Pralaya (An Anticipatory Story) 1:6
SEASON 1, EPISODE 6
“Washington, DC” from Shutter Ferret
Courtesy of the Creative Commons license. No changes were made.
From Christopher L. Fici, Ph.D
I’m back inside my tiny little fucking basement flat. What do you do after being kidnapped? I literally, in such a daze, try to Google that to find out. But the wifi is still down and out. I remember the pamphlet in my hand. What does the pamphlet say?
The cover has this image and caption:
WE ARE THE ANTICIPATORS!
(246) 544-8898
Great. I have to call a phone number? I begin to reflexively introvert.
The thoughts cascade beyond my control. I was just fucking kidnapped for the last twenty minutes! I mean it was as gentle a kidnapping as one could order, but since the boundaries of reality seem to be collapsing/falling away, I’m still goddamn shook.
I try my wife in London again on Facetime. Now the phone signal is down along with the wifi. Of course there is no wifi in the apocalypse. Suddenly the most guttural sobs well up inside me and I’m drowning. I collapse on my bed, my sweet, sweet bed, my safe space. It’s that same fucking weeping the wife and I keep experiencing when we’re clinging to each other desperately in the airport before one of us has to go back home. I just want to fucking be with my wife! Now the world is ending for real too! We really have put this marriage on the extra hard difficulty level.
I weep and weep for about half an hour. It’s also the kind of grief I’ve experienced (because of grace and privilege) very rarely in my life. The kind of grief in which every safety net has been pulled away. I remember feeling this once when I decided to join the Hare Krishnas as a monk. One of those real existential crises in the grotto moments. This is really happening? I have to dive off this cliff and hope I can swim? What can I say? I’m the biggest homebody around. A book, a beer, and a game (well also ideally all of this by the seaside) and I’m content. That’s only a lifeboat in the ocean of life too. It always capsizes, yet it’s always capsized for me for a very specific reason.
I hear a knock at my front door. Fuck! Are they back again? It was such a gentle knock though. Usually I would just ignore it. If it’s the landlord let him come in. He has a key and it’s his property, although he doesn’t have the slightest clue about anything to do with his property when I kvetch about the wifi or the laundry or the ever-running toilet. Fucking depressing basement flat.
The knocking doesn’t go away. Fuck! But it is quite gentle, so despite all ravenous introversion and grief I decide, in light of the circumstances, to at least see who it is. I get up, wipe the snot off of my nose, and see who it is.
It’s the woman who lives upstairs. We briefly spoke like a few months ago when she saw me wearing my Man City kit and we talked about football and the Premier League.
“Hey I just wanted to see if you’re okay. We heard you crying…I’m sorry…and we don’t know what’s going on.”
She heard me? God what else do they hear me doing down here?
“Yeah thank you. I’m sorry. It’s just a lot right now and I can’t get in touch with my wife. My name is Chris, by the way.”
“My name is Rose.”
There are a few more people out on our excuse for a porch. Rose subtly motions for me to come out and join them. I grab my hoodie and head out. I meet Jack, Rose’s partner, and Shola, who lives in the other flat. It’s refreshingly not awkward considering what’s going on and we’re all those Americans who literally live in the same house and never talk to each other. Well, at least that’s the case for me.
They’re all strangely looking at me like I have to say something. So I say something.
“Has anyone been able to get a signal? Does anyone know what’s going on.”
“Up until the wifi and the phone signal went out 20 minutes ago we were getting some news coming through…CNN I think.”
(Of course they had a signal 20 minutes ago. No wonder my wifi sucks. I get all the scraps down here in the basement)
“All it sounded like was like there was a big sick-out…and then there were blackouts and brownouts in NYC and I think out in California.”
We stand in silence for a few moments. Helicopters off in the distance, near the Capitol. Again I do not see another soul out anywhere. No cars, no people.
“Thank you,” I say. “It’s fucking freaky right?”
We laugh awkwardly, but it makes the tension dissolve even more between relative strangers in the same house. These folks are pretty nice! You can tell from their vibe. From the fact they checked on me, the completely weird stranger living in the basement of the house.
The friendly silence is broken by a spacetime shattering screech of brakes. Two tinted-window hooptie Mercedes fly by on Rock Creek Ave, completely ignoring the stop signs (which they generally tend to do anyway). A bunch of kids then run out of the alley across the street, one group chasing another, more than vaguely menacing.
We all look at each other and begin to move back inside, to our own flats of course. Rose makes sure I’m okay. “Yeah…I just want to get in touch with my wife. She is in London.”
She looks at me knowingly. “Jack and I were like that until a few weeks ago actually. So I can’t imagine what you’re going through but I also can. If we get a signal upstairs, I’ll come down and let you know.”
“Thanks.” Really fucking nice people, actually. If we only talked to each other more often we might realize that being a stranger is its own kind of construct we also need to eviscerate. It’s probably a good idea right now to know who your peoples are-even if they are the ones right next to you whom you don’t even know. Never overlook the gift horse of an enclave when it presents itself to you.