Sleep-in
Every morning I’m reminded I’m dead but it feels more like an afternoon nap I didn’t plan for. No one sleeps now anyway. You close your eyes for nine hours (four, average) and then get up when the shrill machine beside your bed tells you to. And you scream, maybe. I definitely scream.
It’s the morning routine my mother hates but the one I’ll always stick to, because there’s simply nothing better to do. After I scream, I turn on the radio. Toxic plays and I lie back down.
Walk
One day, the sun decided not to rise and, in that moment, the whole world died. I can’t remember the details. There was a panic, a lot of running and driving, before someone told us to just go home. And we’ve been home ever since.
Humanity survives like cockroaches. We made the bad decisions, with the lacklustre intentions, and somewhere along the way we all became zombies. And now: we’re the last of our kind. We can’t grow old, we can’t die, but we’re the last. How do you become the last when there’s still six billion other people around?
How do we count the mornings when the sun’s given up on us?
Time
Emily gave me the run-down on it. I never bothered to wonder. We’re dead but we all get up at the same times we did when we were alive. We’re dead but we still go to work and we watch television and we wait for our favourite shows to come back. The world ticks on.
Did it even matter anymore? Emily tells me yes, it does. She’s one of those Gen Z kids still trying to make something of herself.
She counts her years obsessively and though she still looks seventeen, she’s turning twenty-one on Sunday. Twenty-ninth of July. I told her I couldn’t remember when Sunday was. She tells me that sometime in the stretch of darkness it’ll be Sunday. She’ll text me, she says. I guess I’ll be twenty-one too. Emily tells me the third of August is much later. I ask if we can turn twenty-one on the same night. She says, why not.
Work
My family doesn’t.
My father is a scientist with regrets. The continuing pattern of time and age wearied him until we died. He had one last project based on life-forms, not his idea, and now there’s nothing. Sometimes I think of him as a soldier. He learned science because he wanted to save people. Science is a war; I think I heard him say that once. The last war he fought was with himself. The war before that, with some people I didn’t know. He didn’t know them either.
I think the responsibility of taking care of our family killed him, way before the No-Sun ever did. But now he’s alive. Now he has a new car. Now he kisses us hello and sings old Parokya ni Edgar songs about being Mr Suave and cooks and cooks because we’re okay now. No one is in danger.
My father feared death and now no one can die.
My mother is a teacher who never had the chance to teach. Now when everyone wakes up, she kisses us goodbye and drives to the school for people who still want to learn. Kids and adults and everyone in between. Everyone who didn’t have the chance before, who can take the chance now. She technically works but she tells me anak, it’s not work. It’s not work if you love it.
My sister has been working all her life but, like everything else, one day it just stopped. She has the money and the savings and the plans, but no one to do the plans with, she says, it’s so important to have someone to be with so if you don’t then what’s the point? She wants to travel but the airports are always packed nowadays. Pilots don’t want to fly. No one dies but planes still disappear into the sea. Don’t be like me, she says.
I think I’m disappointing her. I lied. I do work. People started wanting to live their dead lives, and people still want coffee. Casual to part-time to full-time. When I don’t make coffee, I listen to the radio. It’s the only way I know what the time is, what inflation means, what deflation means, and who’s dedicated a love song to whom.
From Castell to Ray, I love you baby. Here’s our song.
One small hot chocolate, please. With almond milk.
Sorry, what was that?
Almond milk, please.
Purpose
He says his name is Rocket, but I know it’s actually John-Dean. Emily was the one who got me the job at Starbucks because she wrote my CV. I’ve never worked at Kmart.
After my shift, they wait for me outside the shopping centre and we sit on the bus benches and think about what to do with our money. Emily says uni. Rocket says car. He tosses the coffee cup that I had scribbled ‘Rock It’ on into the bin.
I give them all my money because I don’t know what to do. So Emily buys me a paint-by-numbers dragon.
On Sunday, remember, Emily says, you both have to be there.
Rocket sinks lower into the bus bench. His foot scrapes across the ground and the skin on his ankle rips from the angle. I hate the image of our bodies decomposing as we go about our business. Casual to part-time to full-time.
He tells her we know as he takes tape from his bag and wraps it around his ankle. It reminds me of the burn I have to fix. I roll up my sleeve and my red skin has peeled off. Rocket hands me his tape.
Emily tells us that Sunday’s meteor shower is gonna be great, so I guess we could dress up. It’s gonna be super pretty, and did we hear it’ll be made of crystals? She thought it was just space rock. And they say it’s gonna be like rain, shattering at some point in the atmosphere before it rains crystals down on us. Like an Ishka store. Wouldn’t that be great? Finally, something to look forward to.
She had a motormouth even before death. Rocket and I stare as we realise: Emily has forgotten her birthday.
But we’re coming, right? We just have to come.
Puchero
Dad tells my sister to say grace and she stumbles after Bless us, O Lord, and these…
She says: these… things… your gifts, and everyone laughs. Good enough.
The puchero tastes like nothing but everyone has their fill because we have bottomless appetites and there’s something to be said about the warmth. It’s the kind that lights up in Mum’s eyes when Dad holds her hand in that way, like he’s remembered he loved her (that never used to happen before we died). It’s the way my sister holds her zombie dog (his tail falls off every time he wags it). A hand-holding, dog-hugging warmth you can keep in the pit of your stomach.
I ask if I can finish the stew and no one objects. I ask if we’re doing anything on Sunday.
My dad and sister say no at the same time, but Mum chirps in that she has a weekend class. Tutoring.
What time?
Four o’clock. It’s a late class.
But can she drop me off at the park on her way? I have to bring drinks for Em’s birthday.
Oh, wait, my sister says. She stabs saba with her fork and waves it at us. She mentions the meteor shower.
Mum has no idea there’s a meteor shower.
My sister launches into a cool explanation. Yeah, people were talking about it. It’s gonna be this glass rain thing. But there’s weather warnings and stuff. They said everyone should be indoors. She finishes with a pointed look—at me. I frown.
Dad catches the look and stops ladling soup onto my bowl. He has questions: so, is it dangerous?
I say no and my sister yells yes and the dog barks and Dad softly tells Mum that maybe she should skip the tutoring just this weekend. Mum tells him, no, it’s fine, what’s the worst that can happen?
My sister shrugs. You could die. I steal the banana from her plate and she shouts at me. Mum tells us we’re a piece of work.
Commodore
Lemon-lime bitters on my lap and Mum switches the radio to the classic channel. She looks great. Something about her is different but I can’t put my finger on it. I want to ask her how she feels about being dead. She can’t make those ‘when I’m gone’ jokes anymore. She’s stuck here with me. I wonder how that feels.
Before I get out of the car, she calls me back and asks how she looks. I tell her she looks great.
I’m walking to Rocket and Emily on a picnic blanket when I turn around and catch my mother fluff her hair in the mirror before she drives off. It’s hard to fluff your hair when you’re dead, but she must have bought something new.
Galaxy
Emily is demonstrating a hole in her torso where the lemon-lime bitters seeps out and I can’t decide if it’s disgusting or not. Rocket is dying all over again from laughter.
My sister once told me that the best way to bond was over something bad. Both of you are mad at something so you talk about that and then you find other things you have in common and, boom, you have a friend. That’s how her and her friends meet.
We lie on the picnic blanket. Drinks were done in an hour. We’re next to each other, sausages in a line. Rocket was the one who made that joke. Emily has since pushed him off the blanket.
There’s something about talking when you’re not looking at each other.
I tell them that I’m pulling myself together more than I’m breaking apart nowadays. And I don’t know how that happens. I wake up and my arm is loose, like it wants to escape me. I breathe and the skin over my ribs sink in. I can see the shape of my heart and I miss when it moved. The smell is getting worse. I don’t know how to take care of myself.
Emily is silent. She holds my hand.
Rocket gets up and lies down on my other side. He tells me I’m the lone sausage now, and he and Emily are the Coles bread on either side of me. He holds my hand.
Electric
Have I talked about the sky? It’s nothing but darkness now. No sun, no moon. Just stars. But the ocean still waves. My mother told me once about how the moon and the tides came to be. A woman fell in love with a man but the love was forbidden, so he was cast out into the sea; she, to the sky. Locked in a cave, deep in the earth, his hands beat on the cave door every night, calling out to the moon.
A violent love that shakes the earth under the sea, but when it surfaces, it’s gentle. All she sees is him waving at her.
Does he know she’s gone now?
Rocket
He tells us that he found his brother crying. His brother was ten years old when we died. He wanted to grow up. Rocket promised him that he’d find him a grown-up body. And a grown-up mind. He tells us that he thinks it’s overrated, but he hates to see his baby brother cry.
Rocket asks us if we’d like to help him steal body parts one day. Emily smiles and tells him yes. She knows there’s a morgue in the university.
T-minus
Two hours later and the meteor shower hasn’t happened yet and Emily is crying now. But we can’t cry, none of us can anymore, so she’s just screaming. She hates time. She feels stupid for forgetting her birthday. She hates feeling stupid. She wants to die.
I hug her and Emily cries harder and tries to take her eyes out from her head. Rocket holds her hands.
I’m tired, she cries. I’m tired, I’m tired, I’m so tired.
And everything comes out and it’s nonsense, she says, it’s nothing to complain about. It’s expectations she set for herself, and the dead-life she’s making for herself, so why should she complain, and why should she cry? She can stop it, I’m fine, she says, I can handle it. God, I can handle it. Stop crying, I can do it. I’ll be fine. I can stop it.
But the more she talks the more it sounds like she’s just trying to convince herself. Her words are steady and practiced and I realise that she must have said this before. Only, now, someone was listening.
Want
When I stole that banana from my sister’s plate, she shouted at me. An hour later, she knocked on my door and told me that I’m okay. She told me: don’t die.
And because I don’t know what’s going to happen, I call her while I’m at the park and I ask her if I’ve disappointed her. She told me: no, go have fun.
Tutor
Rocket holds Emily and they lie on the blanket and I’m sitting next to them pulling out the grass. I sprinkle the grass on Emily’s lap.
All I know is that I don’t know what’s going to happen so the words come out of my mouth before I realise: I don’t think my mum loves us anymore.
We miss the meteor shattering in the atmosphere, but the light is brilliant and it makes us turn. It does look like rain and I stand-up from sheer excitement. Emily and Rocket follow. She tugs on my arm and whispers that we’ll talk about it later. I don’t remember what I said.
Everything is starting to fall now.
Gems
We lie down. We don’t feel the shards that crash into the ground making holes in our bodies. Crystal rain tears through our skin and it’s okay. It’s what Emily wanted to feel, and Rocket too, and me, I guess. What kind of people are we, to have been given immortality, and still wish for a never-ending sleep? Sleep, not death, because all we ever wanted was to wake up.
Heart
Okay, I’m over it, I can’t see shit, Rocket says, and he’s groaning as he gets up. He takes off his coat and swirls it over his head like helicopter blades to swat away the shards before it hits us.
We run to the picnic shelter with its corrugated iron roof and the noise is hell. Emily picks out a pink shard from my cheek. I remember hail storms and I yell at the sky. Rocket’s arm has been torn off, he holds it like a runaway with a stick over his shoulder. Emily’s leaning on him from a broken leg and I kiss them both on the cheek and we scream.
We’re up and we’re screaming.
My sister told me that the best friendships are formed by a mutual spite. The sun disappeared one day and we’ve been dead ever since but that’s not what we’re bitter about. I’ve decided I’m going to start thinking about living more, just thinking, and counting the mornings and paying attention to the people on the radio. Send my own love song dedication. To my sister’s dog.
The meteor shower is more intense now, and I wonder if my mother is okay at her tutoring session and if my father is cooking and if my sister still believes, and I remember that meteors are shooting stars too, but everything still hurts and I wish for the sun to come back.
All-Star
A post-wish. If the sun can’t come back, that’s okay, I totally understand, but I wish I can find a new one. Anything, to give to the world one, big, shiny—
About the author
Jeanne Viray is a Manila-born writer based in Melbourne. She aims to infuse her culture and identity in her work as much as possible, learning as she goes. Her work is mainly in speculative fiction, which she considers ‘experimental’ because she doesn’t know what she’s doing.