Atacalepsy / Brecht Lanfossi

I don’t remember who said that, if it was me or Grant. But one of us said it, and the next thing I knew we were wandering the halls of the museum, desperate to get as far away from the outside as possible. We passed rooms with paintings and gowns and fountains with no water. Other people had worked their way deeper into the museum as well. They sat on benches or whispered amongst themselves, casting furtive glances at anyone who got too close. I discovered a body in a room full of Roman sculptures. He was lying face up, his hands around his neck. A white film painted the corners of his lips. A hundred marble eyes must have witnessed this man struggling to breath, clawing at his neck in a desperate attempt to take one last breath, one last chance at life. I had never seen a dead body before. “We should keep our distance,” Grant said, placing his arm on my shoulder. “What’s going on?” I whispered back. “I don’t know,” he said, applying light pressure to the small of my back, his way of telling me to go. We spent the rest of the day sitting against a stone wall, staring at a large stained glass window that depicted a brook running through a forest in the middle of Autumn. I liked the way the colors moved with the light. It reminded me of somewhere else. The museum was evacuated at midnight. It only took two days for the government to declare our neighborhood, a few miles west of the park, unsuitable for living. Already the hospitals were overcrowded with the dead and dying. “The city is under lockdown,” the officials said. “No one is allowed to leave their place of residence. It is not safe to breath the air outside.” They said other things too, about catching the people who did this and holding them responsible for their heinous act of terrorism. Grant and I didn’t talk much during this time. We had a lot of sex because it was something to do, and because it required very little except our collective desire to forget. But as the days passed by, it became harder to forget. We were running out of food. Dead bodies were being flung from upper-story windows to rot on the street. Talking heads appeared on our television. They were doing everything they could to assess the damage, to make sure the air was safe to breath. Even in the static reflection of the TV I could make out the patterns of the haze that danced just beyond our window. The dream had begun to curdle, peeling away at itself until there was the two of us sitting side-by-side as we read the evacuation notice. The money came in an envelope slid under our door We both found this funny. It had been almost a year since receiving physical mail. A relocation fee, they called it. Wait for further instructions. That was the same day they shot those kids on national television. ————— The photo. I had forgotten about the photo. And the coffee was cold. How long had I been standing in the kitchen? I took my mug and went to the living room where I sat on the floor, perched against a cardboard box that had yet to be unpacked. I re-watched the execution on my phone. I thought she had looked angry, but I was wrong. It wasn’t anything that simple, but it was familiar. I saw it in the photograph of the alien, in the way Grant read the news. I saw it in myself. “What’re you watching?” Grant had always been quiet on his feet. “What? Oh, nothing. Just the news.” I clicked my phone off. “I read this morning that the air’s 75% cleaner than it was a month ago.” “Doesn’t look like it to me.” We both looked out at the haze that clung to the ground like a second skin. Grant shrugged. “They say it’s non-toxic. Just fallout or something.” “Nobody really knows. They just say those things to make people feel better.” I waited for Grant to respond, but he knew me too well. That he had cut himself on the sharp edges of my pessimism and said nothing made me feel tired of everything including myself. No, especially myself. “Do you like this house?” I asked. “I think I will. Eventually.” He looked so old in that moment, the way he scratched his right eyebrow while frowning in concentration. There were impressions that I had never seen before. This person who had become my entire life. “But you don’t, do you?” he added. “I’m trying my best.” ————— I found the second photograph behind a chunk of peeling wallpaper. It was of the couple, the alien and the robot, but this time they were

dressed normally, just two people posing for a snapshot. She was dressed in a navy-blue jumpsuit, her hair pulled out of her eyes with a grey bandana. Her eyes were focused on a point just beyond the shoulder of the photographer. It was her: the dead girl. The terrorist. The alien. Or at least I thought it was. I couldn’t be sure. I wondered if it mattered either way. This was our home now, not hers. But there was something else. We did what we could. Was it this woman who had done what she could? Cut out mankind from the face of the Earth. That’s what they had said, her small band of nihilists. Their collective fear that had spread until it became its own type of poison. And then it happened, their final act of transfiguration: poison to poison. I experienced something like a rupture. The memories in my head— picnics, screaming children, pink underwear, a room full of statues— no longer made sense. There was so much in this woman that I recognized, but— I remembered the pill bottle. Were those her pills? When she looked in the mirror to swallow those pills did she see an entire history in that reflection? Did she see the way the man’s eyes stared blankly at the ceiling of the museum as the saliva hardened on his lips? Did she see a child alone in the park, lungs filling up with death? I took the last pill. The baby pink one shaped like a disc. It felt like the right thing to do, and I hadn’t felt that way about anything in a long time. My own face hung in the mirror. I was getting old. It had been a long time since I had made a reckless decision like this, which made me feel even older. The skin under my eyes had turned purple with lack of sleep. My hair had become thin, wispy. When I smiled at my reflection, it was like a joke. An actor performing happiness. The world had cast its shadow upon my face and it was hard not to see that when I looked in the mirror, hard not to remember what this life had taken from me. It was at this moment that I heard Grant calling my name. I had never liked my name before Grant began to say it. There was a certain inflection that made it seem unique, like it belonged to only us. When he used my name in an argument or just in passing, it didn’t matter. There was always a tenderness that I could not find for myself. Grant was in the basement, dusting off the garden. “What do you think?” he asked, opening his arms as if to welcome a large audience. “Not bad, huh?” I could feel a lightness growing at the base of my spine. The pill’s working, I thought. I had never felt this before. “It’s nice,” I replied. And I meant it, which surprised me. “Really nice.” The lightness was at the top of my spine now, working its way around my skull until it felt almost indescribable. Like being untethered, but from what I didn’t know. I thought about the alien and the robot and how they moved through this house like ghosts. And then there was Grant who was not a ghost or a statue or an animatronic but this person standing in a subterranean garden, a person who was just doing what he could. ————— I placed the two photographs and the empty pill bottle in the fake furnace in the living room. It had been a month since I had taken that final pill. Memories of that day come to me in fragments, tiny shards of recollection beamed into my consciousness from somewhere beyond. The way the house grew bigger and smaller as I walked through it, tracing my fingers against the walls until I felt something like comfort. The way the haze cast gauzy strips of moonlight against the bedroom wall. And everywhere I saw Grant, the way he smiled as he opened his eyes to invite me to this house he had created for us. We were etched against every surface, these people who did not belong but were here regardless. And we would continue to be here. When I closed the door to the furnace, I imagined a fire that would envelope the photos and bottle in heat until they were burned into nothing. Later that day, Grant called me down to the basement. He had been working on the garden all day, his hands black with dirt. “Come look,” he said, gesturing wildly. I saw nothing but a few troughs packed with soil. Tiny beads of dew clung to the surface of the dirt. I did not understand what I was looking at until I turned to Grant. I saw what he saw and smiled. We are doing what we can. r