The Turn

Some say the end of the world began when the President of the United States shot himself on national television; others say it started when missing persons reports spiked, when women in different parts of the world were committed on hysterical claims that they had been raped by shadows. Then there are those who say it started much earlier, when the smaller things were going wrong: the barely-noticeable, the insignificant, the sort of things only a child would question.

The details get lost, especially on me, but nobody disputes the day of culmination, the advent of what has come to be called ‘the Turn.’ Everyone remembers that day, even if they don’t talk about it: the day when everybody ran, but each entirely alone.

That’s what they tell me, anyway; as for me, I slept through it all, just like I’d slept through most of my life.

Throughout the years before the Turn, I got up every day to cornflakes. I went to work and dealt with fools. I came home and dealt with more fools. I ate sandwiches and instant mashed potatoes. I watched TV, played my video games, listened to music, and slept.

Today, the door in front of me was difficult to open, so I kicked harder.

In those days, I traced the dotted line: high school diploma, Associates, Bachelors. I followed that line efficiently: no sports, no clubs. I gave to the world what I was told to give. I stocked the shelves, rang up the merchandise, smiled for the customers.

The frame cracked. The door swung forward.

Happy faces from high school days were commonplace before the Turn, from the streets I walked to the aisles I worked. There were architects and doctors, salesmen and entrepreneurs, expecting mothers and proud fathers. The cheerleader everybody wanted was waiting tables, but was also engaged to one who had recently passed the BAR. Three from the glee club were starting a business and the girl voted most likely to succeed was the star of a Dartmouth advertisement. They showed up everywhere, smiling on.

I wondered how many of them were smiling now.

I stepped into an office. There were desks and overturned chairs, a solitary window with a cracked pane, dust rising in the cloud-veiled sunlight.

On the garbage-ridden floor I spotted a navy-blue cap and tassel; it lay untarnished under the floating dust.

I set my rifle on one of the desks, next to a picture of some family. I took a knee, took the cap into my hands, holding it delicately. I studied it.

Graduations were always a funny thing to me— all that gravitas the old world put on them: the music, the speeches, the incessant implications.

I put the cap on my head and set the tassel to the right side of my face. My head fell slowly and I closed my eyes.

I didn’t realize how powerful the silence was in that dusty room until I slid my rifle from the desk, knocking over the picture frame. The shatter of its glass rang in my ears.

I stepped back out into the hall, saw a water fountain and tried to drink from it.

After all this time, I could still catch sight of a fountain or sink and expect there to be water, even so far as to reach for the handle before remembering.

I listened to the echo of my footsteps among the dirty walls; through my high school years, I never realized the resonance these hallways had. Puddles on the floor reflected ceiling lights which hadn’t shone in over two years.

The cafeteria was emptied of food and the vending machines were long-since busted and cleared, but there was only one instance of violence. From what I could gather from the state of the body, a woman was chased here a long time ago; whoever was after her had found her, bested her, and took nothing but her life. A note was clutched in her hand, close to her face. I thought about going back for it as I passed her by, but I didn’t.

I passed a trophy shelf with wide spaces in between the plastic statues.

“3rd Place County Champions!” the dusty mural ran.

Further down the hall, framed in wood and covered in glass like the Declaration of Independence, was the list of “I wills.” Teachers had pressed this chivalrous list on our district from kindergarten through high school...

I will be virtuous.

I will understand what is mine and what is not.

I will keep my hands to myself.

I will think before I speak.

I will speak when I see bullying.

I will remember that I have the power to serve those who are not as lucky as I.

And so on...

Though the sheet of glass was obscured with dust, I could almost make out my reflection.

I looked up. A leak from the ceiling was pattering against my shoulder.

It had rained the other day, for a few days actually; nonstop, but not hard. That’s how rainstorms seemed to function since the Turn: never intense, but always long. Not a bolt of lightning seen, not a crack of thunder heard.

My ears twitched as I was looking down over the chivalrous list. There was something behind me, but not when I turned to look. I don’t even remember what it sounded like; I’d forgotten as soon as I turned my head. It could have been nerves, but I didn’t feel nervous.

Disturbances came in different forms when I came to places like this. Echoes of the past, if not traces of the Turn itself.

As I said before, I hadn’t seen what happened that day. And to this day, I didn’t fully know.

After every moment I let slip past me in my old life, not only had I missed out on the end of the world, but I never even saw it coming. When everyone else huddled, terrified, knowing something was coming but not what— and on the final night, when the anxiety held the whole world in a final breath of absolute silence— I wasn’t among them. And when the nightmare came the following day, I never felt a thing; I only knew the world was gone when the power went out.

But I feel it now; not so badly as to halt my step, but in these faint disturbances that dwelled in ruined memories, I could feel the Turn coming back for what it missed.

I walked out of that school, founded on the hill we scorned as children, and looked out over the town it used to serve. The pale gray ruin matched the clouds above, and it was as quiet out there as it was in the school behind me.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

How wrong is it that I took all this as affirmation to my apathetic life?