All My Friends Are Dead

And as the world ended, the only thing Kiki heard was her own heartbeat in her ears, washing away the sounds of total collapse outside the museum walls. It went on like that for a while. Hours, maybe days. Then, she was completely alone.

Sort of.

She’d been locked away in the basement, working her way towards a new discovery that would change the course of paleontology forever. That’s what she was hoping, anyway. That’s what she told herself when she turned down party invitations, date propositions, and all different types of social engagements; that this work was important, and she’d live her life when it was completed. That’s what she was working towards when living life stopped being an option altogether.

When it happened, her work was the only thing that existed. The bones on the table, the books on the floor, the theories in her head. It must have been after hours. The security guards forgot she was down there. There was probably some sort of evacuation order. That’s why they locked everything up and secured the whole place.

That’s why she was somehow OK.

The first sign that something was wrong came when Kiki finally left her favorite basement research room and began climbing the stairs to the rest of the museum. She needed to sneak her way to the main elevators without the security guards noticing so she could head up to the fourth floor and check something real quick. That’s what she would tell them, if they caught her and tried to send her home. “Paleontology doesn’t have hours,” was her classic line, as they chased her through the museum every time she broke the rules she’d never bothered to learn.

Her phone had been off, she didn’t get service in the basement, and she powered it on to check the time. 9:36 p.m. Shit. Way later than she thought. She waited for service to pick back up so she could skim the barrage of texts she likely had and then promptly ignore them. Usually it kicked back on in the stairwell. That day, it didn’t.

The moments after she emerged into the dark, echoing halls were all a blur. She felt the shaking. She heard the noises. She saw the measures that had been taken, haphazardly, like there hadn’t been enough time. She noticed the way every entrance had been barricaded, sealed off in the hopes that there’d be something to come back to when the dust settled, if it ever did.

She’d been forgotten down there, among the bones and the dust. Even Nate, her favorite security guard, had somehow left her behind. Kiki really had thought they were friends.

Nate never chased or scolded her. He taught her the security schedule and route so she could avoid the guards in her quest to stay and work longer. He brought her coffee and pretzels from the food court whenever he noticed she hadn’t emerged in a while. He gave her a new fun fact about the museum every time they passed each other. He asked about her work, and actually seemed interested in the answers she gave, unlike so many others.

And where was he now?

Kiki thought about leaving. She thought about going up onto the roof. She thought about doing something, anything. She settled on looking out a window.

That’s when her heartbeat took over, a bodily reaction to what she’d seen, rhythmically drowning out all other sounds for those hours and days until, finally, it was safe to listen again.

For a while, Kiki stayed in her research room. She grabbed what she could carry from the food court, things that wouldn’t go bad, and retreated. The main electricity was out, obviously, but the generator was working and the safety lights were on, for however long that lasted. So she stayed in the basement, hiding, mourning the life she’d given up, the one she’d never get the chance to reclaim.

As she grieved in the darkness, Kiki thought of Nate. “I like having tasks,” his voice echoed in her head. “Helps break up the monotony. Human beings weren’t meant to sit and rot. We were meant to do, to be.” Thinking of her friend, maybe the last one she’d ever have, she emerged from the basement to begin anew.

Kiki took care of the important things first. She catalogued all of the food she could find. There were several restaurants and cafes inside the museum, plenty to sustain her. She salted and pickled what wouldn’t last. She was, after all, an expert in preservation. She gathered up supplies, separating what she found into categories, first aid and weaponry being the most important. Everything she knew about history and survival flooded her brain, and she took what she needed and ignored the rest.

Kiki accomplished most of this within a week. Then the real struggle began.

The survival tasks she’d assigned herself had kept her busy enough. Enough that she didn’t really think about what had happened. Enough that she didn’t think about what would happen, to her, in the future. But then the tasks were done, and thoughts were all she had left. She’d already decided leaving wasn’t an option. She was staying inside her fortress. All alone.

So, channeling Nate, she invented more tasks.

On her first day with nothing important to do, Kiki walked slowly through the entire museum. She strolled through every exhibit, even the ones she didn’t much care for. The next day, she did the same thing, except this time she read every plaque, too. That task took two days to complete. When she was done, she did it again. The second time it took longer, because she didn’t just read. She immersed herself in her new world.

She sat in front of each display. She locked eyes with polar bears, Alaskan moose, stripe-tailed skunks. She stared at the intricacies of insects wings. She studied the positioning of birds and capybaras and crabs. She developed favorites and least favorites. She didn’t just absorb information. She watched. She listened.

As Kiki moved throughout the empty halls, she realized how little she apparently knew about this place she’d idolized her entire life. Studying paleontology within the walls of the American Museum of Natural History had been her dream. She worked hard to do the work justice, to learn the facts - but when all that was left were these creatures and her own mind, something changed. And this change led to a routine.

Every morning, Kiki took a stroll. She started on the lower level, had breakfast, and worked her way up from there. She said good morning to every single thing in the museum that had once been alive, even the bones of the dinosaurs, reconstructed into towering skeletons by people just like her. During this ritual, she let the museum tell her who needed her attention that day.

Then she packed herself a lunch, grabbed what she’d determined was the best office chair in the whole museum, and wheeled herself over to her companion for the day.

One day she chose the jaguar. Kiki found his spots mesmerizing, almost soothing. “Is that why you have them?” Kiki asked him as she sketched out the back half of his body on the sketch pad she’d commandeered. “To lull your prey into complacency? I mean, I know scientifically speaking, the spots are for camouflage, but maybe they’re also for lulling. It would work on me, I swear it would.”

Another day she chose a flock of passenger pigeons. Kiki liked that they weren’t alone. They were dead, sure, forced to spend eternity on display, but at least they had each other. She told them that as she did a little yoga on the floor nearby, wondering how large their wingspan was as she reached her arms up to the sky.

Sometimes she chose a few different subjects to focus on, and sometimes it was just one. Sometimes she took breaks, taking a stroll before making her way back to her spot for the day, and sometimes she fully set up camp. She treated it almost like a 9 to 5, a schedule she could work within.

“I don’t have all that much to look forward to when I go home,” Nate used to tell her as they walked side-by-side through the museum, each with a bag of pretzels in hand. “My kids are grown, my wife’s gone. This museum and the creatures in it, they’re my favorite part of every day. Might sound weird, but they’re my friends. Them and you.”

One day Kiki was hanging out with the polar bears, lying on the floor and staring up at the giant blue whale hanging from the ceiling. “She’s 94-feet long and weighs 21,000 pounds,” Kiki told the polar bears. “They told us those facts when I did my orientation. They’re very proud of her. They have whole ass dinosaur skeletons upstairs, but this model of a whale is what they love bragging about the most.”

Kiki sat up and moved closer to the bears, studying their fur and their snouts. She’d hung out with all of the animals in the Hall of Ocean Life at least once. Well, except for the blue whale.

“I don’t really consider her my friend, I guess,” Kiki said out loud. “Not in the same way. Too far up, maybe? I like to be able to make eye contact with you all. Or maybe not realistic enough?”

Kiki paused, giving room for the polar bears to respond if they wanted to. That was how civilized people conversed.

“I guess it doesn’t really matter if she’s realistic or not, though.” Kiki sighed. The bears said nothing. “After all, all my friends are dead.”

The words surprised Kiki. She let them linger in the air. It was the first time she’d said anything like that out loud.

“All my friends are dead,” she said again, a little louder, focusing on how the words felt leaving her mouth, how they sounded. Suddenly, a wave of emotion overtook her. She ran into the center of the hall, directly under her not-friend the blue whale, and yelled, “All my friends are dead! All my friends are FUCKING dead!”

After that, Kiki thought about death constantly. She had a lot of questions all of the sudden, none of which had easily accessible answers.

Was everyone she’d ever known dead? Her family, her friends, her coworkers, everyone? Even Nate, with his kind face and curious mind, was he dead too? When would it be safe to go outside? Would it ever be again? And if it was, would she ever feel safe enough to leave … or would she die here?

That was the big question. After all, eventually, everyone died.

There was something ironic about dying in a museum full of dead things. The whole thing was ironic, really. This museum had been her whole world, her favorite place, her refuge from the horrors, and now it was probably going to be the place where she died, where she wasted away and became the exposed bones she’d studied so obsessively. As she rolled this thought around in her head, something occurred to her.

Kiki began wandering the museum with a brand new mission: find the spot where she should die. All of her friends, giraffes, mountain goats, pandas, mink, everything from the tiniest insect to the largest dinosaur, had a place, a spot where they were permanently on display. So of course it begged the question, where should her spot be?

Kiki meandered through the different exhibits and decided to start with ruling areas out. Gems and Minerals, for one. North American Birds. The entirety of the second floor. So many spots felt wrong. Finally, though, she narrowed it down. Her final resting place would either be with the North American Mammals or in any of the dinosaur halls on the fourth floor.

Kiki used her beloved sketch pad to start a pro and con list, scribbling messily as she roamed back and forth between her best options. Pros for dinosaurs included being on the top floor, closer to the sky and all that. Being a paleontologist, dinosaurs were her life’s work. Wouldn’t it be poetic then, for her bones to come to rest next to the ones she’d given up her life to study? North American Mammals, though, that was where so many of her other friends were, the ones who looked and felt more realistic. Perhaps it would be better to end life among them. They’d been dead and on display for so long, playing at being alive. They could show her the ropes.

As Kiki worked to make her decision, she tried to get into the spirit of things. She worked out exactly where she’d be on display in each of the areas she was considering. Then, as if she were buying a house, she tried to immerse herself in each space. She laid down and got into character. How would she pose herself? That was half the battle, she’d learned from studying her friends.

She tried splaying her limbs this way and that, as if she’d been struck down by something. She tried resting with her hands by her sides or crossed over her chest, classic human death poses that a curator might explore. She tried posing doing something active, like going for a run, but it felt inauthentic since was lying down. She looked around at the other creatures displayed all around her, molded into natural poses by expert preservation methods. If only there was a way to do that for her. If only she could be preserved doing what was most natural to her.

Suddenly, Kiki was back with Nate, walking through their favorite place together. “Maybe that’s not your destiny, kiddo,” he’d said to her after she wondered aloud if she should be trying to find a partner, start a family, and settle down, like everyone in her life seemed to want her to do. “You love this work, I know you do. Half the time the other guards have to chase you outta here long past the end of the day. Not me though, and do you know why? Cause I know this is where you’re meant to be. So to hell with the rules, all of them. Do what feels most natural to you. Be who you’re meant to be.”

Finally, Kiki finally knew what to do.

It took a lot of stamina, getting the desks from her favorite research room upstairs all by herself. It was important, though, so she managed. She put one desk with the North American Mammals and one with the dinosaurs. She got a nice chair for each, chairs she could recline back in with all her body weight without falling over. She set up each desk exactly the way she’d had them before, in the days when her research was so important. She started spending time in each spot, picking her research back up as best she could.

As the days wore on, that’s where Kiki was. Sitting at a desk, sometimes with the dinosaurs and sometimes with the mammals. In between she took walks throughout the museum, telling her friends all about her work.

One day, maybe, the museum would reopen. Someone would find it, pry open the long sealed doors. Maybe it would be Nate, still alive, determined to find his way back home. Inside he’d find the pterodactyls, the beavers, the giant blue whale, and Kiki, sitting at one of her desks, preserved in the pursuit of knowledge for all eternity.