Five days. I’m eating again, two meals a day, holding my spork in my clublike fist as a toddler would a crayon. My jaw still aches and everything tastes like rot. As we walk I feel my pulse in my swollen hand and wrist, and I wonder if I’ll ever heal.
We’re passing a strip mall, I think. Concrete and desolation, chain restaurants and office supply stores. Ubiquitous logos I know without seeing, that will mean nothing to the next generation, if there is a next generation.
What a waste, this landscape. Store after store after store; phones that will never be charged, games never played, drawers never opened, glasses never—
“Brennan, wait.”
“What?” he asks, pivoting toward me.
“Is that a LensCrafters?”
He looks where I’m pointing across the street, searches, and finds. “Yeah,” he says, and with the first hint of affirmation I’m crossing the street. No need to look both ways.
“You think they’ll have the glasses you need just sitting there?” asks Brennan scuttling after.
“No. But they’ll have contacts.”
He breaks the glass door and we’re in. I beeline for the back, where I find a wall of sample packs. I scour the selection, taking any within a quarter of a point of my prescription. Daily, extended wear, anything. I stuff them into my pack. It’s enough to last at least a year, I think. While I’m filling my backpack, I feel a lump in the media pocket and pull out the dead mic pack from the show. Matchbox-sized and useless. I toss it onto the floor and slip more lenses into the pocket. Afterward I scrub my hands with soap and drinking water in the exam room sink; that’s how easy it’s been to find bottled water, I can wash my hands with it now. I keep the purification drops I took from the store, though, not knowing what’s ahead. I’m almost able to unfurl the fingers of my right hand. I can hold the bottle tight enough to pour, though I have to tip my whole arm.
I think of Tyler gifting me the trash bag. Why me, I’ll never know. And I’ll probably never know if he’s alive or dead, if any of them are. If anyone should have made it, it’s the doctor, but I bet Heather’s the only one who lived. Me and Heather, the most useless of the bunch. Cooper was probably the first to go.
I drop the empty bottle and peer into the mirror above the sink. An empty, wasted face stares back. A crusty scab on her chin, the yellow mottle of old bruising on her neck. Useless, but still here. I peel open a tiny package. I’ve never put in contacts left-handed before. Even getting the lens out and positioned on my index finger is problematic, and then I keep catching it on my eyelashes. Eventually it sneaks past, makes contact with my eye—and pops out onto my cheek. Another failed attempt, and another, then finally the lens slides in and settles into place, stinging. The second lens takes only marginally less time to get in, then it folds in my eye. I almost puncture my cornea fishing it out. It’s like I’m back in sixth grade, struggling with my first pair of contact lenses, running with tears streaming from abused eyes toward the bus—
The bus.
Those were real children.
Those were real children and I walked past, blind.
What did I step on?
Who.
I take a seat in the creaky exam chair, bury my head in my hands. It feels like the rest of my life can only be an apology, that with each step forward I have to beg forgiveness for the last.
I rest until I can try again, until I can refocus on something as mundane and concrete as putting in a contact lens. I return to the mirror. Plastic and cornea finally connect. I blink to help the lens settle and suddenly everything is so clear it’s startling.
I find Brennan in the front, trying on sunglasses. I see the holes in his red sweatshirt, the frayed cuff of his left sleeve, the fuzzed disarray of his growing hair, his unbroken posture. I see someone who doesn’t have to live the rest of his days in regret. He picks up a pair of glasses with huge lenses and bright yellow frames; I think they might be a women’s style, but who can tell and what does it matter. I see the pink beneath his fingernails and I think of Cooper’s hands covered in blood. A heat in my chest like anger and I know—I would feel it. If it were Brennan’s hands turned red, I would feel it. He slides the sunglasses onto his face.
“Those look good,” I tell him, trying.
He moves the sunglasses to the top of his head. “Thanks.”
We exit the store and follow the road north. The blankness, the bleakness, the rotting litter and stillness all around. It’s unmistakably vast. The extent of it overwhelms me. I don’t know whether to be thankful that my glasses broke or to resent it. Though, who knows, maybe I would have clung to the lie even if I could see. The brain is a terrifying and wondrous organ, and all it wants is to survive. I doubt I’ll ever be able to make perfect sense of those confused and confusing days. I’d rather just forget them.
Brennan and I walk despite the abandoned vehicles all around us. We walk because the world is too quiet for cars and without a word we’ve agreed to walk and for all I know I’m the last one on Earth who knows how to drive.
By dusk my eyes are itchy and tired, unused to being bound, unused to seeing. These lenses are daily disposables; I toss them into the fire and they disappear.
“Do they make a big difference?” asks Brennan. He’s reverted to a blur.
I nod, close my eyes, rub my temples. The fire crackles.
“Brennan,” I say. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know how bad it was. I don’t want to talk about…before. But I’m sorry.”
“It was because you couldn’t see?” he asks.
I nod again. It’s not a lie.
“Your eyesight’s that bad?” I hear rustling as he feeds the fire. I wait. I know what’s coming: a story. About his mom, maybe, but more likely about his brother. Aiden’s been walking with us these last few days.
“It didn’t seem so bad,” says Brennan. “I thought it was like—Aiden had glasses, but he only needed them for driving. That’s the only time he ever wore them.” He pauses. Did Aiden forget his glasses once and rear-end a traffic cop? Maybe he drove the wrong way down a one-way street. “Mae”—Brennan’s voice lifts—“at your house—”
“No.” An instinct. I can’t, I won’t. He’s caught me unprepared and my hackles rise.
“But—”
“No! I don’t want to talk about it.” Even this is saying too much. My eyelids are tight, but they can’t block memory. A shock of dark hair, a blanket falling. I feel the threat to leave him boiling in my throat. I’ll speak it if I have to, lie or not.
I can feel him staring at me.
“Brennan. Please.”
A long moment passes, and then he says, “Okay.”
In the Dark—Trying to find my wife Hello? If anyone is reading this, my wife was a contestant on In the Dark and I’ve been trying to find her since August. I’ve tried all the emergency contacts I have for the production but I haven’t been able to reach anyone. I know someone on here knew a cameraman, and if you can help me, if anyone can help me, please.
Please.
[-] submitted Just now by 501_Miles
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25.
The next afternoon as we walk along the road I see a parachute caught in the trees to our left. Brennan darts ahead to get the first look, and it’s the third time today he’s referred to himself as “the scout.” I see him pause at the crisp tree line.
“What is it?” I call.
“A box!” he yells back. “A big one!”
When I get there, he’s walking around a huge plastic crate, peering in. It’s as tall as he.
“What do you think it is?” he asks.
“A big box,” I tell him. He laughs, but I’m not there. I might never be.
“But from where?” He’s still circling, like a pup investigating a scent.
The box isn’t connected to the parachute, which is huge, bigger than I would have guessed from the road, and hangs above us like a great green sky. The cords have snapped, or been cut. Don’t look, scan, but these tracks are the most obvious I’ve ever seen. “It was air-dropped,” I say, remembering a trail in the sky, a sound in the night.