The Black Hole Blues

Note: This story contains lyrics from Chicago (2002)

           You suppress a flash of annoyance as you navigate your car into the driveway and shift the gear into park. You’re in an argument with your friend right now. Your iPhone sits in its cradle, a black charger snaking down beside the steering wheel. Beatriz’s name is lit up on your phone, her voice blasting through the car speakers of your 2017 Honda. It’s loud enough that you lean back and press your fingertips into your browbones.

           “I guess I just don’t understand, okay –“

           “It’s because I’m closer to you than to Gabrielle or Dee.” You say to her, trying to mold your voice into a patience that doesn’t also sound condescending.

           Beatriz is silent on the other side for fifteen whole seconds. You watch the counter on your screen go. 36:47, 36:48, 36:49…

           “How the hell does that even make sense?” Beatriz explodes. Her voice makes the seat shake. “Let me get this straight, any time either Gabrielle or Dee invites you to something, you go, but every time I invite you, you say no, so that makes me your closest friend in the group?”

           “N-no,” You stammer, trying to compose yourself. If only she could understand. If only there are magic words out there that would make this whole situation better, because you don’t like this feeling, you want it to just shrink up and disappear, “Well, yes, it is like that, but only because I feel comfortable saying –

           Beatriz huffs in frustration. Your lips tighten and you seal them over the tops of your teeth. You don’t want to be angry with Beatriz – because you aren’t, because you don’t allow yourself. If you are, you might open your mouth and then horrible things would come out. Best stay quiet.

           You glance at your over-bitten nails. They look smaller than usual. That’s probably because you’ve been picking them more than you should.

           “Evie, you know I love you –“ Your heart sinks, facing the inevitable. It’s happened before, and it’ll happen again, “ – but, like, come on. I deserve to be treated better than this.”

           You’re so tired. It’s not her fault, of course. “I know. I’m sorry.”

           She hangs up, and you shift restlessly in your car. The four walls keep you plunged in silence, which is merciful because you need the break while also somehow being outside. Outside enough that the neighbors won’t bother you, which is the best kind of outside. You inhale sharply and hold that breath. One, two, three, four.

           You thought for a moment you were going to lose your best friend. You could have, and you might still. You’ve already lost before, and you can’t afford to lose again.

           Come to think of it, your mind wanders to your ex-husband. Divorced a year now. You thought the two of you were the real deal, since ninth grade. Married a year out of high school. Citing ‘irreconcilable differences’ on paper, but in truth, you’re not really 100% sure what happened. It’s confusing to you, because he’s always been (always was, you remind yourself) so kind and gentle with you. He even let you keep the car you bought together. Lucky for the two of you that you didn’t own a house yet and all it took was breaking a lease on an apartment in Jersey City.

           You remember some of the things he mentioned to you over the years. He also never got on with your mother. At some point he started complaining about…ugh, what was it again? It was something ridiculous, you think. Something like, he was annoyed that you only did things he wanted to do – watch the shows he likes, cook his favorite foods (why would he even want to do stuff that you like? It doesn’t make sense. It’s not like he enjoyed your interests).

           A heaving, shuddering sigh wracks your body and you try not to let the tears escape. You catch your eyes in the rearview mirror. Did your hair get shorter, a bit thinner? Running your hands through your brown hair, you check to see if there’s anything missing. Weirdly, you don’t think you’ve gotten a haircut since before your divorce.

           You make your way out of the car and into your house, a small one-bedroom bungalow you’re lucky enough to rent in North Jersey. It’s nothing pretty or perfect, but you manage.

           As soon as you’re finished putting the groceries away, your phone rings. When you check the screen, the three letters you spy make you groan. You should be used to it by now. She’s good at catching you at just the right time.

           You pick up the phone. “Hi, Mom.” Your skin feels tight as you stretch a smile across your face so she doesn’t suspect anything wrong. Even though she can’t even see your face.

           Her voice on the other end is so loud that you pull the phone away from your ear. You don’t need speaker phone when you talk to your mother. “Evie, hi baby! How are you, my dearest?”

           You chat with your mom for a bit. She asks surface level questions about you, tells you about how awful everything is with her. At some point she’s going to do it, but you don’t know when. Part of you dares her, silently, to just go for it now. No use hiding it.

           “Listen, sweetheart…” Her voice changes. And here it is. “I hate to ask this, but I need a favor.”

           You pretend not to know what it is. Sound innocent. But inside, your heart is sinking. You don’t have all that much money. You’re a twenty-five-year-old divorcee, working full-time and living alone on an entry level salary. At this point, it’s a question of which crisis is going to financially sink you. You should have budgeted better, but really you know this is the price you pay for being her daughter.

           “I’m short on cash this month,” Mom says, “It would really be helpful if – “

           You purse your lips and open the Paypal app. “How much?” You ask her, the shortness in your voice palpable across the conversation.  

           “Five hundred,” She responds, her voice trained to show shame. She waits anxiously on the other line. Biting your tongue, you type ‘500.00’ into the app and click “Pay”. And there it goes.

           A few moments pass. “I got it, babe. Thank you so much. I’ll pay you back.”

           You don’t respond. That money is as good as gone. You make your hasty exit from this conversation, because all of a sudden you are just tired of people.

           They’re all so needy. All of them need something from you, all the time, always. It’s overwhelming. You feel like sinking onto the floor – which, in fact, you now do. You sink onto the floor and curl up in a ball around yourself.

           It hurts to be this way. No one actually wants to have you around. They just use you because they can rely on you. That’s what you are: reliable. Loyal. Resilient. Puts others first. A caretaker. Passive. A doormat.

           Is your skin dry? It’s practically summer, humid out enough that your skin shouldn’t be acting this way. But when you pull your hands apart your hands, normally so youthful, look ancient. Skin pulled taut over the muscles and tendons and bones. And your fingernails are, in fact, shrinking, going so quickly that they might disappear.

           “It’s always the epidermis that goes first.” Someone says.

Your head shoots up and suddenly, you realize your living room looks different. Darker, somehow, the color leeched out of the room. The couch in front of you is less sharply pronounced and more of a haze.

The television is on. When did that happen? It sheds light across the room and your eyes find the screen.

           “Re-Renée Zellweger?” You gasp.

           She looks twenty years younger, with finger curls in platinum blonde hair. Just like she did in the movie ‘Chicago’. Instantly the main song flashes across your mind – they had it coming, they had it coming – as the actress smirks down at you. You can only see the vague image of her face and shoulders, but you can definitely tell when she shrugs.

           “Everyone sees what they want to see,” She explains, “But Renée Zellweger’s an interesting one.” The image of Renée Zellweger reaches a hand out, grasping onto the edge of the TV and pulling itself out from behind the screen. You try to gasp, but it seems like your lungs are shrinking.

           “What’s happening to me?” You ask. There’s a faint buzzing in your ears. Everything around you is melting, growing larger as your entire body shrinks, and fading in and out, like a signal wavering on and off. The colors grow and build before waning once more. The entire world flickers, even the sun outside. Its light goes from a pallid dawn to a rich sunset, to a gray overcast, to night, and back.

           “You’re making this plane disappear,” Renée Zellweger explains, in that weird, ‘poor me’ simpering sort of tone she used in the movie. You don’t remember much of what actually happened, since you only saw it when you were a kid. There’s only a few scenes that really stand out in your mind: the song, Mr. Cellophane, which you really related to even back then, and that one moment during the Cell Block Tango when Renée asks that Hungarian (Ukranian? Polish?) girl the giant question,

           “Yeah, but did you do it?”

           “Nuh uh, not guilty.”

           You try to stutter, but it feels like your mouth is twisting in knots. It doesn’t make sense, until you look down at your body and fail to see it.

           Beneath you, your entire corporeal form has turned black and expanded outward. Your arms and legs have fully disappeared into the blackness. It causes the floor to sink down, down, down like you’re stuck in quicksand. Or one of those images you see online of –

           “-A black hole,” Renée says, though she’s disappearing too, “You’re just gonna keep shrinking before you explode out and destroy the place. Soon you won’t be able to h-“

           Her voice appears in your mind.

           -ear me as your inner ear dissolves. Then you’ll lose your sight –

           Lights flicker on and off, and then they stay off. Your neurons still work well enough that you can still feel your living room around you through the pads on the tips of your fingers, but then your fingers start to disappear too.

           Why am I sinking? You cry out. It’s not your body, your physical body screaming, but something else entirely. You aren’t a corporeal form anymore.

           Somehow Renée is still talking, which you don’t realize until you focus on it.

Your brain still sort of works for a while though, which is pretty amazing. Even as you go from a three-dimensional being to a two-dimensional, and then even a one-dimensional, your neurons still fire. Weird, isn’t it?

           This isn’t right. You don’t want this. But your brain can’t fathom how to stop. It’s dissolving now, like the rest of you. You’re going to destroy the planet at this rate.

           Oh, the whole universe, Renée says nonchalantly.

           Make it stop, You say to her. Pleading – or, as much pleading as you can. You can’t tell what’s going on at all – you feel a great shaking inside, or maybe outside, of you. Somehow you feel like you’re going into the first dimension. Then, less. Or maybe infinite dimensions. It’s difficult to say.

           All around you, though you cannot tell since your senses have long escaped a body that doesn’t have that capability, the world is folding in on itself. Animals are being unmade, deserts turning into oceans. Words that were left unsaid are spoken, only to return to their origins.

           I don’t want this. You say.

           You can sort of feel Renée sigh. She seems impatient. You did, she says with indifference, You wanted to be so small that you could disappear. That’s what happens with people like you. You try to shrink yourselves as small and compact as you possibly can and it always causes this. Again and again and again. She sighs. Do you know how many times I’ve had to rebuild universes because of nymphs like you?

           You feel around desperately. This doesn’t make sense. What is she talking about? You never wanted to shrink until you disappear. You never wanted anything bad to happen to anyone. It’s your fault the universe is dying.

           A nymph? You ask.

           A black hole in the making. You suck everything in so you never have to expel anything out. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to exhale.

           Renée’s embrace is all around you. Somehow, your neurons get the sensation of stardust on nonexistent skin, gossamer breezes and faint imprints of miniature stars waiting for their time to shine, time that has long since left the atmosphere.

           And then, you see it. Maybe it’s your neurons finally dying for real, because it’s the only thing you can actually see now.

           It’s a pond. Except you can see every single little droplet of water in it. Little atoms floating between hydrogen and oxygen molecules, algal growths and pieces of flotsam and fish feces. A droplet falls into the pond, and with eyes unseeing and decaying under the weight of a black hole that is your new soul, you watch the molecules move to adjust for the droplet’s force. Waves push out from its origin.

           I don’t want to be, you beg.

           You have to. Renée Zellweger says.

           But I don’t want to hurt people. I don’t want people angry at me. I don’t want to be rude, or say the wrong thing -

           Your eyes go blind. You try to scream, but there are no words, no voice box, no mouth. Not even fingers to claw at your face. None of it exists in this uncaring void in which you unbecome.

           I just want them to love me.  

           You just want to be air. You just want to dissolve and not crush your entire universe under the weight of your disappearance. You don’t want to be like this. You’re a burden. You feel every cell, every atom vibrate as the black hole gets more and more concentrated, collapsing in on itself as light starts to crack through like an egg, you can see with eyes unfettered by your own faults and then –

           It explodes.

A human being's made of more than air

With all that bulk, you're bound to see him there

Unless that human bein' next to you

Is unimpressive, undistinguished

You know who...

Cellophane

Mister Cellophane

Shoulda been my name

Mister Cellophane

'Cause you can look right through me

Walk right by me

And never know I'm there...

           Stop.

           You can feel a presence near you. Stop what? She asks. I’m not doing any of this. That’s all you.

           You think about your husband, who only wanted to appreciate you. Beatriz, who just wanted to hang out with you. And your mother…well, you know what, baby steps.

           There isn’t much you can feel anymore. But you do feel something. Anger. I’m done with this, you snap at no one. This isn’t what I want.

           Atoms swirl all around you, hot smoking stardust forming into gasses and stars blinking in and out of existence, even nearby you can feel an atom bomb forming and crashing into itself and exploding and imploding only to be reabsorbed by your sheer gravitational pull. Lighting strikes happen everywhere, spreading outward in fantastic cracks of energy and light. But it’s time for this all to go. You pull it all back, focusing as hard as you possibly can and suddenly everything flashes by you, beneath eyelids that are now reforming and –

           You are back in your living room. Renée Zellweger is gone. The dulcet tones of Mr. Cellophane disappear out of your restructured brain. There’s a beep from your phone, a text from Beatriz. You uncurl out of your ball and lie flat on your floor.

           You begin to exhale.