Day Of No End

It’s difficult to remember what the dark looks like. Sometimes I collect all the blankets in the house, lay them on top of one another, and bury myself underneath. Sometimes I dive deep into the town pool and clench my eyes tightly. Sometimes I lock myself in the pantry cupboard and tape the cracks. Still, the light finds a way in. Between the blanket layer, and the air bubbles and the small splits in the wood, it always finds a way in. I heard some people on the television talking about places underground where you can pay to visit the dark. Places so far under the earth not even the animals can dig there. Other people have built their own boxes in their homes, or in their basements, like my family, but after a while the air becomes stale and the space so humid and as soon as you try to let some air in, the light comes spilling through. It’s unnatural to be in light this long, the people on the television say. They also say that we can’t last any longer. All the hospitals are filled with crazy people. The world is coming to an end. Mother usually turns off the television when they start talking like this. 

The television has a constant clock and date on the screen for people to know what day and what time of the day it is. In case we all forget. And some humans have, the people on the television say. They say that human beings need to have the light and the dark to have order. Without this order people get confused and don’t know what day it is. 

And at the start it was all confusion. Where I am from June the 21st is usually a day of celebration. The day when the sun stays in the sky for the longest. The day we celebrate the sun for all it does to help us. People decorate their homes, and everyone dresses up in flowery outfits and pretty headpieces. A parade goes through the town centre, and children run around with streamers, throwing petals and handing out candy. But that year the sun didn’t stop. It stayed there. The sun enjoyed our dancing, my grandmother said. It’s a sign of good things to come, my mother said. But when the sun didn’t go away for two days, my father said that something was wrong, and we all became confused. The people on the television talked and talked and talked. In many countries on the other side of the world like New Zealand it had been completely dark since June the 21st. People hadn’t seen the sun in two whole days. Many people had travelled to other parts of the world to see what was going on. If you were rich enough you just flew there to feel the dark again. To sleep in the dark. To escape the light. But after a week the entire world went quiet. There were no more flights and countries closed their borders. It’s as if the world stopped spinning. Then people got scared. 

My father started boarding up the house and collecting food. Then we stopped going to school and leaving the house all together. The people on the television told us to stay calm. But no one stayed calm. My grandmother moved into my room and I had to start sleeping in the lounge on the couch. I didn’t see my friends anymore and no one came to visit. There was one time in the beginning an old lady and old man knocked on our door. When my mother opened the door the lady threw water on my mother and told her it was the end of the world and we needed to love god. We don’t open the door now. 

June the 20th was the day everyone on the television said to prepare for. They started calling it “Before The Knowing”, and June the 21st was called “Day Of The Knowing”. It sounded a bit silly at first, but the more my mother and father whispered that it was better than calling it “Before Knowing If We Die'' and “Knowing If We Will Die Or Not”, it began to sound a lot better. People on the television said that if we continued to live like this, we wouldn’t survive. They said that if the sun doesn’t go away on June the 21st, exactly one year after, it may never go away. They said we would become an autonomous world. I didn’t know what that meant so when I asked father he said that it means we are alone. 

I remember it feeling extra bright the morning of June the 21st. The shards of light that continuously beam through the wooden panes felt warmer. My eyes squinted a little deeper. But besides that, there was nothing else remarkable about the morning. Mother, father and grandmother were already eating breakfast in the kitchen. I looked into their faces, curious as to how they would be the morning of “Day Of The Knowing”, but there was nothing there. They looked directly into their cups of tea and bowls of cereal staring into nothingness. I remember I felt disappointed, and bored. I didn’t know what I expected, but definitely not this. It was just another morning. Looking back I realize that all my mother, father and grandmother were trying to do was what they thought was best for me; to act normal and hide how afraid they really felt. I spent the rest of the day outside the house, kicking the dust from the ground and wondering when the sky would darken. But it didn’t. By 12am father lost his cool and turned on the television. The people on the television said that nothing had changed, even on the other side of the world. At 9pm the sun remained high in the sky, laughing down on us. At 2am when the day had “officially” changed to June the 22nd, I heard my mother crying softly in her bedroom. 

So that was it. “Day Of The Knowing” became known as “Day of Disappointment”. 24/7 sunlight continued into the next day and the next day and the next. More people became crazy and the earth dried up even more. The people on the television have left, and grandma stopped speaking. It’s been nearly 3 years since the sun stayed in the sky, and tomorrow, like every other day, father will mark it off on the calendar. It’s become a bit of a game, actually. With every day ticked off we laugh and chant and clap our hands in glee, happy to continue our own little game. Similar to “Before The Knowing” and “Day Of Disappointment” it’s an important day, but we have named this one ourselves - “Day Of No End”