Ardor

Two: We're All Goners Here

(Author's note: Sorry the chapters have been so short and rocky thus far. They will get better and longer, just keep in mind this is a draft. Thanks for reading! --R.H.)

I'm not into fatalism or anything, let's be clear about that. But if you seriously think about it, all of us are doomed in the end. It doesn't matter when you die--or how, really--because eventually we will all meet the same fate, relatively speaking. We're all goners at some point or another.

I don't sleep because I can't. I can't because I'm waiting, waiting and thinking. I'm thinking about the pointlessness of death, how we all die at one point or another. How we are all doomed eventually, destined to die, fated as goners from the moment we are born. I'm waiting for the tremors to tickle the foundation of my house and make it shudder. I'm waiting for that brief moment of terror when the my room itself jerks to life.

My room is dark except for tiny slivers of white-blue moon stealing through my blinds. It's amazing how many shadows can come from such little light. I lay wrapped in a cocoon of uncomfortably twisted sheets, sweating until I fear drowning, but not daring to move; I fear missing the earthquake more than dying in a salty puddle of my own excretion. Disgusting, I know, albeit true.

It's three-thirty and I'm still waiting. I'm also now considering the possibility that I am just completely insane, but something in my gut tells me that I'm not. My lids are heavy and sticky with exhaustion to the point that if I blink I'll probably fall asleep.

I make the mistake of blinking.

I don't wake up again until I feel my bed shaking like a broken massage chair. I sit straight up, back stiff as a board. It shouldn't have even lasted long enough to wake me up. My heart pounds against my sternum as if trying to break free from my ribcage. I sit perfectly still, terrified to move. The rumbling escalates so much that I can hear framed photos crashing to the ground in the hallway, their protective sheets of glass shattering on the hard floor.

The house jerks as a new orgasm racks its skeleton. The force is so great that I am tossed from the sweaty discomfort of my bed. I land hard on the wooden panels, smacking my head as I fall. Doing my best to ignore my throbbing forehead, I scramble over to my closet, struggling to stand upright. I grab the emergency kit that my father forced each of us to have in our rooms and crawl back over to my bed, where I slide into the small space between the floor and my mattress.

My breath comes in ragged, shallow gasps and I can feel my brain overloading with too many thoughts and emotions. Tears born from absolute terror run down my cheeks, making soft noises as they plop to the floor. The only sounds that fill my ears are that if my own sobbing and my house crumbling down around me. I have no idea where my family is and whether or not they're okay, but I'm no idiot and neither are they. My father knows what to do should this ever happen; my whole family does. I just have to trust that they are safe because I am not going to die without reason. Even if they are dying there's nothing I can do about it.

No matter how many times I tell myself this I still feel so beyond guilty. Tidal waves of despair keep washing over my head, threatening to pull me under. I don't know how long I've been laying among the dust bunnies under my bed, but it feels like forever and yet the world still quakes with seismic forces stronger than itself.

My vertebrae are bruised from pounding against the painfully unforgiving floor.

I have cried for so long that there is no liquid left in my body.

I am dying of thirst.

My forehead is swollen from its surprise meeting with the ground.

My family might be dead and I can't stop thinking that if they are then it's all my fault. That stuff about death I was thinking about before? I was lying to myself. It makes a world of difference how and when a person dies. We may all be goners, but there is life before death. The thought that scares me the most is that my family never really did live their lives. My mother spent most of hers fighting with my father and drinking, my sister Clara had just enough times to go through random phases of her life that never really mattered, and my father, well I believe my father got the most life out of any of us because he was never here to be dragged down by his sucky family. 

And then there's me: the scrawny, rich, try-hard wannabe son of Mr. Military Man. I didn't live either. I let my father do the living for me. All of us did. I don't want to go out like this. How can you die when you were never really alive in the first place?