We Never Started Counting

“--And be sure to turn the clocks ahead!”

“Of course!” I yelled back down the hall. Cassie and I had lived together for over a year by then, and the rhythm of the evening in our house was a gently rocking waltz where the partners danced and slid around each other, on opposite but shared missions. One to the kitchen, one to the bathroom. One to finish the laundry, the other the dishes. Now, with the long, drab winter finally letting up, a new step: Changing the clocks. We flitted around the small apartment, turning gears and pressing buttons, smiling with the power to change time. 

When I laid down to sleep, my head was full of thoughts of spring. No crocuses had bloomed yet, let alone daffodils or tulips. Still, I wanted to get out into the community garden the next day and clean up a bit. Other people in the building had been complaining about the buildup of trash in the raised beds over the long neglectful winter, as well as the scattering of bird poop across the concrete rooftop where the garden was housed. It was funny, the way nature and humans interacted in the city. That, too, was a sort of dance: Plastic bags swaying in the wind while birds swooped through the sky on the very same gust. What a funny world. I set my alarm and rolled over.

When I woke up, light streamed through the window. I laid there for a moment, feeling the warm glow on my eyelids and smiling dreamily at the sudden change from the previous day’s dull winter gray, but then I shot up. This was no early morning glow, the slanting rays through my window signified that I’d slept well into the afternoon. Why hadn’t my alarm gone off? I rubbed my eyes and while multi-colored stars speckled my vision I reached for the alarm clock that sat at the side of my bed. Finding it, I brought it to my clearing eyes, but no small red lights illuminated the time on the clock’s face. I turned it over, looking to see if the batteries had died in the night, but before I could even open the back of the small machine I saw battery acid had spilled out and formed a yellow crust across the back of it, killing the clock before it had been able to wake me. I began to smile again, thinking how silly I had been not to notice the stain and smell last night when I had dialed it forward, but then my finger brushed against something soft on the outside of the cool plastic. It was moss. Moss? How did moss get on my clock? I turned it over in my hands, pondering the true extent of my ignorance, and then a smell, familiar but out of place, earthy and alive, filled my nostrils and I finally looked up. I felt my face go slack, and what was left of my dreamy smile fell from my lips.

The room was falling apart. The formerly beige carpet was dyed green by mold and foreign plants, and seedlings climbed the walls, through which ragged holes framed by snake-like wires provided views into the rest of the apartment, which was in much the same condition. Looking up to the ceiling, I was blinded for a moment by the same late-day rays which had woken me shining down into my room where the roof had fallen away. It was as though years, no, centuries had passed as I’d slept, not just one night. A sudden panic filled my body so quickly that it pushed my heart up into my throat, threatening to spill out into my mouth and then out onto what was left of the carpet.

“Cassie?” I called, the squeak of my crusty morning voice sounding like a ghostly whisper in the shell of what had once been my apartment, our home. I called again, standing up with a sudden urgency. “Cassie!”

My feet met the floor steadily, and carefully I made my way across the room, hoping the floor was not as weak as the crumbling walls and ceiling. The mossy floor felt cool and soft on my bare feet, and looking down I saw that each step left an imprint of my toes in the now impossibly thick, and terribly alive, rug. Shivering, I crept to the front door of the apartment.

The hall was more of the same. To the left, a tree branch reached through a hole in my neighbor’s door, blocking my view through the window, but not my exit. I continued to shout as I now quickened my step on my way down the stairs and out of this newly alien place. “Cassie! Cassie! Joe? Stephanie? Is anyone there?” My voice echoed a song against the pounding beat of my footsteps as I ran down the stairs, getting faster with each step. The silence was unbearable. What was this? What happened? We had laughed yesterday at the power we had, turning the clocks, smiled in anticipation of the changing world blooming again before our eyes. Had our proud and callous laughter angered some indignant god? I wasn’t religious, but growing up my mom told me that the Old Testament God was something to be feared and that that was still a form of love. Had we forgotten fear? Was this, this frightening change and lonesomeness, my final punishment? Oh God, was this the Rapture? Had I been left behind?

Breathless, I reached the bottom of the stairs and made to push through the glass side door, but my body fell through air. I was being dipped in this cruel dance, dipped by God, we were waltzing together now, maybe-- And the wind was knocked out of me as my shoulder hit the ground, a quiet uhfff escaping my lips and then a hssst flowing back over my teeth as I felt the glass that used to be the door dig into my arm. The pain was minor, but there was blood seeping into the gravel already. When I looked up, though, I knew I had bigger things to worry about.

The city was gone. Or rather, the city I’d known, my city, my world, was gone. The skyline, formerly spiked by proud buildings and radio towers, was now dotted only with clouds. To lower my eyes was to reveal only the wreckage of everything I’d ever known. The street was barely there; a cracked collection of gravel full of weeds and small trees was all that marked the path which had carried me to work for the past three years. I realized that my apartment building had been lucky to be as sturdy as it was, since the bank across what had been the street, an originally large and forbidding structure full of light and marble, was now just a tangle of metal and plastic bound by an unfamiliar vine with glossy leaves, perhaps some distant cousin of the old ivy which had grown in the carefully tended gardens in front of the big glass windows. And beyond that wreck: grasses, taller than I would stand even on the tips of my toes, and beyond that: trees, unlike anything I’d ever seen before. It was a jungle, a vibrant, colorful, antipodal jungle. I fell back to my knees, the glass crunching into my knees, but I felt nothing. My face went slack again, and for a moment I thought perhaps I really was in Hell, alone for the rest of my afterlife as punishment for my lack of faith. I felt tears begin to roll down my cheeks. I pushed the heels of my palms into my eyes, bringing back those multicolored stars, hoping perhaps I was just dreaming, and if I rubbed my eyes I would wake up back in bed, ready to go to the garden. Oh God, the garden, the garden! The whole world was a garden, what did I ever need that hideous rooftop embarrassment for!

Suddenly, I was aware that the sun was no longer warming my slumped shoulders, and a chill beyond that of the sudden shade shook my body as I smelled something beyond the scent of new growth: It was the smell of the zoo, caged and musky and wild. My God. If I wasn’t dead yet, I was going to be.

you aren’t dead

What? I stopped shaking as my veins chilled even further, stopping me cold. No one had spoken, though I had the distinct feeling that a voice had just echoed across my ears. No, not a voice, it was something more, a hum, something animal, something--

you are very much awake and very much alive

we are so happy to have you with us still

“What… Who are you?” I spoke slowly, still afraid to turn, to face the feral creature which stood unknown behind me. But then I felt the shadow move off my body and the warmth of the sun returned, though it was not enough to thaw my bones. I felt the weight of something, something distant and large, move past me. Without reason, without even choosing to, I looked up.

The creature in front of me was as large as an elk, but instead of hooves, its feet split into long, short-clawed toes. As my eyes traveled up the spindly legs I found myself shocked even further by the rippling, shifting color of the animal's coat. Somehow it was green and grey and pale brown all at once, a gentle summary of our surroundings reflected on its body. My eyes tripped over its flexing muscles and up its neck. It was long, too long, terrible on such a compact and graceful body. And then I reached its face. Framed on either side by long ears which faced me from each side of its head, its flat, almost humanly-shaped face seemed covered by a reflective film, and in it I saw only myself at first. Then I made out the outlines of eyes shifting beneath the first layer of skin, scanning back and forth, and then there was another ripple and I saw layers and layers of small, pointed teeth. I sat back on my heels and stared into the face of this thing, scared beyond scared, beyond movement, beyond logic.

you slept for so long but never decayed

Its face didn’t move but that hum seemed to move the air and ripple the thin skin across its face, and an inexplicable sense of peace came across me. 

we waited for you for so long

longer than we have lived

An apocalypse, it must have been! Some sort of nuclear bombing, wiped the whole world out while I slept, and the fallout probably mutated me and these animals into… whatever we are now. Tentatively, I cleared my throat. “Is this… Where am I? What happened?” I asked, my speech echoing oddly against the silent, unfamiliar landscape.

we took back what belonged to us

when all that was left was almost nothing

we grew 

The creature lifted its head and turned its great neck to face the street, then the almost clear sky. It seemed wise, and yet fear-inspiring, and awe-inspiring. It was more than any one thing I’d seen before. And still, the peace I felt when I’d looked into its face stayed with me, unfreezing my heart, relaxing my bones. It turned back to me, the color of the sky rippling across the collage of its coat.

some things did not grow

like the stones that fell and crumbled

and you

we have waited to see what such a living stone would do

waited for so long

I looked again into the face of this mysterious animal, and now saw, instead of myself, what I can only describe as pure beauty reflected its face. A flash of colors filled my widening eyes, and I saw the world born and die and born again in the curve of a leaf, in the crash of a wave. I saw the growth of life and the fall of death and the end of humankind. When I finally blinked away my cheeks were again wet with tears. “How long,” I whispered.

we don’t understand

“How long,” I repeated, and then stopped. I looked back at the apartment and thought about Cassie. I thought about how I had danced through this building, this rotting, crumbling building, this stone, this long-lasting symbol of death. What had I lost? What had that long-lost spring held for me, that was now gone forever? Did daffodils still bloom? “How long,” I breathed, turning back to the creature, “How long since my last spring? Please, please tell me: What year is it now?”

o living rock what strange speech you share

“Please!”

but you must understand there is no year

“Please!”

you must understand

we never started counting

And suddenly I recognized the humming which had suspended me in this peacefulness held in it the pulse of an alarm, of my alarm, telling me to wake up, telling me how much time I’d lost, telling me to get moving, that there was no more time, the clocks had run out, but I was alive and here and this, this was a new kind of spring.