s really become quite afraid of the situation, but you press on regardless.

“This is ridiculous? You’re being ridiculous! Just drink it!” Your enthusiasm has lit up your face and made you mostly oblivious to the obvious danger of the whole thing. Derrick eyes the glass on the table, the blue liquid within. It’s becoming clear to you that his claim that he would “rather drink Draino than watch this fucking movie again” may have been colorful hyperbole, but you’ve never been one to let these things go.

“How do you not want to watch Blade Runner?” You had been calm and patient to start, but quickly realized that the time of reason was growing short. Six times in a week was too much, he had said, but you would have none of it.

So now, the Draino.

“I’m not doing it,” says Derrick, and this time you believe him, but the whole thing has gotten out of hand and you refuse to let this pass. You shout “fine!” and hammer the glass back, downing approximately a cup and a half of the stuff in one go.

Derrick’s eyes are wide, but you’re not worried. “Dude,” he says. “I don’t think that was a good idea.”

“Yeah, well,” you start, but you interrupt yourself, coughing up a thick syrup of blood and stomach lining. You can’t think of anything good to follow that, so you squint through the blood that’s started welling up in your eyes and try to maintain composure despite the retching.