playlist for the apocalpyse
commonwealth essay entry
angst
g
1492 words
You talk to him in the sun sprawled out on bare rooftops, tracing cloudlines with one bandaged finger. The girl who can’t hear. The boy who won’t talk.
“I think I would like to make a soundtrack for myself before I die,” you say out loud and it’s unacknowledged save for one raised eyebrow. The usual silence but that’s more of your fault than his.
“A playlist for the apocalypse, maybe. The sounds I’ll miss-…no, am missing the most.”
He won’t tell you how he found you, how he managed to walk through fallen stone and burning corpses to pull you out from under the wreckage of broken car husks. Why he did it. Why it’s even you to begin with. You turn on your side to squint at him in the sunlight.
“Are you lonely?”
He smiles at you, upturned lips that whisper little word hushes you’ve learned how to read over too long afternoons.
Not anymore.
You call him Jae just because; that and the fact that he won’t tell you what his name is, won’t tell you anything for that matter, refuses to speak words you can’t hear.
I like that name.
“Well good,” you had said, pacing empty apartments with whitewashed walls. “Because I like it too.”
-
Track 1- Voices
Duration- As long as the conversation flows
Waking up not alone in the almost-dark is probably your first memory of him, unseen hands holding you down least you unravel bandages trying to claw sound back into your ears.
“I can’t hear you,”
I can, he had written on dust covered floors, letters elegantly messy in the light of Armageddon dawns. Does that count for something?
It’s the start of something you can’t really put your finger on, him pulling you back from building edges the first few nights you totter too near them, screaming for him to let go let go just let go I don’t want to do this anymore, I don’t want to live, each and every unheard syllable driving you closer to the edge.
But I want you to, pressed into your palms, something that feels like faith and hope spelt into your skin.
I want you to live.
-
Track 2- Rain falling
Duration- Entire thunderstorms
It doesn’t rain for weeks on end but when it does, it feels like angels are trying to drown the rest of the living, thunder under the soles of your feet mistaken for the-end tremors.
Angels taking photos, he mimes each time god hurls lightning down on a broken world and makes you laugh, takes the shivering out of your hands for a moment.
“Such sadists.”
They’re just curious.
In your head, the rain would’ve sounded like gunshots from on high, splattering little watery deaths on the metal top of the bus stop the both of you are huddled under tonight. He plays at speaking with you, fingers tapping out answers and questions on the alphabets of fading ads peeling, did you take the bus a lot last time?
Last time. Three months ago. You don’t correct him.
-
Track 3- Thump of tennis balls
Duration- Five sets or until someone gets tired
Do you play?
He scuffs his shoes against the cracked court, uneven in places, lines spiderwebbing like grasping tendrils to nowhere. You follow a few down towards where the net would’ve been and stare him down from half-court.
“Casually, I never got myself into competitions or anything.”
Play with me.
“With what, exactly?”
He shrugs and gestures for you to go to your end of the court, takes up the server’s position on his side. Bounces an imaginary ball at his feet.
Make believe. It’s not like we’re not doing that everyday already.
Back arches and invisible racket makes an invisible connection, sends nothing your way.
That was an ace. I’m going to win if you just keep standing there.
You play invisible tennis with him and win, 5-3, mainly because you shout out scores faster than he can show them.
-
Track 4- Pages turning
Duration- Enough of an interesting plot
Living in a dying city goes a little something like this: dancing slow waltzes down expressways, playing tag with shadows of other survivors running back to the places they hide from reality, reading novels stolen (borrowed without intentions of giving them back, he offers not so helpfully, what will they want books for at the end of the world anyways?) by the stack in the aisles of empty supermarkets.
“I never really had time to read,” you say and reach to the shelf on your left for bottled mineral water, unscrewing the cap one handed while you hold your book open with the other.
I never liked reading.
He stacks architectural wonders with tin cans, towering shapes of pineapple cubes, soup, sardines all clattering to the floor when he’s done and unsatisfied. A can of tuna in fresh water rolls towards you and you kick it back gently, turn a page. By the time it gets too dark to read, he’s moved on to soda cans, shaky towers of carbonated drinks that loom, soft-drink shadows.
He kicks it all down before leaving and you cover your ears out of habit.
-
Track 5- Tuning guitars
Duration- Until it sounds right
He doesn’t speak and you can’t hear but it doesn’t stop you from singing, guessing rhythms from the way he taps his fingers lightly against whatever surface he’s leaning against this time.
I like your voice.
“You should sing with me.”
No.
“I won’t even be able to hear it, come on.”
Precisely.
You wander into music shops with broken windows, stepping on glass shards and over fallen score sheets, take down lonely guitars from their stands to hold.
I’ll tell you when you get it right, he writes on the pages of blank manuscripts and sits on a piano bench, plays what looks like middle E for himself.
“You don’t have any idea how ridiculous this is, don’t you?”
Tune it, says an impatient hand and you sigh, edging down unheard semitones until he holds an okay up and you move on to the next string. It takes you two days to do the whole shop, thirty-two guitars with five strings each. A hundred and sixty reminders of how you should’ve played more, sang louder, for more people. Listened harder.
-
Track 6- Pencils scratching on paper
Duration- The size of a good idea.
He’s taken to carrying booklets of post-it-notes around now, sticky memos in every shade he can find.
I love these things, he writes on one and sticks it on your arm, adds another to the back of your tee just for good measure. Snippets of thoughts get left behind wherever you go and they flutter goodbyes at you when you leave, flamingo pink on the side of a luxury car, baby blue sky stuck on lamp posts.
Between the both of you and every stationary shop in the city, you make enough rainbow armies on walls to
Fight whatever’s coming next?
You throw scrunched up post-its at him, pelt him with sunshine yellow. Ignore the question because whatever that’s coming next will win no matter what.
-
You think you could go on forever, the sounds that you miss. Simple things like FM radio static in the car on road trips, the sound of waves crashing, the noise that late night TV shows emit in the form of canned audience laughter. But what you’ll miss most is this: the sound of nothing. Silence, staring up at murky skies back to back with a boy you’re going to die with; catching moths to release from buildings high with a stranger sharing the remains of your life.
“I kinda wish I’d met you sooner.”
Me too, he spells into your palm and you feel like clasping your hand over his fingers, feather light touch but the moment passes and your hands close on empty air.
“Did you feel that?”
He helps you up and the sun plays hide and seek behind the silhouettes of falling skyscraper skeletons.
“Yeah”, he says out loud, word almost lost in the midst of steel, life, everything you’ve ever known crashing down. Perhaps it’s the overwhelming fear, sadness digging its poisoned tipped little claws into you; turning coherency inside out and upside down but it sounds like your playlist compressed into four letters
A lifetime in a breath.
-
“Can you feel the ground shake?”
They say the world is ending.
.fin.
angst
g
1492 words
You talk to him in the sun sprawled out on bare rooftops, tracing cloudlines with one bandaged finger. The girl who can’t hear. The boy who won’t talk.
“I think I would like to make a soundtrack for myself before I die,” you say out loud and it’s unacknowledged save for one raised eyebrow. The usual silence but that’s more of your fault than his.
“A playlist for the apocalypse, maybe. The sounds I’ll miss-…no, am missing the most.”
He won’t tell you how he found you, how he managed to walk through fallen stone and burning corpses to pull you out from under the wreckage of broken car husks. Why he did it. Why it’s even you to begin with. You turn on your side to squint at him in the sunlight.
“Are you lonely?”
He smiles at you, upturned lips that whisper little word hushes you’ve learned how to read over too long afternoons.
Not anymore.
You call him Jae just because; that and the fact that he won’t tell you what his name is, won’t tell you anything for that matter, refuses to speak words you can’t hear.
I like that name.
“Well good,” you had said, pacing empty apartments with whitewashed walls. “Because I like it too.”
-
Track 1- Voices
Duration- As long as the conversation flows
Waking up not alone in the almost-dark is probably your first memory of him, unseen hands holding you down least you unravel bandages trying to claw sound back into your ears.
“I can’t hear you,”
I can, he had written on dust covered floors, letters elegantly messy in the light of Armageddon dawns. Does that count for something?
It’s the start of something you can’t really put your finger on, him pulling you back from building edges the first few nights you totter too near them, screaming for him to let go let go just let go I don’t want to do this anymore, I don’t want to live, each and every unheard syllable driving you closer to the edge.
But I want you to, pressed into your palms, something that feels like faith and hope spelt into your skin.
I want you to live.
-
Track 2- Rain falling
Duration- Entire thunderstorms
It doesn’t rain for weeks on end but when it does, it feels like angels are trying to drown the rest of the living, thunder under the soles of your feet mistaken for the-end tremors.
Angels taking photos, he mimes each time god hurls lightning down on a broken world and makes you laugh, takes the shivering out of your hands for a moment.
“Such sadists.”
They’re just curious.
In your head, the rain would’ve sounded like gunshots from on high, splattering little watery deaths on the metal top of the bus stop the both of you are huddled under tonight. He plays at speaking with you, fingers tapping out answers and questions on the alphabets of fading ads peeling, did you take the bus a lot last time?
Last time. Three months ago. You don’t correct him.
-
Track 3- Thump of tennis balls
Duration- Five sets or until someone gets tired
Do you play?
He scuffs his shoes against the cracked court, uneven in places, lines spiderwebbing like grasping tendrils to nowhere. You follow a few down towards where the net would’ve been and stare him down from half-court.
“Casually, I never got myself into competitions or anything.”
Play with me.
“With what, exactly?”
He shrugs and gestures for you to go to your end of the court, takes up the server’s position on his side. Bounces an imaginary ball at his feet.
Make believe. It’s not like we’re not doing that everyday already.
Back arches and invisible racket makes an invisible connection, sends nothing your way.
That was an ace. I’m going to win if you just keep standing there.
You play invisible tennis with him and win, 5-3, mainly because you shout out scores faster than he can show them.
-
Track 4- Pages turning
Duration- Enough of an interesting plot
Living in a dying city goes a little something like this: dancing slow waltzes down expressways, playing tag with shadows of other survivors running back to the places they hide from reality, reading novels stolen (borrowed without intentions of giving them back, he offers not so helpfully, what will they want books for at the end of the world anyways?) by the stack in the aisles of empty supermarkets.
“I never really had time to read,” you say and reach to the shelf on your left for bottled mineral water, unscrewing the cap one handed while you hold your book open with the other.
I never liked reading.
He stacks architectural wonders with tin cans, towering shapes of pineapple cubes, soup, sardines all clattering to the floor when he’s done and unsatisfied. A can of tuna in fresh water rolls towards you and you kick it back gently, turn a page. By the time it gets too dark to read, he’s moved on to soda cans, shaky towers of carbonated drinks that loom, soft-drink shadows.
He kicks it all down before leaving and you cover your ears out of habit.
-
Track 5- Tuning guitars
Duration- Until it sounds right
He doesn’t speak and you can’t hear but it doesn’t stop you from singing, guessing rhythms from the way he taps his fingers lightly against whatever surface he’s leaning against this time.
I like your voice.
“You should sing with me.”
No.
“I won’t even be able to hear it, come on.”
Precisely.
You wander into music shops with broken windows, stepping on glass shards and over fallen score sheets, take down lonely guitars from their stands to hold.
I’ll tell you when you get it right, he writes on the pages of blank manuscripts and sits on a piano bench, plays what looks like middle E for himself.
“You don’t have any idea how ridiculous this is, don’t you?”
Tune it, says an impatient hand and you sigh, edging down unheard semitones until he holds an okay up and you move on to the next string. It takes you two days to do the whole shop, thirty-two guitars with five strings each. A hundred and sixty reminders of how you should’ve played more, sang louder, for more people. Listened harder.
-
Track 6- Pencils scratching on paper
Duration- The size of a good idea.
He’s taken to carrying booklets of post-it-notes around now, sticky memos in every shade he can find.
I love these things, he writes on one and sticks it on your arm, adds another to the back of your tee just for good measure. Snippets of thoughts get left behind wherever you go and they flutter goodbyes at you when you leave, flamingo pink on the side of a luxury car, baby blue sky stuck on lamp posts.
Between the both of you and every stationary shop in the city, you make enough rainbow armies on walls to
Fight whatever’s coming next?
You throw scrunched up post-its at him, pelt him with sunshine yellow. Ignore the question because whatever that’s coming next will win no matter what.
-
You think you could go on forever, the sounds that you miss. Simple things like FM radio static in the car on road trips, the sound of waves crashing, the noise that late night TV shows emit in the form of canned audience laughter. But what you’ll miss most is this: the sound of nothing. Silence, staring up at murky skies back to back with a boy you’re going to die with; catching moths to release from buildings high with a stranger sharing the remains of your life.
“I kinda wish I’d met you sooner.”
Me too, he spells into your palm and you feel like clasping your hand over his fingers, feather light touch but the moment passes and your hands close on empty air.
“Did you feel that?”
He helps you up and the sun plays hide and seek behind the silhouettes of falling skyscraper skeletons.
“Yeah”, he says out loud, word almost lost in the midst of steel, life, everything you’ve ever known crashing down. Perhaps it’s the overwhelming fear, sadness digging its poisoned tipped little claws into you; turning coherency inside out and upside down but it sounds like your playlist compressed into four letters
A lifetime in a breath.
-
“Can you feel the ground shake?”
They say the world is ending.
.fin.