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In the Apocalypse by Liz Shulman


When the electrical pole fell in the alley, knocking out the power on our block, Tony and I knew there was nothing to do but sit on the porch and wait.  I poured us each a little whiskey over ice and we sat in teal plastic chairs and watched the men from ComEd install a new pole deep in the cement.  The lights from their truck guided them as they delicately transferred wires like surgery.  I lit a citronella candle.  “This is what it will be like in the apocalypse,” Tony said.  “Everywhere will be so dark.”  Breaking my rule of only smoking when I travel abroad, I lit a cigarette.  “In the apocalypse, that cigarette will be worth a hundred dollars,” Tony said.  When I was 21, home from college, living with my parents, I tried to hide I smoked.  If I could just make it to morning, I thought in bed in the dark, I’ll brush my teeth and they’ll never know.  I always worried, though, that something would happen in the middle of the night to expose me, like maybe if my father had a heart attack, I’d help my mother get him to the hospital, and, although I’d try to breathe through my nostrils, she’d still smell my stale cigarette breath.  Or I’d develop a blood clot and die and they’d find out I had been smoking.  Every night nothing happens to any of us, I’m relieved.  Downstairs, the neighbors were on their porch, too.  Five or six of them, a loud couple with their loud friends and loud kids like it was a party.  We preferred the quiet.  Without the noise of the neighbors, all we would have heard were the distant sounds of the men working on the pole.  Occasionally some crickets.  A couple sirens in the distance.  In a couple weeks the cicadas would arrive, screeching.  The neighbor who lives in the unit next to ours came out on the porch.  “Everyone is downstairs,” he said, carrying a bottle of rosè and a plastic container of cheese cubes.  A variety pack, I was sure.  Tony whispered, “This is how it will be in the beginning of the apocalypse.  At first, everyone will be nice to each other.”  We finished our whiskey.  I put the cigarette in the ashtray, blew out the candle.  It was midnight.  My parents hadn’t called with an emergency.  Everyone was alive another day.

 


Liz Shulman is a writer and teacher in Chicago.  Her writing has appeared in Another Chicago Magazine, Tablet Magazine, Columbia Poetry Review, Punctuate, Understanding and Dismantling Privilege, among others.



One response to “In the Apocalypse by Liz Shulman”

  1. Clare georgantas says:
    September 19, 2020 at 11:59 am

    Beautiful writing!!!

    Reply

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