if the world was ending
During the spring quarter of 2020, I took CRWT057A: Intro to Fiction at UC Riverside. One of the assignments was to write a short story that demonstrated our distinctive voice as a writer. This is the final product of that assignment.
This short story has also been published in UCSB’s Catalyst Literary Arts Magazine, Fall 2021 Edition.
I was sitting in traffic when it happened. I jumped in my seat a little, like a hand on a hot stove kind of jump. The ground started rumbling like a bad case of indigestion and the beat-up Ford next to me with more rust stains than the number of years it probably had left to run started shuffling closer to my car. The earthquake didn’t scare me. Nature prevails over anything, right? It is how it is. You’ve seen those paintings. It has five scenes, starting with some virgin landscape representing pre-colonial America then ending with a grotesque massacre, completely fucked. The wild plants are growing on civilization ruins like an STD. The Course of Empire, or something. Nevermind.
But no, the earthquake didn’t scare me. I jumped because I thought that the rumbling was my stomach. Name a worse combination than devouring a McFlurry, being lactose intolerant, and then getting stuck in LA traffic. I thought I was going to shit myself. I thought I was going to have to buy out the car fresheners at the Dollar Tree at the next exit with a big fat shit stain that looked just like the goddamn McFlurry that caused it all right smack in the middle of my good jeans while the cashiers, with their blue eyeshadow and red lipstick and paper thin brows, gave each other knowing looks because it’s Dollar Tree and you just know something like that has happened there before.
Then I would’ve had to drive back home with the gross liquid soaking through my good jeans and onto my seat, and my roommate would probably come out of our apartment because I would have sent her a text that said “AHBL” because that’s short for “all hell broke loose” and she would piss herself of laughter because even though she’s a good friend she’s a big phat bitch–ph because body size isn’t important no matter what those damn Vogue magazines tell you– and she’s almost as big and phat as the shit that I had to clean up out of my car and off of me.
If I really think about it though, I wouldn’t want my roommate to be the first person that found out about this whole spectacle if it had actually happened. I wouldn’t even want my mom to be the first even if she had spent the better part of the first few years of my life changing diaper after diaper. There was only one person I’d want to tell. I wanted to run to him, to spew the story from my mouth like liquified McFlurry from my ass, but there were three problems. I hadn’t talked to him in months, I wasn’t actually in danger of shitting myself in my car, and I was stuck in LA traffic during a sizable earthquake. Nature prevails over everything.
I know you’re curious. Don’t worry, I’ll tell you.
It wasn’t my fault we weren’t talking. We were both just bad at communication. Who am I kidding? If you want the truth, it was him. It was me. It was us, together. He had a temper so short that his fists would fly before he even figured out why he was angry, and I was blind as a bat, so blind that all the red flags waved green. But who cares? It’s not like it mattered anymore.
The earthquake got me thinking, though. What if this earthquake was the start of the end of the world? The sky was kind of an apocalypse orange today too, and it didn’t look like the typical haze of LA smog. Then, I really started thinking.
If the world was ending, he’d come over right? Even though we fought every second of every hour and he would scream at me that he hated me more than his mother’s guts–which was a lot because his mom tried to arrest him and when that didn’t work she decided she’d try to kill him–that didn’t mean that he wouldn’t spend the night if the world was ending, right? Even though he hated me that didn’t mean he didn’t love me. At least, that’s what I tell myself.
I’m sure I sound insane, but you’re this far into the story, and I’m the narrator. You have to commit to it! My therapist told me that.
I’m sure I’m not convincing you of the stability of my mental state, but believe me, if you ever had the chance to be loved by him, you’d know that he is the last shot before waking up with the ugliest hangover of your life.
Meeting him was like gripping the glass with shaky hands. Your friends are shaking you, shouting “You know you shouldn’t!” but you know you will, which is exactly what I did.
I was ice skating at the shitty ice rink downtown with muddy, chipped ice and a Zamboni that shuddered like it could feel all the germs it was smoothing over. He was terribly dressed for an ice rink, wearing jeans that had too many rips and a sweatshirt that probably did nothing against the cold, but he sent me a hot chocolate. I poured it into the trash can, not breaking eye contact, which seemed like a good idea until I realized I was pouring hot chocolate right onto my skate. I limped away to assess the damage at a nearby bench and he came to sit next to me. It would be the love story of a lifetime if I told you he had nice eyes that I could melt into, but I’d be lying. He had such an ugly smirk I wanted to slice off with my skate, but I knew I was going to go home with him anyway.
My shot glass was now empty, my stomach was now full. I’d taken it, and I’ll leave it to you to guess if I chased it or not. You should know me well enough by now.
Even if someone had told me that there was no turning back after that first encounter, I’m not sure I would have run. There was no going back, not when I was taking in so much of him that I didn’t know where I stopped and he began. Not when he had me by the throat. Not literally, of course. I’m not that crazy, and that would be weird to write about. Because writing about how I thought I was going to shit myself in LA traffic was normal.
But he did have me by the throat, and I enjoyed every second of it. I enjoyed surprise dinner dates where he tried and failed to make fancy dishes he found on foodie Instagram pages and we ended up getting take out, late nights out at clubs we forced ourselves to go to so we could pretend we were enjoying our youth only to stumble back into my apartment and not be able to make it past the kitchen, and reading stories off his facial expressions when the sun was just peeking up over the ridge of his shoulder. I’ll never forget how his stare commanded answers, forcing me to tell stories animatedly about where I’d been, where I was, where I’d go.
But in the end, I stayed put, and he was the one to go, leaving me behind to deal with the hangover. I think it’s an appropriate name to label the withdrawals I went through, and I couldn’t find another word. I can’t be original all the time!
When we’d had the last of our stupid fights, the one that ended it all those months back, a hangover was exactly what I had. All I had were blurred memories from a fever dream. I had more memories than I had moments with him in those last few weeks. Soon, I just didn’t have him anymore. I had nothing but this splitting headache and an even worse heartache, just like a real hangover, about where he was, what he was doing, and if he was with another girl who picked up for him what I couldn’t lay down. I had a bad feeling that I’d never get to see him again, that I’d never get to take him in like a shot and experience the first two stages ever again because it seemed like I was stuck on this third one for good.
I could have been stuck in that third one for good, but then it felt like the world came back to life. Traffic wasn’t going anywhere, but you could tell that somewhere up there, somewhere way out of eyesight, it was moving again. I was sitting in my car next to a beat up Ford, and the sky was an apocalyptic orange. The world wasn’t ending today, I guess. But even so, I couldn’t help but wonder that if it really was ending and the sky was falling, and goodbyes were pointless so we could stay in a hello that lasted forever, he’d come over, right?
