The Sunbeam Apocalypse

Alicia faced the mirror, staring with squinted eyes. For a few moments, she stood still, her hands hanging at her sides, her fingers wriggling nervously. Buying time for herself, she pulled her hair out from it’s constraints very slowly, and fluffed it. A crease in her hair just above her ears spoke of the long night in a cheaply-done bun. But, while she fixed her hair, throwing this lock that way and tucking and untucking strands behind her ears, she paid much closer attention to her reflection, looking and looking as if to get an answer written in ink across her stomach, or her large thighs.

Finally, she relented, and pulled on old jeans and a large, cotton shirt. Her hair went back into the bun.

The days were getting longer and warmer. She scratched at her long pants, already irritating with the heat, when she stepped outside. Sweat began to bead at her forehead within ten minutes, and she arrived at the coffee shop with a sweat stain tracing her bra line.

The radio was playing as she took her spot behind the counter, knotting her apron strings about her waist. Record temperatures today… Hot! Hot! Hot!... Sure is a scorcher, wouldn’t ya say, Jim? Alicia drummed her fingers on the counter, waiting for customers and trying to find a comfortable way to stand.

“Hello,” she said brightly when the bell at the door clanged, an instinctive smile scrawled on her face. The lady wanted an iced coffee. (It was so hot today, she said.) Alicia laughed politely and grabbed a plastic cup, talking intelligently and pleasantly about the weather as she bent over to scoop from the ice bucket. 

“Have a great day!” The sun poured in the windows again as the customer left. Alicia stood quietly, willing coolness, shifting her weight on her feet until someone else came in and she began to laugh about the weather.

That night was not much cooler. Alicia came into her room and peeled off her sticky clothes. Again she stood in the mirror, staring, releasing her hair just to put it back up.

The next morning, she woke to alarms from the street. Beautifully searing blares from city trucks peeled in the windows from the road, along with the thick, accented voice through a megaphone: “Heat Wahning Today. Stay At Home. Heat Wahning Today. Stay At Home.” The whole city, it could be imagined, then, turned over in their beds and stuffed a second pillow over their head in complete synchronization. But it was all too late — the city was synchronously awake.

“Heat warning today, heat warning today.” Alicia mumbled, jumping up from the bed. After time spent again with the hair and the mirror, Alicia made her way downstairs. Though her stomach grumbled, she gave the kitchen a wide berth. She pinned her hands into her sweatpants pockets to keep them from reaching out toward cupboard doors. A destructive inner dialogue was cut short when something outside the window caught her eye.

Stardust — that was her first thought — was floating in the air. It looked faintly pink, these sparkles that drifted with the breeze, but, with the stagnant heat, were mostly hanging still. She watched them, aware, with sudden conviction, that this was something magic. One drifted close to the window. Alicia leaned close to see it. It came nearer and she came nearer until the pane of glass was all that was between the glimmering pink orb and the tip of her nose.

Alicia saw it was pulsing. She blinked and looked again. Now she could see something else. In the middle of the thing, she saw her own face — a reflection. But not quite. Her chin was jutted farther, her eyes closer together, and her cheeks puffed and sagged like she had aged and not aged well. Others of these things were gathering by the window. She felt her heartbeat swell with the stardust as it pulsed.

Falling back from the window, finally, she felt a tear rush down her cheek. Pressing a hand to her forehead, she felt burning heat. “Heat Wahning Today. Heat Wahning Today.” Indeed, she thought.

By noon that day, everyone had discovered the pink things and was talking about it. Phone calls and online posts spread the news of this stardust, these aliens, this proof of an old conspiracy or of the success of some witchcraft. Along with disorienting effects and confusing resulting conclusions, the record heat wave was showing the wildest things in the air. Three people had already published poetry about it, and four real chemists and two fake had released six different explanations to the public. Two idiots had already died, and the alternative post-apocalyptic band, TNT, had become Tik Tok famous overnight.

Nobody knew what had happened, but something had happened to everyone.

Alicia, meanwhile, had discovered what had happened to her. Every morning and every evening — and, now that she was home, most other times of most days — she stood in the mirror, pretending to play with her hair. Then she went downstairs, avoided the kitchen, and saw her greatest fears out the window in the stardust. It always ended, when she stumbled back into the cool safety of the little hallway, and, with her hands, gingerly inspected the sunburn on her forehead and the tear stains drawn to her chin. In the heat, she saw her ugliest self — someone she was so truly afraid of, and someone she felt so close to. And in the hysteria of it all, she had burnt herself again and again, and shed desperate tears to keep herself cool.

But, it had been a week, and her friends were now waiting outside her door. The stardust had disappeared for them days ago. The city trucks no longer drove by at 7am calling a Heat Wahning and her boss at the coffee shop had been asking where she had been the last few days. From her bedroom, Alicia looked down. George, Sasha, and Mo. They were standing together, shoulder-to-shoulder, chatting lightly, waiting patiently. They had brought Alicia a parasol for the heat. It was Spanish-made; hand-painted with beautiful dancers in yellow and blue and red.

I’m coming, she texted, though she could not see how. She met the mirror again. She pulled her hair out again. This time, she saw her sunken eyes, as well as tragedy everywhere else. Though she was butt naked, she felt like she was wearing a Victorian funeral dress.

Clothed, she waved at her friends through the front windows. They smiled and waved back, enthusiastically. Alicia could not help but feel like a chronically ill patient, going out, well attended, just to stretch her legs. She pulled on her shoes.

Breakfast? Sasha texted.

Nah, was Alicia’s three-character reply. She looked up from her laces to see her friends and the festive parasol again through the window. She could still see the pink things around their faces. But she didn’t get any closer to the window — she made for the door instead. But she knew that when she walked outside they would still be there. She knew, though her friends were ready, that she was not.

When the enchanted sunbeams hit her face, you see, Alicia knew what she would lose. Just picturing it now, she could feel her skin tingle as if it had already begun to change. She reached a hand, half-mindedly, to her burns. Though she knew nothing was different just yet, the seconds that elapsed before her fingers touched her face this time were more frightening than anything that week. The real thing, Alicia heard herself think, would only be scarier.

She took a deep breath and let it out to her shoes, head tucked to her chest, eyes shut. Eyes were on her outside the door, eyes of people she knew, and still this atmosphere had never been more foreign. Being inside felt miles away from her friends just feet away; and quiet and dark where they were sunny. It was silent in her head, as she took her three steps to the door. Hand on the doorknob, eye at the peephole, Alicia watched the yellow rays spotted with pink, as they formed flares behind the fence and traced poetic circles on the grass. Then, with a twist, she pushed the door until it clicked and took a step out into the sunshine.