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This writing was accepted for publication in the 84 page perfect-bound issue... Down in the Dirt magazine (v078) (the January 2010 Issue) This is also available from our printer as a a $7.47 paperback book (5.5" x 8.5") perfect-bound w/ b&w pages

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Just a Feeling

Tres Crow

    “Do you think you have much longer here?” I asked, my face blank and staring ahead into the empty street so that Ben couldn’t see how important the question was to me.
    “Hmm?”
    He looked at me, bemused, his brows raised and his hung-over eyes bloodshot and bleary. He was lost in his own idea of things.
    “You know. Here on Earth. Do you think you’ll live much longer?”
    We looked into the street, together but not together. There was no indication that the power was still out, or that it had been since early the previous evening, other than the blind eyes of the traffic lights and the eerie lack of cars on the road.
    The moment was apocalyptic: no power, no cars, just the two of us sitting on the porch and watching the remains of the world. The sun glittered off sprays of broken beer bottles on the sidewalk and the tiny wings of flies beat the stale air around a half-empty keg sitting in a bucket of warm water, which had been a bucket of ice just seven hours before.
    Ben didn’t answer right away, but that wasn’t his style; he thought before he spoke. He was silent and tight-mouthed, and the only sounds were the flies and the ineffectual breeze, which caressed the branches of the trees but didn’t touch me.
    As I waited for him I thought too. It occurred to me that apocalypse comes in two acts. In the first act the lights go out and, as if a switch has turned on, as if they’ve always been waiting for something like it to happen, the survivors find each other and then maybe they buy a keg. And they celebrate the end of jobs and commutes and responsibilities; they celebrate each other, their very humanity and the warm glow of community, and maybe, as the blackness of the powerless night deepens, they marvel at how bright the stars are and that the Milky Way is so clearly visible as a wisp of cloud drifting permanently across the sky. Everything feels fresh and new and perfect and they become ecstatic as they realize all of the things they’ve been missing while they worked and went to bed early and commuted.
    But then the second act: in the morning they wake up and the power is still out and the house is trashed from the party. There is no running water so the house remains trashed and the accumulated urine of tens of drunken people sits fetid in the toilet upstairs, and the dirty dishes kiss flies in the sink. And eventually the survivors, who had welcomed the unexpected holiday with gloriously upheld arms just hours before, begin to ask, at first only in their heads and then eventually out loud, “I wonder when the power’s gonna come back on?”
    Ben opened his mouth but paused for another moment before he spoke. His eyes were closed tight. He said: “I dunno. I guess I’ve never really thought about it before.”
    I pulled my face away from the broken glass on the sidewalk, “I don’t believe you. Everyone’s thought about it before. At least once.”
    “Hmm.”
    He got up and went to the keg.
    “Do you think it’s still good?” I shrugged and he grabbed a blue plastic cup, inspected it for cleanliness, and then pumped some warm beer for himself. “Want any?”
    “Nah,” I replied and he slumped back down next to me on the couch. “Me. I don’t think I have very long.”
    “How do you know?” he asked, his voice echo-y from the cup over his mouth.
    “I dunno. I guess I don’t, really, no one can, right? But it’s just a feeling I get when I can’t sleep. I can actually feel what it’ll be like to be dead. Not my spirit, mind you, but my body. And times like that, death just feels too close to be too far off, ya know?”
    He sipped his beer and stared into a distance that didn’t actually exist.
    “Are you ready to die?” he asked.
    “I suppose so...” I started and his eyebrows rose. “...sort of...well, no, not really. No. I don’t think I am actually.”
    He smiled, kindly, old-souled. “Well then, I guess it’s just a feeling, isn’t it?”
    We laughed together and the sound of our mingled voices echoed across the emptiness. It was just us two there, everyone else slept upstairs or in their own houses, and I was glad for the moment that I wasn’t alone. The broken glass glittered over the sidewalk, looking more beautiful in death than it had in life. Ben handed me the cup of beer and I took a sip through my smile.
    He asked: “When do you think the power’s gonna come back on?”
    I shrugged and we looked out at the empty street, together and yet not. But it didn’t matter anyway.

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