(Don't) laugh like there's no tomorrow

Two romping figures break the early morning silence of the valley with their interminable laughter. 

He laughs. He laughs not because there is anything particularly funny, but because he loves to laugh. He laughs so rambunctiously that his knuckles have gone white from excessive rib-gripping. He will be saying his ribs hurt in two, three minutes, tops. His laughter never subsides as he speeds through the birch trees that surround their cottage.

She laughs. She laughs not because there is anything remotely funny, but because he laughs and she loves his laugh. She laughs so uncontrollably that she trips on the extended branch of a nearby oak. She collapses, trying and failing to stifle her giggles. 

They are blissful, and they are one. 

They are laughing so much, you’d think that they were trying to compensate. 

You see, they’d never laughed in Reliquia. 

It was an unsuspiciously mild summer day when Shay moved to tbe Reliquia apartment complex. Yet she soon found a reason to be suspicious of the Reliquia residents. ‘Cause they didn’t do it. Not on Sundays when the market vendors in the nearby square set up their stalls and haggled with the residents over apples or syrup. Not after school days when the children would frolic on the field. Not even on the day that the circus came to town. 

Nobody laughed. Zero displays of pleasure. Not even the Reliquia newborns. They didn’t even chuckle at the dishevelled-looking parrot that snuck its way into the residence and sang songs: “Goose down goose down, doornail gown. Can you hear me? Arrr, I can hear you. I can hear you.”

They didn't even crack a smile when her neighbor from the floor below her, Marshall, was carrying a comically large cream pie and at the same time trying to button his ill-fitting jacket. When he had managed to finish buttoning, he breathed out and the bottom button flew straight into the parrot’s talon, making it panic and sending it flying to a nearby nest for safety. A nest that turned out to be another resident’s large poofy hair (she was called Ava, interestingly enough). 

Shay thought this was strange; She felt her entire body shake from the effort to stop herself from laughing out loud. But then it got worse. When a family came back from the hospital with a newborn baby, their neighbors congratulated them. But nobody smiled. Their faces remained blank as they regurgitated banal praise.

Shay’s lips had curved upward at the sleeping baby. Though she covered her mouth, she swore she could see the baby in the woman’s arms glaring at her later. With menace in his large eyes. Could a newborn glare?

She didn’t know why. But she complied to this unspoken rule. She never invited friends over - not that she wanted to anyway - and avoided spending time in the complex. Even when she thought she was safe inside her apartment, she could feel the annoyance of her neighbors whenever she laughed out loud to a joke that a TV character had said. She’d mutter, “I should just move out of this place. It’s a damn cemetery.” But she didn’t. Lack of money was definitely one reason. Another was a stubborn curiosity that had to be satiated: How is it possible that every single person here lives a laughless existence? What do these people do, do they shut themselves up in coffins each night and not talk to each other? Do these people not feel joy? 

She got into the habit of heading out two hours earlier than necessary for her to get to work on time. She headed straight to the gazebo of an abandoned part of the local park, her favorite place to remember. Her mother’s hands as they brushed through Shay’s hair, her uneven and lovely smile. Her father’s weary shoulders that gave her piggybacks, his expressive eyebrows. 

“Fancy seeing you here.” It was Marshall. She had never gotten to be particularly close to her neighbors but he spoke with an unexpected warmth. He was in joggers and sweating, on a morning run most likely. 

“It’s my favorite place,” she said simply. She didn’t budge from where she was sitting, but she wasn’t too annoyed when he sat down next to her. 

He broke the silence. “Don’t you need music in a place like this?”

She raised an eyebrow at him, “I’m listening to a comedy podcast right now.”

He matches her raise, “But you’re not laughing.” 

She replied, “It’s not funny.” 

Unfortunately, he knew all too well what it meant to become numb to everything, anything. 

But his numbness did not stop him from trying to make normal conversation. To maintain some sense of normalcy. “I saw you two days ago,” he said. “Those were nice roses you’d brought.” 

She gulped then mumbled, “My parents. And yourself?” She had seen him too, and she’d thought, Stop staring from far away. Stop dithering. Do you not want to see them? Do you not miss them? How can you not miss them? 

Marshall’s shoulders tensed. He said, “My mom.” 

Shay suddenly got up, her eyes focused and ablaze. She held out her hand and said, “Let’s go.”

He was afraid to take it, so he surprised himself when he gave her his hand. She steered him deep past the forest, past the main park, and into the graveyard. The graveyard was rather beautiful at this time of day, the stones illuminated by the morning light. Among the tombstones, there was a stately monument. Built as a memorial, to those 174 people.

Shay nodded solemnly. Marshall took a step, two, three, forward. He could make out a familiar name inscribed onto the stone. He stroked the letters in the air, whispering her precious name. “Mom, I’m here.” 

They continued to accompany each other to visit their parents, whenever they could. They shared their hopes they’d had for their families, their whims, their sorrows. Soon, they even laughed. 

When they came home to the Reliquia complex, they exchanged smiles.

But after three months, they felt stifled. You see, a person who’s grasping at straws for those rare pieces of happiness cannot stay at Reliquia. So they both decided to move to a different part of town, and live as roommates to cover the costs. 

The night before their moving day, Ava knocked on Shay’s door. She wordlessly motioned Shay to follow, and Shay followed without asking for an explanation. She found Marshall out in the hallway, also cornered by about nine other residents.

The mother of the newborn baby said, “You plan to move. You cannot.”

Understandably, Shay and Marshall uttered protests at this interference.

Ava breathed and told the rest of the residents, “They really should have been told about this the second they’d moved in.” She said this nervously, her words spaced out and awkward. 

“Know what?” Shay and Marshall did not believe these people had sinister intensions, but they were frightened and suspicious all the same.

An elderly man with a leather walking stick intoned, “Reliquia is an eerie place. Five years ago, every single resident of Reliquia lost someone. Someone precious to us was taken away by an accident that should not have happened. 174 people in total.” 

Shay could see the headlines flashing again. THE SINKING DISASTER. FERRY FLIPS, 174 DROWNED OR LOST AT SEA. 

Marshall could taste the stinging salt and the ice. “Mom, we’re gonna reach the shore soon. It’s gonna be warm real soon. Please, Mom. Mom? Mom…” 

Their knees gave out. They crumbled against each other, unable to breathe.

Ava continued, more calmly than before as she’d obviously practiced saying these following words, “I don’t know how, but it seems all inhabitants share a connection to the 174 perished. We were all given special offers to come here. Envelopes advertising the low rents in our mailboxes, phone messages notifying the approval of our housing applications despite us not having filled them out in the first place. We are all clearly in rather desperate circumstances, seeing as we accepted these sketchy offers to be able to live practically rent-free. 

Shay, Marshall, it is our belief - however hard you may find to accept this - that something summoned us all here. For four years, we’ve received signs, messages written on foggy mirrors, spelled out in alphabet cereal, that our loved ones are communicating with us.”

The two couldn’t breathe. They felt themselves losing sense of how to move their mouths, how to react to anything at all. 

“They tell us that they are lost souls. That they are on their way to their destination. But, every time they hear we are happy while we remain here in Reliquia, they will be tempted to come back to us. To rejoin us. To finish living the lives that they never got to live. But if they keep steering away from their path, their souls will be destroyed. They will then truly be lost.”

Ava collapsed onto the floor, struggling to keep her composure. A single tear ran down her left cheek. Shay and Marshall helped her up, a million questions running through their minds. 

Ava grabbed them by the wrists, begging. Her eyes widened, as if she were convincing them and herself. As if she were losing her head. “They say it’s not long now. It’s only three more months. Three months. Not much at all. And now… if you abandon this...them, they will lose their way. They say, they say souls need someone alive to be their compass. You have been summoned by them. You can’t leave here until they have crossed it, whatever “it” means. If you left now, what would happen to them?” 

Sure enough, they started seeing signs. It was as the residents had said. Mysterious signs, scribbles of instructions drawn on mirrors and spelled out through books, symbols and even drawings left in hallways. 

So Shay and Marshall stayed for three months, and a week, for good measure. Every day, they shed tears and grasped each other’s hands. They did not dare say anything aloud, for fear that they would laugh. That their grief and madness would make them laugh. 

So every time they felt as if they would burst from the frustration of feeling nothing, from the sheer boredom of numbing themselves from any kind of positivity, they would hold each other’s hands. They would keep their minds off it while they were out there with other people, though they made sure not to mix their outside lives with their lives at Reliquia. For fear of letting their grief seep out and letting happiness infiltrate Reliquia. 

They discovered, much to cynics’ surprise, that laughter was infectious. And it was almost impossible to not get caught up in it.

Still, they kept themselves busy. They ran around the abandoned park. They read, though avoiding anything that could induce laughter. They worked hard, as hard as they could without getting too mixed up in others’ lives. They breathed, and they held each other’s hands. They dealt with their grief, by becoming each other’s solace. Then, after three months and a week, they left, leaving their grief in the Reliquia apartment complex.