The Resting Place

What they don’t tell you about the end of the world is that it didn’t end the same way for everyone. Some were met with fire that scorched the earth, and some were met with floods. Some met their end quickly, and some could do nothing more than watch their fate creep towards them a little closer each day. And for some, the world didn’t end at all. Life just kept moving in the same direction it had been before.

“Things really aren’t bad,” Paige says as she pours packing peanuts into a row of cardboard boxes, chewing gum with her mouth open carelessly. “If you don’t watch the global newsfeed all the time, things are fine.

Lexi is scanning box after box, half-listening to Paige, half-listening to the upbeat electronic music playing over the PA system. Ada silently sorts the boxes, tuning out Paige completely.

“Everything is just exaggerated. The world is ending!” Paige continues. “Well, it ended, and we’re still here. If anything, we should be the ones complaining. Sure, some countries are gone, but who’s been picking up the slack for the last 7 years? Who’s been keeping the economy going? Keeping the world going? That’s all us.”

“Isn’t that what the Ultro man says?” asks Lexi indifferently.

“Huh?”

“Ultro Chew, keeping the world running since 2051. That’s what he says in the ads,” Lexi says with a smirk. She looks across their small, sterile-looking workroom to make eye contact with Ada, but she is quietly focused on the box in front of her.

“I don’t know. Maybe,” Paige says, annoyed. “But it’s true. It’s what set us apart from the rest of the world after doomsday. We didn’t stop working and now look, we’re still going.”

She smiles proudly, nodding in agreement with herself. She sets up another row of boxes and begins filling them with orders.

After a few hours, the music stops, and with a soft click, the green light mounted on the wall over the door turns red. The three women stop their work and head towards the door for dinner. They walk together down a bright white hallway, passing door after door of workrooms just like theirs until they reach a large cafeteria with a stream of workers filing inside.

Lexi sits next to Paige, who has her tablet out, already giggling at her screen and taking small bites of her sandwich here and there. Ada is busy working through her sandwich, two bites at a time, with her eyes locked onto the table between them, brow furrowed.

“You okay?” asks Lexi, bemused.

Her eyes met Lexi’s in surprise as if she had only just noticed her presence. She nodded, trying to swallow too big of a bite.

“Yeah, I’m good. Just hungry,” she says.

“I can see that,” Lexi teases. “You’ve been quiet all day though. You let Paige regurgitate First Party speeches all first and second shift. You know it takes two people to shut her up.”

Ada chuckles through a mouthful of food.

“My bad,” she says, finishing her last bite. “I’ve just been really out of it.”

“Go on,” Lexi says intently. They’ve spent two meals a day together for the last 6 years, but their conversations never felt this way.

Ada’s brown eyes, usually bright and alert, now are bloodshot and puffy. The corner of her lips, usually pulled into a wide smile, now seem heavy.

“Do you remember what it was like to dream?” she asks quietly.

Lexi is surprised. Her mind shakes awake old memories, once dormant and half-forgotten. Vivid dreams she had as a child rush forward from her subconscious. She remembers the chaotic free-for-all of possibilities and her calm, unwavering acceptance of it. She remembers feeling weightless, then dragging her legs through invisible tar a moment later. She remembers flying. Dying. Falling in love with someone who doesn’t exist. And the way it all lingered long after waking.

“I remember,” Lexi answers. She smiles, but there’s a lump in her throat and she doesn’t know why. “It’s been a while though. Probably over five years or so.”

“Yeah, same here. I don’t even remember what came first, if I stopped dreaming because I stopped sleeping, or if I stopped sleeping because I stopped dreaming,” Ada says, trying to laugh over the sadness. “I used to dream about my sisters a lot. It was nice seeing them again that way,” Ada says, looking at Lexi with watery eyes. “I miss it.”

I miss it, Lexi remembers. It came from a soft voice in the work room nearly a year before.

**********

“My mom was a professional dancer, so she started teaching me as soon as I could walk. I loved watching her, I tried to do everything she did. I took classes for years too. I miss it.”

“You should get back into it,” Lexi suggested.

“I want to. I’m just so tired.”

“Have you tried Ultra Extra Strength?”

“It’s not that. I'm awake, I’m wide awake, but my mind is drained. I don’t even know what I would dance to. It’s almost impossible to find anything produced before Doomsday. And the new stuff-”

“Sounds like workout remixes they used to play at Planet Fitness?” Ada chimed in.

“Yes! It’s not… moving,” Emily expressed.

**********

“Sleep is a waste of time!” Paige shouts, snapping Lexi back to the present.

“It’s just an excuse for lazy people. I mean we lost half the population, and we still get more done nowadays because we know how to use our time.”

The red light on the cafeteria wall begins to blink and at once the workers stand up and file into the hallways back to their workrooms. When Paige is a few steps ahead, Lexi squeezes Ada’s hand and looks at her earnestly.

“Are you okay?” Lexi asked.

“Yeah, I will be,” Ada said.

When Lexi enters the workroom the next day, Paige is already at her station unwrapping a piece of Ultro. Lexi steps into the backroom and pulls a pack of gum out of her locker. She takes the last piece of the pack, knowing that there are already three new packs sitting in their inbox.

Lexi presses her thumb against the fingerprint reader attached to her work station just before the green light clicks on. She’s unwrapping her piece of gum when she looks up at the empty space Ada is supposed to be filling.

Lexi stands there frozen, holding her breath, willing Ada to walk through the door by the time she exhales. Paige is shaking her head disapprovingly.

“Do you think she got transferred?” Lexi finally asks.

“No, I think she doomsdayed herself,” Paige said coldly, continuing to pack boxes.

“What? No! Ada wouldn’t do that,” Lexi said, her chest now pounding.

“It happens pretty often, they just keep it pretty hush hush,” Paige explained casually.

“No, just no,” Lexi stammered.

“Hell, I replaced the last girl who offed herself.”

Lexi’s stomach tightens into a knot.

“Emily?” she whispers.

“Yup.”

“No, no, no,” Lexi cries.

Without thinking, Lexi rips open Ada’s locker. Inside she finds an extra set of clothes, a few pieces of gum wrappers, some crumpled-up charcoal sketches, and four unopened packs of Ultro.

“Oh shit,” says Paige, peeking over Lexi’s shoulder. “She’s been off Ultro for a month, no wonder she went doomsday.”

“Shut the fuck up, Paige!” Lexi screamed, slamming the locker door shut. “Her pictures are gone, she wouldn’t take them if she was going to…”

Lexi feels a throbbing pain behind her eyes. She massages her temples, then picks up the piece of Ultro she left at her station. Her fingers tremble as she unwraps it. The gum is at her lips when something catches her eye: a note, scribbled in ink on the inside of the wrapper.

The lungs need to breathe, the mind needs to dream.

637 Lafayette Street

Lexi drops the gum, shoves the wrapper into her pocket, and heads towards the door.

“What are you doing? You wanna have to live out on the streets?” shouts Paige.

But Lexi can’t hear her over the ringing in her ears. She marches into the empty, fluorescent-lit hallway and heads towards the exit to find her friend.

Stepping outside feels like walking into a heavier atmosphere. The air is thick with heat, humidity, and foul smells. Lexi’s eyes burn as they adjust to the sunlight, diffused yet still bright behind a hazy sky.

Lexi walks quickly down the crowded sidewalk, weaving around the endless encampments of tarps and worn tents. By the time Lexi reaches the end of the block, her lungs are irritated from the haze of smoke hanging in the air. She was used to the filtered air within the company’s compound. Lexi wonders how fast they’ll fill her position, knowing they have an endless waitlist of applicants in need of clean air and housing. Paige started just a few hours after Lexi last saw Emily. The thought makes her nauseous.

After walking eight blocks through the gray city, Lexi turns onto a narrow street packed with industrial buildings. She walks down Lafayette Street until she finds 637. It’s a worn-down, gray building, indiscernible from the buildings surrounding it. This is it, she thinks, not knowing what it is. She knocks on the door but no one answers. She looks up at the windows, trying to see if there’s any movement behind the dirty glass.

“Ada!” Lexi shouts.

“Shhhh!”

Lexi turns towards the noise. The door of the building behind her is cracked open with an old woman peeking out of it. The woman smiles and gestures for Lexi to follow her. Lexi crosses the small street and steps inside.

The woman silently leads Lexi through an abandoned warehouse and up a set of creaking stairs. When they get to the second floor, Lexi is surprised to find the air is cool and clean. To the right, is a lounge filled with handsome sofas and bookcases. To the left is a long hallway softly lit with old lamps emitting a warm, comforting glow. Somewhere, someone is playing a familiar melody on the piano. The woman leads Lexi down the hallway. The walls are covered with paintings and sketches and photographs, framed and unframed. They pass a chalkboard mounted on the wall with what looks like a poem scratched onto it in a language Lexi doesn’t recognize.

“I’m looking for my friend,” Lexi says anxiously. “Her name is Ada. Is she here? Is she okay?”

The woman gives her a small smile before stopping in front of a door in the middle of the hallway. She opens the door to a dark bedroom. A small lamp in the corner is casting a soft, blue light into the shadows. Lexi can just make out a bed and a dark figure frozen on top of it.

“Ada!”

Lexi rushes to the bed to find her friend slowly opening her eyes, having just awakened from a deep sleep.

“You’re here!” said Ada, her sleepy face awakened with happiness. “What’s wrong?”

Lexi has tears trickling down her cheeks. She can’t find her voice, so she simply leans over the bed and wraps Ada into a tight hug. When she finally lets go and raises her head, Lexi sees familiar faces on the bedroom wall. Pictures of Ada with two other girls, all beaming the same wide smile, are taped to the wall close to Ada’s pillow.

“I’m dreaming of them again, Lexi.”

Ada’s eyes are brimming with tears, but she’s beaming. She makes room on the bed, and Lexi lies down beside her.

For the first time since the end of the world, they do nothing. They let the blue light wash them in a soothing calmness. They don't think about where they have to be or what they have to do. They just let themselves exist without expectation. When their eyes grow tired, they close them and let their dreams gently descend.