Flicker (3 page)

The room’s overcome with a gravity I can’t grasp, and I hold my hands up in confusion, trying to grab hold of any words I might recognize, but everything slips past me. I’m scared to look into anyone’s face, scared of what I might find.

“Fine. I made this promise. We all did. I just didn’t know it would be so soon,” Mom says.

Realizing no one’s going to answer my questions, I give up knowing they’ll continue to treat me like the child they believe me to be. Nothing’s going to change overnight; I might as well pretend Charlie never knocked on our front door.

“Dad, can we play chess then before bed?” I look to him, thinking about the many games of chess we’ve played together over the years. During a game he says, “Always look in your opponent’s eyes, trust your instincts, trust your gut.”

“Not tonight.” He looks into my eyes, and I know I can trust him, just like he’s asked. I smile, practicing patience like I’ve been taught, but inside confusion tears at me.

Though I don’t understand him at the moment, I know Dad loves me. All the people at this table do, even if it doesn’t always feel that way. These are the people who’ve taught me everything I know about the world. These people are my family. Which makes the fact that I have no idea what’s going on with them all the more complicated.

Diane begins to sob, and I want to do something to stop her tears, but I’m too scared to move. Nothing makes sense, Diane never cries, Forest never yells, and Mark never points fingers. Pretending things are going to go back to normal won’t work, everyone’s breaking protocol tonight.

“Look at her, Mark. Is this what you want it to be like? Do you?”

“Don’t you dare talk to him like that, Cecily,” Diane raises her voice at Mom. “We’re doing this and we’re doing it now.”

The room is quiet and I’m in suspense for what Mom will say next, but she doesn’t fight, doesn’t push back. Instead she nods solemnly, agreeing to Diane’s words.

Mom and Diane stand and begin closing the blinds on all the windows in the house, embracing after they finish their task. This exchange after the entire evening has been fueled with intensity feels off. They hold one another for longer than normal, and I’m held captive by this unusual display of affection. A peace offering for a fight I didn’t understand.

Diane and Mark walk into the kitchen, leaving a heavy silence to hang over the dining room. I don’t know what we’re doing, the thing everyone else understands. I want to ask, but my throat’s tight and the recycled air I breathe constricts my airway. All I want to do is run outside and pull in a long deep breath.

Diane walks back into the room, carrying a tray of steaming mugs filled with fancy sachets of leaves. I’ve never seen these before. Tea is a luxury we ran out of four years ago. I remember the day I walked in the kitchen to see Diane slamming drawers in anger over the fact all the green tea was gone, her favorite.

On each saucer is our daily allowance of multi-vitamins. We take them each night with a glass of water, and Mark hands us each our small plastic cup.  A different quantity is given for each person, based on his or her bodily needs. However, over the past year, we’ve been missing our vitamin E and fish oil capsules as bottles have emptied once and for all. I’ve never been bold enough to ask the question I think about, why take expired vitamins at all? It just points out everyone’s paranoia. I’ve looked it up in the dictionary: they match all the criteria. I can’t help but wonder if I do, too.

Diane places a mug in front of me. I look towards Mom, bewildered as to what’s going on. Is this what she wanted me to avoid? She nods her head yes, ever so slightly, telling me not to drink what is in front of me.

I look at the sachet in the water; there’s a tag at the end of the string reading “Chamomile.” I know what that is from my botany studies, but I’ve never seen these fancy bags before.

“We saved them, Lucy, for a special occasion,” Dad says, putting his hand on mine.

“What’s the occasion?” I look around the room, Diane’s stopped crying and Forest bows his head in his lap.

“Just follow my lead, dear,” Dad says. I nod yes, turning at once to Mom, whose eyes are glazed over and still. “To new beginnings!” He lifts his mug and we all follow suit, holding ours up high, before bringing the tea to our lips.

chapter five

M
om’s hand finds my knee, squeezing tight. I almost drop the teacup in my lap. Everyone around the table stares into the cup they hold, as they drink the hot liquid.  Setting their cups on their saucers, everyone bows their heads avoiding one another.

My stomach drops as I look at my cup, and then Mom’s, both still full. Everyone else empties theirs quickly. For a moment I think no one notices me, and what I have or haven’t done, except for Mom. She steadies her breath as she sees my full cup, as though knowing I didn’t drink any of it, grounds her. But then, all at once, the table realizes what Mom and I haven’t done, and their shouts erupt around us

“Drink it, Cecily!” Dad demands, his eyes suddenly wild, his face growing red.

Dad reaches over the table, grabbing my shoulders in a slow motion move. He shakes me, yelling, and I look around the room, beginning to grasp what’s happening. With a foggy realization the family around me transforms into organisms I don’t recognize, as if the petri dish got clouded with a foreign substance.

“Lucy, dammit. Drink the tea!” His words curdled in his throat.

Diane points her finger at Mom and the room grows hysterical as screams fly towards us. Dad lifts a cup to my mouth, forcing me to drink the tea. My lips are sealed tight and I push him away.

Diane stands, screaming at Mom to drink it now, but Mom just shakes her head, apologizing over and over, but then the shouts stop. I gasp, realizing Mom holds Diane up.

“Help me,” Mom screams, straining to hold onto Diane, saving her from falling to the ground.

Looking around to see who will jump to help, I notice Forest slumped down in his chair, looking towards the ceiling with his mouth agape. Mark leans hunched over his tea, mumbling words I can’t decipher, then stops, toppling towards the table.

“Lucy, help me!” Mom yells again with a look of horror on her face. Before I can reach her, a sound stops me. I turn to face Dad, scared of what I will see.

“All is well….” Dad says, staring straight at me. “All is well….”

He falls back in the chair; matching the pose Forest holds.

“What’s happening?” I scream at Mom, who sinks to the floor with Diane in her arms. “What’s going on?” My voice has never been this loud and I turn my head, trying to avoid the faces that have gone blank around me. Moms face turns white before she leans over and vomits on the floor, retching up the magic beans I found. My stomach rolls in confusion.

“I never thought it would happen so quickly.” She shakes her head and her hair comes loose from the bun it’s tied in. She sputters nonsense as her wild eyes survey the scene. “We thought it would take longer, but this was best. If it took longer they would have forced us drink it.”

“Where is the key to the medicine safe? I need it.” I grab Mom’s face with both my hands, needing her to focus. We need medicine, now.

“No, Lucy. It’s too late,” she bellows. “It’s all over.” Tears streak her face.

“Was it the tea, Mom, because it’s expired?”

“No,” she whispers not looking at me, wiping her mouth on the sleeve of her shirt. My mother has transformed into a person I can’t recognize. I’m confused by her ranting, not wanting to understand, or maybe I do understand, perfectly. I just want, so badly, for it not to be true.

“But Diane? She didn’t go outside tonight to meet the cowboy. She couldn’t have gotten the virus from the air,” I say.

“There is no damned virus Lucy. The cowboys, the horses, they’re alive! Nothing out there will hurt us … we’re the fools. They did this to themselves,” she screeches at me, while pointing at the bodies around us. She shakes and begins pulling pieces of her own hair, growing wilder each moment Diane’s corpse lays in her lap.

“No. They couldn’t. They wouldn’t.” I shake my head in disbelief. “Just give me the key and I’ll get the antibiotics, or something. It’s not too late.”

I stand, rushing to Dad, as he sits in his chair, frozen in time and space.

“Dad, where’s the key?” I shout at him, pressing my hands to his cheeks. “Just tell me where it is!” My voice catches. His chest lays flat, his breath gone and mine goes for a moment too, overwhelmed at the sight of my father dead before me.

I close my eyes tight, wanting to avoid the images I fear I’ll never be able to erase. The room starts spinning as though I’m floating in the air. My eyelids cover me with light, as tiny stars make their way into my mind, pushing out the darkness.

“This is not happening. This is not happening. This is not happening.” I chant these words out loud attempting to block out Moms cries. Her voice doesn’t fade; it grows louder, deeper, stronger. The burden of her screams pierce my skull.

I open my eyes to see her shaking hands grab hold of mine. She’s become so small, gripping me with terror, and I don’t understand the shift. She’s always been the support for me.

“We’re alive. Aren’t we, Lucy?” she asks; pleading with me to tell her a truth she can live with.

I know what to say because my chest moves up and down and hers matches mine and everyone around us is perfectly silent and perfectly still.

“Yes. We are alive.”

chapter six

M
om looks around the room. “This was meant to be us, Lucy. This exodus was meant for us all. I can’t believe they went through with it.” Her mouth quivers as she says the words.

They meant for this to happen.

They meant for this to happen to me, too.

When Mom asked me to follow her lead tonight, it wasn’t an attempt to force me to forfeit my choice … it was to save me. Mom stands and walks to each body, holding faces in her hands; closing eyelids with her fingers as her own teardrops fall onto the cheeks of our dead. She goes around the room, staring at the bodies of the only people I know. I shake my head, it isn’t
know
. They are the only people I
knew
.

I’m not able to equate this scene with what I’ve always been taught. Virus. Disease. Pandemic. Those are the death makers I’ve been taught to fear. This is nothing like the horror stories they painted for me over the years. This is worse. I stand still as my mother looks at my dead father. A man who’s become a stranger.  Dad would never do this to me. Dad warned of death from the unclean air, this is death he brought on himself.

Mom leans into his lips, letting hers press against his, and I want to look away, but I can’t. My father just killed himself. She lifts her hand, slapping it hard against his cold cheek.

“Coward.” She spits the words in his just-kissed face, her hand trembles as she pulls it back. She wipes her cheeks dry with her palms and breathes in deep.

“Mom….” I don’t know what comes next. I don’t know if I want to know, seeing as this was the plan Dad, Forest, Diane, and Mark had in the works all along. A group suicide. “How did they … why didn’t we…?” I point to Dad, not wanting to say out loud the word “die.”  She looks over at me, as if having forgotten I’ve been here all along.

“The tea was mixed with poison.” She keeps her eyes on Dad while she speaks. “Diane and I had measured the quantities earlier while you were in the hatch, we all knew it was going to be tonight. Dad, Forest, and Mark had decided how much to use … I don’t want to talk about this, Lucy. Not now.”

“So they put the poison in the cups of tea? You knew what was going to happen?”

“Yes, but that’s beside the point, try to understand. What matters is no one tried to alter the amounts, they could have resisted, but they didn’t. They will….”

“They willingly took their lives.” I finish for her. “So why didn’t you change everyone’s?
You could have saved them all
.” I’m the one shaking now.

“No, Lucy. I couldn’t. They didn’t want to be saved.” She takes my hands in hers, leading me to the study. She closes the door; the one Forest has sealed every single night of my life, effectively shutting off the room of the living from that of the dead.

Once in the study, we both sit down in chairs. I wrap a blanket around my shoulders, not for the warmth, but for a sense of security. I want to ask Mom more questions, to understand the why and the how, but I don’t. I’m not ready to speak of it because then I have to admit the truth. They are gone because they chose to leave.

“I trusted him,” I say out loud, realizing I never knew what that word meant before. But now, it’s not that I understand what trust means, it’s more like I know what
distrust
means.

“You shouldn’t have,” Mom answers.

I close my eyes and focus on the stars dancing under my eyelids, falling asleep to the nightmare of the day.

The rising sun is hidden since Mom and Diane closed all the blinds last night. Still, I know it’s morning by the way my stomach lurches around, and I wake knowing there’s nothing left here to keep us alive. I look around the study, realizing it’s empty. Mom’s not here.

For a moment my heart races, fearing something’s happened to her, but then I hear noise in the dining room, and I focus on calming down. Her being dead is impossible, we spent the night tossing and turning. Her from the demons of her past, I suppose, and me left worrying about the unknown.

“Mom, you in there?” I call, standing as I retie my waist–length hair in a ponytail and then zip my oversized hoodie. Hearing grunting, I walk into the dining room and see Mom struggle to pull Forest onto a tarp.

“I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d start. We need to take them outside.”

“How are we going to do that?” The task is impossible. Not just physically, but emotionally. 

“We’re going to do our best. We can’t keep them in here. The whole house would be unlivable in a few days. I need your help.”

She’s a strong woman, weakened by too little food for too many years, but she must have always been a determined person, otherwise she would have never prepared so hard for the blackout. Now with her creased forehead and tight mouth, it’s hard to believe she could have ever been more intent.

“Of course I’ll help, but then you have to tell me the plan. I’m sick of being in the dark.”

I never speak with candor, and Mom stops in surprise and turns to me, “I promise.”

Moving their bodies to the tarps isn’t as hard as I expected, it may be wrong to think that way, but it’s true. These corpses are just shells of the people I knew. Once Forest and everyone else is on a tarp of their own, I look at the door wondering how we will do the next part: Take them outside.

“We should get our suits on now,” I say.

Mom smirks, it’s a face I’ve seen so many times before. The face she makes when the men suggest a new “safety measure” or when Diane implements an energy conservation method.

“No need, Lucy.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There’s no need for a Hazmat suit.”

“Why would you say that? All I’ve ever heard is you guys telling me to stay inside.
It’s dangerous out there.
Sanitize. Sanitize. Sanitize.”

“I know, Lucy, and I’m sorry. But I promise the air is fine.” Her self-assuredness is unnerving, but also laughable.

“I lost everyone I knew last night and now you want me to join them? Are you out of your mind?”

“Look, I know it’s an enormous amount to take in. But I’m telling you, the people we love, grew to a level of insanity I had previously only read about in books.”

“You know what, Mom, if you were just going to walk outside today then why didn’t you take the pills with the rest of them?” I roll my eyes. First she slaps my father’s face, now she acts like my whole life was a joke.

“Lucy, listen to me. You can open the front door, go outside, and breathe in fresh air, for the first time in your life. Don’t you want that?” She raises her arms in incredulity.

I do, but I also want to know what it means to live. Fear, no matter how foolish, is deeply rooted in me. If I pull it up from the dirt I don’t know what will keep me grounded.

“I’m putting on the suit. I’m not interested in dying any time soon.” I walk past her towards the hatch in the kitchen, grabbing the no longer forbidden flashlight from the table as I exit the study.

As I lower myself into the hatch I hear her say, “If you wear a Hazmat suit you’ll never know what
living
is.”

              Once garbed in the suit and back upstairs, I refrain from arguing with her. I don’t want to say something I’ll regret, but I wish she’d pretend, for one more day, that our life hasn’t been a game of make-believe.

Mom pushes past the anti-contamination room and opens the big steel door. She looks back at me, in my head-to-toe gear and pauses, “Lucy, I’ve been waiting for so long to be free, if only for a moment.”

She runs outside and flings herself into the air and does a cartwheel, falling over halfway as she tosses herself on the grass. She’s a laughing heap, a lunatic, and I wonder if the crazy-hair-pulling-out person from last night has returned. I watch her evolve from the mother I’ve always known into this otherworldly person.

“Lucy, trust me, this is Heaven.” The word stings as she says it. Trust. I turn from her ecstasy and head to Dad’s corpse. I drag him to the doorway and hold the tarp by my gloved hands as I pull him over the threshold.

Before I get his body completely across, I stop and run back inside the house. In the study I grab a box full of old air purification masks. I know their filters are past usefulness, but it feels wrong to take him, and everyone else, outside unguarded. They died believing in a truth they created, and maybe that’s okay because all I have now is a useless Hazmat suit protecting me from a future I know nothing about.