this apocalypse is feeling a little underwhelming

Gettin' antsy.

Previously… I blogged my Call To Action. I invite women who have nowhere to go, who don’t want to face an apocalypse alone, to my mom’s 5+ bedroom house in Northern Ontario. My message: What if we did this together? Fought together, created together?

Chapter 2 - this apocalypse is feeling a little underwhelming

October 2 2029 Ontario

After the blog post is live, I open my stats page. I’ve never been able to resist watching my numbers grow – or not – and while I try not to let views dictate what I put into the world, I can’t help but feel a correlation between when I share and my own value. I’m a child of the internet era – there’s no other way to feel. And this post was the ultimate call-to-action: the world is disintegrating right in front of us, and we need to act collectively in order to be safe.

My sister Tricia is driving north to get here. It wasn’t easy to convince her, but she’s on her way. There’s five bedrooms in this house, my mother’s house, thugh only she and I live here now. Each room feels like a unique era, based on when her children left home. Mine is the most modern, given that I’ve returned – but when I came back, it had been fashioned the oldest, painted in a pale pink that she’d chosen, always wanting me, her eldest, to embody the girlishness she spent so much effort enforcing in the early years of my life. I’d swiftly painted it tan, and now everything in my room shares the same effortless brownish hue, a smooth wash of invisibility.

Tricia’s room is chaotic, borrowing its owners energy. The walls are each a different colour: purple, yellow, blue, and orange; she’d done that as a young teen and so it remained.. Tricia is loud and occupies much more space than her frame should allow. When Tricia comes home, her luggage explodes, her voice echoes through the house, and she carries with her an energetic vibration that precedes her arrival and lingers long after her exit.

Jenna is the second youngest – the ‘girlishness’ thing really stuck with her. Her room remains untouched – she didn’t move back like me and doesn’t visit like Tricia. She’s never been back, in fact. Though the walls are a dove grey, every other piece of furniture or decor in the room is kissed by a muted pink palate. Her bed is made, a spray of dolls all tucked in beneath the dusty rose quilt. There is a small pile of boxes in the corner by the closet. My mother, who labels everything, has written ‘SEARCH’ across the cardboard.

From the search party. Flashlights and batteries, high-visibility vests, stacks of Missing posters with my sister’s face on them. How a picture completely changes its meaning when it’s used in such a manner. How a day violently changes when someone goes missing in the middle of it. Impossible to think about the day, or the sister, without the pall of the event. Incredibly, she was found – not safe, but found. But she never spent another night at home. I have no way getting in touch with her. She’s lived in the streets of British Colombia every since she’d been found. I know she’s alive because no one’s ever told me she isn’t.

James’ room is in the basement. His choice. He got his own bathroom, could play video games all night without headphones (was his excuse). Door usually closed, insides haphazard. James is an adult, of course – we three girls are all abut a year apart and James two years younger than Jenna, the youngest girl – but his room is from the early 90s, right down to the little roadmap carpet, a heaping bin of hot-wheels next to it. The green room. A boy’s room, my mom would say with pride. When James comes home, he crashes on the pilled outerspace comforter, his six foot frame extending past the limits on the bed. Nothing ever needed to change with James. He was 14 when Jenna went missing; she’d been 16 and his absolute favourite. The only one who had any time for him. No one even mentioned it because it was so obvious: James stopped growing as soon as Jenna was gone. He visited once or twice a year from Toronto where he lived with a few male roommates, a rotating eviction-notice frenzy brought calls every so often, then mom’s sighs would come heavy and laden with meaning before she eventually sent money.

And my room. Colours of a sandstorm. I keep it tidy so my mom never feels the need to come in. My laptop is sitting open on my bed, the screen dimmed to preserve battery power. My blog post has 57 views and one share and one like.

I pull open my beige curtains, just enough to peek outside. Our street isn’t a main thoroughfare or anything, but on the day the world ended, you’d think there’d be some traffic.

There’s just Molly D chatting with the new neighbour – not that new, it’d been a year by now, but I never learned their names – both have their phones in hand, and their faces are surprised, I suppose, but not horrified. Not panicked. The unknown Neighbour pats Molly D on the arm and returns to her home. Molly makes her way back as well. Before she enters her home, she looks around the neighbourhood. I do as well, from the second storey.

I imagine she’s thinking the same as me: who knew the apocalypse would be so mundane.