When The Darkness Takes Us: Jess's Story

Everything

"You're really doing this, huh?"

His voice is tired. I know he's done arguing. I am done too.

I stuff a handful of sweaters into a duffel bag. There's a thin trail of dried cat vomit crusted on the red plastic. I can't remember the last time I cleaned anything. It's not a sexist thing that I used to do the cleaning. He makes more money. A lot more. I'm a freelance journalist and half the shit I do is just fucking around and following the stories that I want to follow. I don't make much.

Of course, like some awful mind-reader, this is the very next thing he brings up.

"How are you going to pay for anything?"

I look over at him, leaning against the doorframe. Tall and lean. He lost weight this past year. I don't know who he lost it for, but it wasn't me. Same as I didn't start conditioning my hair again for him. I did it for a figment. For a man I'll never be with. Maybe Travis' prospects are less fictional than mine. I loved him once, so I hope that for him.

"I probably won't pay for anything," I lie. I lie so easily. Because I do have a plan to make money. He wouldn't like it. No reason to tell him. "I will struggle and miss bills and my credit will be shot."

"Your credit's already shot," he scoffs.

I turn away so he doesn't see me glare. He's right. My credit is shot. Even finding a room to rent was a major pain in the ass. Everything we have is in his name. The car is in his name. I've just assumed I'm taking the car and now I'm wondering if he's going to stop me.

"I'll manage," I snap. He doesn't deserve to be snapped at. Not really. All he did was lose interest in me. It's not his fault when I'm so uninteresting. He still paid for everything. Supported me in everything I ever wanted to do.

I zip the bag shut and throw it over my shoulder. I have two more bags by the door. Not taking everything yet. Most of it I'll plan to come back for, but probably never will. Like when I moved out of my mom's house when I was seventeen. I took my American girl dolls, rap cds, and one bag of clothes. Nothing else. Always said I'd go back. I never went back. I won't come back this time either.

He moves away from the doorway so that I can pass. I struggle to pick up both of the other bags by the door.

He sighs, the sound of obligation being recognized. I won't be his obligation much longer.

"Let me help you carry those down."

I should stop him, but all I can think is that I'm so fucking glad he won't try to stop me from taking the car. The car in his name. My whole life is in his name.

We take the rickety old elevator down. I wonder if it's the last time I'll ride this thing. It's from the 1920s. Has this weird accordion-like gate exactly like the one in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. And now I'm thinking of the day we moved in when I started humming the beat to "Sweet Transvestite" and tapping my foot to mimic Tim Curry in those impossibly loud heels. Travis didn't know what I was referencing (even though I know he must have seen Rocky Horror at some point and I'm almost certain I watched it with him while we were dating) so instead of explaining I really leaned into the bit. "How'd you do? I-" in that unique upturned warble of Curry's. The whole bit ended when we reached the fifth floor and I just shrugged and said, "Rocky Horror? The elevator....it looks the same." Travis looked around the antique space and mumbled, "Does it?"

A clang as the iron and bronze fixture hits the ground floor brings me back to the present. I start to open the accordion gate, but it's always been a bit heavy for me and I have the weight of a stuffed bag hanging over my shoulder. I pull the gate and the bag slips. I grunt and the gate snaps back into place.

With another sigh, another acknowledgment of obligation about to end, he opens the gate. He continues to hold it as I step out into the lobby. Light blue walls and gilded gold fixtures, yet the lobby has never had the aura of elegance that it's so obviously aiming for. The carpets are dark green and musty, holding decades of dust and cigarette smoke that the weekly cleaners have never been able to excavate from the compacted sediment of the nearly hundred-year-old carpet. The stairs are marble and full of chips. The skylight overhead has a smashed McDonald's cup on top of it. It's been there for the past three months. Every time I see it, I wonder that the wind doesn't knock it off, and how did it ever get up there in the first place.

I head over to the side exit, the dimly-lit cement hall that leads out to the parking lot or down to the basement full of abandoned furniture with the enormous racks that used to be the laundry. "We like to call this part of the living museum. That's really what this historic building is. A museum visit every time you come down here to do your laundry." That rental agent had been on some real other shit. It's a bunch of rusty iron racks that get in my way, not a trip to the damn MOMA (although leave it to the MOMA to turn old ass laundry....thingies....into some kind of art exhibit). And as I step out into the crisp fall air, Travis dutifully walking behind me, I'm suddenly sad again. Because what did I know about museums or modern art before Travis? For such a damn neckbeard, he really is pretty cultured. I wasn't and he loved teaching me things. A group of girls at a journalism conference once mentioned Jackson Pollock and I said, "Oh, I don't know that artist" and what a bunch of cunts they were about it. They openly laughed. Women in their 20s who ought to know better than to be so rude. They laughed for a full minute and then their ringleader, a big fat woman but one with giant tits (which could be why she was sniffing her own farts so hard) she said to me, "Not everyone is cultured. I used to not know anything about art." That same fat greasy bitch-after inviting me back to their room that night-struck up a whole conversation about sex. Telling us all what she likes and doesn't like. I happened to mention that I don't like giving blow jobs. Don't like them at all. Will do them. But don't enjoy it. She got real loud and started bragging, "I have to go to my boyfriend and ask him to let me suck his dick. I suck his dick so often, he gets tired of it. I love giving blow jobs." And the whole thing really made me want to look around to make sure there weren't any guys present. A simple "Oh, I do actually like them" would have sufficed. Instead we got this very weird monologue where she made herself sound like this needy bitch starving for cock sucking smegma off her disinterested dude's crusty dick while he smashes a PS5 controller and combats the irritation of what weird cunt his girlfriend is.

We've reached the car. I unlock it and pop the trunk. Travis stuffs the two bags into it, which is no easy feat considering the trunk is already full of yoga gear and overdue library books-mostly antifeminism and Ben Shapiro.

He closes the trunk with a sigh. Another sigh. But this one has nothing to do with obligation. I hear relief in his breath. "You're sure you want to do this?" and unlike all the tears and begging and anger of the past few weeks, I can tell his heart isn't in this question. It's merely perfunctory.

"Yes."

"What about..." he trails off and flails one hand despondently at the sky. "You know. They say the world is ending."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

He stares at me then, makes full eye contact for the first time in days. Confusion and concern crinkle his brow. "It has to do with....everything."

I pause.

"Why?"

My one-word question is only a whisper.

His eyebrows come closer together, like he can't believe me, like he's so disappointed in me. He's looking at me like he just realized he never really knew me. It occurs to me that the sun is very bright for a day like this. I wonder if the sun will be bright on the day the world ends. It shouldn't be bright that day. But look at it now. The sun gives zero fucks about the imagined importance of human happenings. We're nothing to the sun.

"I dunno why, Jess. You know it's true though. You know it."

I put my final bag in the backseat.

"I don't know anything."

As I drive away, I can see him standing in that parking lot, rubbing his head like he can't believe what happened. Probably rubbing his bald spot. He does that when he's upset.

The sadness remains, but the relief pulsates. It's short-lived though.

What point is there in a new life when all life is about to end?