The Bell by Paige Powell

The bell tinkled, and maybe nobody heard it at first; but it tinkled again, and everyone did and pretended not to; and then it tinkled a third time and nobody could, with any credibility, pretend that the bell was not tinkling. The questions—why? For what? And for whom? —didn’t matter, now. People left their offices, their schools, without a word. The highways were jammed full of cars. Nobody looked at each other as they idled. Nobody listened to music.

Mr. H thought he saw a shadow of something as he exited the highway, a darkening in the dappled green of the hedges. He kept his eyes straight ahead; the blossoms of the Bradford Pears danced across the sidewalk like tiny ballerinas. He was thankful for that— a last gift of something pink and soft.

Mrs. X, hidden in the bathroom, called her husband, but all that came through the speaker was the tinkling of the bell. She straightened the figurines on the window ledge; she wanted to feel useful.

Mr. O turned on every single light in his home, flipping each switch with a delicacy reserved for his wife, when they were young, when she was alive, when he still wanted to do beautiful things with his thick and calloused hands.  From the outside, the house was a grinning jack o’ lantern, Mr. O only a shade moving within.

P and Q kissed for the first time, their faces slicked together with tears. When they pulled apart the sky was already turning green, and for a moment the bell sounded something like Christmas, and P only wished there was more time. They kissed again.

Z searched on his phone: who rings the bell? But by then it was too late. The error sign stared at him like a pitying eye.

Y took every book off the shelves. They had been organized, carefully, lovingly, into genres, by author’s last name. Why did Y do this? What, really, kept fiction separate from poetry, Dickinson from Poe? Nothing. They would all go up in flames.

Ms. A picked her son up from school, but the pick-up line was so long that she abandoned her car and found him waiting in front. “Come on,” she said, grabbing his hand. They walked for miles.  At home, she locked the doors. She grabbed the rifle from the coat closet. She had never told her son how proud she was of him. She told him now and she saw the flash of an eye outside the window. “I love you.” Thump. “I love you.” Thump. “I love you.”

Paige Powell received her MFA from Texas State University, where she now teaches writing courses. Her work is forthcoming in The Chattahoochee Review, The Los Angeles Review Online, Moon City Review, and Bourbon Penn. She lives in the Austin area.