Waiting for the World to Come Back
Mia waited for the third knock.
Took a breath.
The hatch she held on to rattled against the storm winds outside. Don’t lock it. When I come back, there will be no time for it. Her mother had been clear with her instructions, looking down at her through the dusted lenses of the gas mask—their only mask, the empty hook on the wall reminding Mia. If only there had been two. Slip out, quietly. She had practiced opening and closing the hatch while her mother slept, just a crack though, mastering the art of rolling it closed, fractions of pressure after fractions of pressure. Then the lock itself, no key necessary, just a bolt on the inside. It had taken time to chip away at the rust, smooth it all out. So close.
Thunk-thunk.
Breath.
Two knocks, a breath, and a knock. The signal, her mother had said. How long was a breath supposed to be? She wasn’t sure what constituted a normal breath anymore. Hers were little more than weak flutters, trying to escape through the cloth wrapped around her nose and mouth—a pointless precaution. She knew what would happen if she breathed in the outside. Even now, some of it was getting in through the narrow circle around the hatch, she knew, despite the garbage bag that acted as a seal. Golden light diffused through the dark plastic. A sunset. A sunrise. A new sun made of ash and fire and death. A hungry sun, insatiable. A sun that would never set, only change form into burning clouds and burning air. But the rain . . .
Thunk-thunk.
A fallen tree? A collapsed fence? Mia tried to recall how the outside world had looked. Weeks had passed since the wind had come and forced them into this pit. Posts of steel or wood, cobwebs of fencing clinging to them, mounds of unidentifiable matter piled at their bases. Blacks, grays, browns. Could have been a town, a factory, a neighborhood. It was hard to tell what things used to be. Even where she was now, entombed by walls riddled with cracks and painted with soot, a greasy substance leaking from them like blood from a wound.
An oven, she considered. An underground one used to cook meat. Cook pizza. The corner of her mouth curled into a smile at the image of pizzas with bubbling cheese strewn across the floor, the absurdity of it all. She swallowed, but even the memory of the taste was lost to her. Now, tarps folded into bedding crowded the floor among the rubble from the ever-crumbling walls and a few packs, deflated from emptiness. Bugs on their backs, legs folded in on themselves. Bullshit what they said about cockroaches. A pair of boots she hadn’t noticed before, the soles worn smooth. How long had he stayed here? She? Did he run into the wind, barefoot, free? Mia wiggled her toes in her own shoes, and it hurt.
Thunk-thunk.
She didn’t bother to look up, the rhythm commonplace now. Could her mother be dead? It had been hours. Days? No, she hadn’t slept, hadn’t grown tired, although her arm felt like an extension of the hatch—rusted, decayed, lifeless.
The walls bled, and the wind howled. Bursts of electricity crackled in the sky. The weather was different now.
Were those footsteps outside? An approaching stranger, the crunch of weeds beneath bare soles. Maybe to retrieve his boots. She smiled again. The smile turned into a chuckle, then a cough. But she knew better. There was no one coming. Not her mother. Not the bootless person.
Glass shattered in the darkness, and she almost lost her grip on the hatch. She turned to the soiled curtain across the room.
“Isla?” she said, but the word was sand. She cleared her throat. “Isla?”
Her little sister peeked around the curtain. Grubby hands, grubby face. She clutched the bodiless head of her doll, cotton entrails dangling from the neck hole. She didn’t have her blindfold on, but her bangs fell past her nose, concealing anything above it. Good.
“Please keep quiet,” Mia said. “Mommy will be back soon. I need to hear, and you—” Mia closed her eyes as anger grew in her chest. It wasn’t Isla’s fault, she reminded herself. She was innocent. She was—
lsla nodded and ducked back behind the curtain.
Thunk-thunk.
The sound of an envelope dropping through a mail slot, heavy with possibilities. The sound of a game of hopscotch with her mom on the porch of their cabin during the winter, because it snowed in the winter, and they loved the snow. The sound of her dad chopping wood for the fire they would sit in front of as the moon rose over the trees, their pointy tips aiming at it like the arrowheads they had found on their hike.
Dad . . .
Thunk-thunk.
A heavy, metal door closing. A hammer sealing them in. A head slamming against concrete. Again. Again.
Mia breathed.
She could just let go, let her fingers relax. Allow the hatch to fly open. Let the outside in. Like it wanted. Like the crumbling walls would soon allow, anyway. It would be a mercy. They weren’t made to exist in a place like this. Why did they fight? Only a matter of time.
Mia straightened her little finger, then her ring finger. Three fingers away from release. It was enough to tear a small hole in the plastic-bag seal. The air didn’t smell different yet, but surely the poison was making its way in. Would it hurt? She supposed it would. Skin didn’t do well on the outside, in the wind. Turned it black. Blood beading through micro fissures in the skin and scabbing over. Isla deserved—
A tug on Mia’s hand. Isla stood inches away, one eye gazing up through a triangular split in her hair. That eye. Hair obscured the other, but she knew it burned just as intensely. Isla tugged Mia’s hand again. Mia shook it off and wiped it on her leg.
Mia held her gaze, used it to channel anger, hatred. Used it to justify what she had to do, not for her, but for her mom, for her dad. Only her thumb and index finger curled around the handle now.
Let go.
“You could have killed us both,” Mia shouted. “I thought I told you to be quiet, that I needed it to be quiet to hear Mom when she—”
The cloth around Mia’s mouth slipped between her teeth, held her tongue, which only added to her fury.
“I am. I was,” Isla said, her head lowered.
Mia’s anger fled as quickly as it had come, fled as she lost sight of Isla’s eye, fled as she realized that Isla had been quiet and that’s what had startled her.
It wasn’t her fault.
Not then.
Not now.
Mia pulled the cloth the rest of the way down, letting it settle around her neck. Her teeth raked across chapped lips, searching for words. None came. Isla returned to her spot behind the curtain.
Mia looked up to see a five-fingered grip on the hatch. The wind could do nothing to budge it a millimeter. The air was clean, and she took in a lungful, closed her eyes, and listened to her heartbeat.
Thump-thump.
Isla’s tiny voice muttered something, hummed a song. The one Mia had taught her. Isla had never heard music, real music, just the songs Mia remembered or made up for her. She had never played hopscotch, had never lounged by a campfire, trying to find the seat where the smoke wouldn’t follow but always did.
Had never seen the night sky. How it used to be.
The sun. How it used to be.
Mia, her fingers tight around the handle, waited for two knocks.
