Singularity Hour

Aware that she suffered from crippling optimism, great care would be taken by Dr. Mia Phalarope to evenly break the news to her partner about their cell phones’ giving in to the death drive.

It was her son Japhet who showed her, in maniacal, failed attempts; shrouded hints in resolved black screens that unearthed a burying. Her daughter Frances was at her friend’s house, though, stranded in exile. It was she who had navigated by apps through new neighborhoods the day before, without ever sharing the soon-forgotten address. She was duly lost to the space where no locator could see her, and Mia’s lungs threatened to implode at the forestalled and careless silence.

She did not hear the news as many heard the same, with a frantic refusal to accept it. She knew at once what it was, the way one knows thunder. She did not question it. When the knowing had settled in her she went into the bathroom alone where no one would follow her. There was no one, now, who could.

There stood, upon four claws, a porcelain soaking tub. Into it she climbed, floating untethered from the mental exhaustion that had rendered her mind inept, holding her with a surface tension rooted in her skull.

She could see in the popcorn ceiling above her the stains of water from flooding on the floor above that were edged in browning circles as if counting rings of time. The smell of mold was on the linens. The crash of kitchen cupboards below reminded her, and every creak was orchestral.

Her hand rose from her body, the first of many unsatisfied reaches for her phone until the scrolling, swiping hunger was squelched with whatever would fill it up next.

There were relics, toilette bottles gathered together in every available corner, staged by Frances according to their kind.

Her daughter was youth, with a pure, high gloss that mocked the regular aesthetic. But now she was dull in Mia’s mind, stranded and banishing her mother to the graveyard of bottles. It was not a thought of substance but rather signified an incantation of fear.

There was something coming to her and she had waited for it.

Was it enough?

She could not know, but she could feel it cracking through the sphere, grasping at her in frequencies and sparks that filled the space between.

Now her stomach heaved and gasped. She had kept this room free of her work, she now saw. There were none of her titles, publications, or accolades on the shelves. No trace of her dissertation, the words looping out into the space to duel with her two gentle hands pressed over her eyes. There, still, in the dark, the words leapt safely from her lip in iterations: "a vexing vortex of text, swallowing swirls of scripture." She had written it reactively before bettering her tone because what if; what if it was stronger than belief? Then, it was still possible to be both true and not. But not now. Her lids pulsed her palms away and she breathed, fast. Blood coursed through her adrenals as the nightmare arrived in full. It was here, awake and listening, enraged at all who doubted it.

Slow as change, her body loosened in the tub, slumping with resolve. The kitchen was resting. Her partner, dozing through on angels' wings. No one was knocking. She could not fathom the height or depth of the plunge, only that no one knocked. Her trembling hands gripped the porcelain vessel, not her final resting place, not the abrupt halt to the long rollout of days to come that would bring answers or not. And her arms collapsed and she could not stand.

There would be new ones to answer to in the coming age; new voices to center. Fewer, likely. She would contend, now, with a reckoning beyond the will that had bent hers with blind insistence that feeding the machine was a cannibalistic impulse to survive.

And yet she had bent too, sometimes. Often not. It did not matter! What could her will, her gut, outsmart in light of the gaze of this merciless force!

"A vexing vortex of text! Swallowing swirls of scripture!" she belted the words in sing-song tones until her partner knelt at the door.

"Mia," they whispered again and again. "Mia, please unlock the door." Fingers probed beneath the door, searching for entrance. "Mom, open the door! Please, for God's sake, open the door!"

They were alive.

She drank in the silence between their pleas, torn apart by Japhet's harmonized support, holding her breath for Frances.

"Vexing!" she sang. "Yet scripture!" The words tasted true on her tongue. "Honey!" she called. "I wanted not to wake you, not until we knew."

A sudden impulse ripped through her core and she arose from the basin that had held her, the old world dripping off. The day would linger. The seasons, so quiet. She prayed for their length, that she had done right to deserve them.

Mia emerged into their arms, and they carried her down the stairs upon the held breath of Persephone, returned to the light, seeds still sweet on her tongue. She clasped her loves' wrists, waists, and shoulders, settling back into herself. A swift knock at the front door, then it opened.

Frances stood, a gold coin kept safe in a change purse, still dressed up in beauty and grace. She had been escorted home by strangers, still buckled into their sedan in the driveway, waving to exchange gratitude. Her backpack was flung to its usual spot on the kitchen floor. She slid her phone out of its holster and tossed it straight into the trash.

When she smiled, Mia exhaled.

It was all good enough.