The Epilogues and other short stories

Monica and Blair

After the colourful lights, something begins combing through the clouds like giant apparitional hands, parting the sky like fingers tearing tethers of wrapping paper on a gift from God upon a horrific Christmas. The atmosphere wrenches apart in shudders above the topography, revealing the empty cold glare of something that could be mistaken for the winter wrath of God. The cold and its trembling air collapses like shattering glass upon the world, revealing the coruscate eyes and the vacuum of tenebrous eternity behind. The air begins filling itself with death.

"Wow! Like, wow!" Said Blair, in her very best of the worst Christopher Walken impersonations. Monica looks up from her phone and stares a grimace toward the most annoying love of her life.

"It's so sad."

"Wow! Am I getting this right? Does it sound right? Waow! I mean. Wow!"

"You're an asshole, you know."

"Oh! Don't get me started on the watch!" Blair pulls a pretend time piece from her pretend pocket and holds it up to show Monica. "I hid. This uncomfortable. Piece of metal. Up my ass. For two years."

Monica sighs and throws a pillow at Blair. It hits her hard in the face and she looks stunned for a moment but then sticks her tongue out and continues her impersonation. "Wow!"

Monica watches her phone while she sits criss cross applesauce on the hotel bed at the opposite side of the room from Blair and the opposite side of the dying planet. It's one of those super clean, white sheet rooms that a patron only realizes is a hell hole when they find a dead bed bug under one of the many pillows.

It's night where they are and it's the first moments of daylight where the earth is freezing and dying in real time on Monica's screen. Everything is expiring under the thumb of some enormous, destructive titan. The landscapes rise and fall many times when the behemoth breathes it all in and exhales it all out.

Monica doesn't really care that her face is covered in tears. She doesn't wipe away the blurring, salty eye juice. Her long chestnut hair borders her cheeks like open curtains and she lets the theatre of her face play out.

"I'm scared, Blair. I know we do this a lot but I'm not ready to die. The lights were always so beautiful and they granted me an ounce of hope to my fleeting, recurring soul. I wanted more of that feeling. More of that...warmth. Now the colour is bright black and fading into the extinction of this world's history."

Blair sits on the floor at the end of the bed with her torn jean knees spread out at her sides as the soles of her bare feet touch together. She holds her toes and stretches down toward them and back up. She smiles at Monica in her slight cleft lip Blair way, satisfied that her impersonations have improved.

"What. Makes you think. Whatever. That thing. Is. Can kill us naow? It looks caold over there. I like. The caold. I mean. Wow! We are. Already caold and dead. After all. I think. We're cursed to do this. Every so often. Anyway! Wow, baby! We're dead! Baby!"

Monica rolls her eyes and makes a vomiting sound. But she also laughs a little bit.

"Just because we've seen numerous end times, Christopher is it? It doesn't mean that I'm not scared of dying. And all of those people who won't loop back into another contingent universe...I'm crying for them. It's so horrible. I really liked the way of things here. Everyday is...was like a celebration of something or for someone. We've never come across a place like this and chances are, we never will again."

Blair stands up and crawls onto the bed with Monica and tries to spoon her from behind. Her arms clasp around her bare waist until they both lay down on their sides. Blair buries her face in Monica's hair and touches her bare feet to Monica's bare feet. She gives up on the Christopher Walken impersonation.