Paused

There’s too many things and nothing to think about, there’s too many books and no books to read, there’s too many muscles and no muscles to move. And there’s Ma, outside the room, screaming, snapping, growling, trying to drag me out from my room but I tell her I will finish my breakfast after I’m done studying, though the truth is I can’t finish anything. Brain on a grill, that’s what I’m feeling, brain on a grill, melting, melting, melting,

I rub my temples, flipping through the pages, my eyes burning from exhaustion, words and pictures dancing, my focus bouncing around the room, and the heat, 

that damn heat.

Everything is boiling, I can’t stop, I can’t look away, I have to keep my eyes on the notes. Sometimes I just wonder why something can be so easy for them. With only a blink they are a thousand steps in front of you, doing everything so flawlessly and marvelously they don’t feel human at all, ambling up the ranks and pushing someone like me down the podium. I admit I’m afraid to lose, I can’t lose, I can’t afford to lose. I know I’m not like them and no matter how hard I try I’ll come tumbling down. I want to prove to them that I belong to where they are but I have nothing to prove to them, all I have is me and myself and hard work which I’ll never know if it’ll pay off. 

What if I don’t belong to where they are? What if they find out I'm not as good as I they thought I was? What if Ma and Pa get disappointed? What will Dean think of me?

“Simon!” Ma barks. I clench onto the corner of the page, pressing down my anger, I can’t tear off the paper, I need it. 

“Simon!”

“What do you want from me?!” 

Ma has already destroyed the locks, the door flinging open. She stumbles in, grabs my arm and says, barely breathing, 

“The world is ending.” 

---------------------------------

Ma pulls me out into the sun, it is 7:30 pm and we’re still under broad daylight. Everyone else in the neighborhood is outside just like us, basked in sunlight that is never meant to be there in the first place. There are people who kneel down on the asphalt and pray, mumbling something. Our neighbours hop into their car to join a hoarding in a mart a kilometre away.

“We’re all gonna die. We’re goners!”

“Shut up, Isaac! Nobody’s going to die!” Pa flicks a newspaper at the eldest child in the house. I grab the remote and switch on the TV. Isaac frowns and paces into the kitchen, his phone out, calling someone.

“There are no oncoming earthquakes, tsunamis or any geohazards. The ocean shows no sign of moving towards the continents, and the Earth is not spiraling into the sun. Everything remains unchanged,” a scientist announces, blinking as she struggles to open her eyes in the flash of cameras. “We don’t know the cause and why the pause has no effects on Earth and when the issue will be resolved. However, we advise you to stay home and stay calm. People from the day zone are encouraged to keep themselves hydrated and keep out the sun as temperature is expected to rise ....”

I sink into the sofa, my extremities running cold. Everything feels like the kind of stuff you’ll see in movies, everything feels unreal. No, this can’t be real. 

I pinch my arm, it hurts.

My phone vibrates, I switch it on, notifications swarm into the screen. I tap in, farewells crash down into the chatrooms with news clips of people plunging down from skyscrapers sandwiched in between. Humanity is freaking out. Nobody knows the Earth can just say, ‘Fuck it’ and stop spinning. First the pandemic, then this.

Ma starts to sob, head in her hands, Pa holds her close. “We’ll be fine,” he says, but I see him punch in the numbers he needs to call grandma.

I get up, my head hurts, the room spinning around me. I stagger up my room. 

“Where are you going?” 

“I’m going to take a nap for a while.” 

I pass out the moment my face hits the pillow.

---------------------------------

It’s still there. The heat, the fear, the sun. I’m sweating waterfall, my perspiration forming a dark circle on my bed. My room is a mess, notes and papers cluttering the desk and the floor. I put down one of my legs and I’m already standing on one of them. I’m thirsty, my throat stuck close, my lips parched and my tongue shrivelling. I look at the clock and realise I have only slept for an hour. 

I gallop downstairs to grab a drink, chugging down the water until I am forced to cough it out. Pa is rendered topless, sitting cross-legged on the floor, a notebook in hand to count the supplies. The windows are sealed close, curtains down, and Isaac is gone. Peeking out from the curtains, there’s a parade carrying a banner, the leader screaming into a microphone, telling us that it’s not too late to return to the arms of God. 

“Where’s Isaac?”

“Off to his girlfriend’s,” Ma says, sitting next to Pa. She is holding some cardboards, our names and date of birth scribbled on it with a black marker. There is a fourth one on the floor with Isaac’s name, crossed out. 

“Are we going to die?” I question, Pa stays silent, Ma too. “We can’t just stay here, can we?”

“I saw bodies outside on the road,” Ma says, her face falls when she recalls it, worry written all over her expression, worry for Isaac. “Amelia from next door was attacked when she was trying to drive away. We can only leave when the government is sending troops to evacuate us. Now we have to focus on staying alive long enough.” 

Ma shakes her head, whispering, “But I don’t think the government knows what to do either.” 

“Go somewhere else, relax for a while.” Pa tells me, pushing me out the kitchen, sweat dripping from his brows, his neck and face burning. I nod, straggling into the living room. 

I stare at my phone, 9.50 pm, 31°C. I inhale and scroll down my contact, my thumb above a number, Dean. I lie down on the floor, the coldest place in the room, my skin sticking onto the linoleum, and wait.

If we're all going to die...

there's one last thing I want to do.

“Hello?” a voice speaks from the other end of the line. He sounds much weaker than I imagine him to be. For a second, I regret what I did, but I force myself to go on. 

“Dean, it’s me, Simon.”

“What’s the Top 10 in class calling for?”

“How are you doing?” 

I have a crush on you.

“Not great…” I hear wailing coming from the background, “someone tried to crawl into our house to loot our supplies so my dad kinda knocked him down with a shovel. He’s bleeding a lot, Mum is trying to patch him up. I’m doing fine though, just chilling. At least there’s not going to be any school tomorrow.”

He laughs.

I have a crush on you.

He continues after the wailing has stopped, “I’m surprised you called me, you usually stuck your face in the textbooks.”

“Yeah.”

“My turn. How are you?”

I have a crush on you.

“We’re safe here. We got the windows barricaded.”

“Quick thinking. Kinda sucks we gotta die this young."

There’s an awkward silence.

“So, uh...I’m hanging up?” Dean asks.

I have a crush on you.

“Yeah, goodbye.”

“See you in the afterlife.”

He hangs up the phone.

It took a while for me to notice how much I was shaking. 

I can't do it.

I cower in a ball, regret and relief crumpling together into a confusing mixture.

There’s too many things and nothing to think about, there’s too many things and nothing to do, there’s too much time and no time for us.

It hurts, like a stab in the chest, twisting and digging deeper, but I don’t want to die yet, not now, not like this. I haven’t confessed, I haven't gone to college, I haven't graduated, I haven’t got a car licence, I haven’t got the job I like, I haven’t seen so many parts of the world and so many things that a human being can do.  

-------------------------------------------------

It’s 10:34 pm, Ma and Pa are blasting Matt Maltese’s ‘As The World Caves in’ in the house. Ma is in her gown I saw her wore in a wedding before, dark patches of perspiration seeping through the fabric. She’s wearing a pair cherry red heels, not caring if the soles are dirtying the ground as Pa twirls her around on the dance floor, looking at each other as if they’re the only two left in this world. When the music quiets down, Pa pulls her close and they huddle together, forehead to forehead and slow dance away, their neck glistening.

And here it is, our final night alive

And as the Earth runs to the ground. 

“Care to join?” Pa reaches out his hand to me. I take it, and the three of us clump together.

Isaac is not picking up his phone.

At 11:45 pm, temperature 36°C, we sleep on the floor, the blanket pulled up to our waist. I remember we used to do this before every weekend, when Isaac and I were kids, but then life got a little busier, and time got a little shorter, and I drowned myself in the shallow joy of competition. 

"You're good enough."

I look at Ma. Behind her, sharp rays of sunlight slips in from under the curtains.

"We don't really need you to get the best grade in class. No matter how high your score is it doesn't define your worth."

"I'm not the genius you think I am."

"We want a son, not a genius."

My nose stings.

“Good night, Simon.” She kisses my head, the air-conditioner humming. 

“Night.” I say as I watch her close her eyes.

We don’t know if we’ll make it out alive tomorrow, we don't know when the sun will boil this place to dust, but it doesn’t matter anymore.

I feel at peace, my mind empty and my brain no longer melts in the heat. There is no running track for us to race on, no trophies to earn and no line to reach. I feel the breaths of my family, their hearts beating along with mine, things that I will lose. 

How easy it is to forget that in the very end, every failure, every anger and every fear we have ever experienced, ceases to exist when the universe pauses. 

------------------------------------------------------

I open my eyes. 

The house is dark, darker than what it used to be before. I get up carefully and amble towards the curtains to pull them aside.

It’s...

It's night. 

I lean against the glass, hungrily digesting the long lost darkness and the magnificent glow of the stars, the moon staring back to me. I pinch myself again, it hurts. 

“It’s night!”, I shouted for Ma and Pa to wake up. We tear the barricade off, opening the window, the cold air flowing in. They pause for a moment, their vision glued to the sky. After a few seconds their discovery hits them like a brick, their jaw hanging wide open, first a loud gasp then a jubilant guffaw with the urge to hug this miracle in their arms until it suffocates.

We scurry to the TV, switch it on and wait for the news.

“The issue is resolved, the Earth is starting to rotate normally…” We can't hear the rest of speech, the announcer’s voice is drowned out by the cheering crowd.

Outside, we hear a car pull into our driveway.