Breakthrough

It sure was jittery, last night.

Nighttime can be a blur sometimes. We hit all the nodes, as well as the notes. Even our discordance felt ordained. Neon. Met with the right groups and at all the right times, but we overindulged. Okay, I overindulged. The pulsation of an intoxicated evening stretched into a long night, like a quasar, something cosmic, like the history of the slowest supernova, a sedate twin galactic waltz: more absorption and sluggish radiance than cataclysm.

Once upon a time, there was an abundance of time.

Now I wake with a dull head and it's a grey morning and I hear no birdsong or much of anything else.

Coffee. Two scorched hilltop scoops of ground arabica beans and a stainless kettle and a french press stolen from a former girlfriend. Organic cane sugar. One percent milk. No food. Just caffeine and a sweet verve.

Without warning or explanation, my mind goes straight to breasts, full and curved, perfect hard nipples at attention. 

Salivate, drink the last of the coffee, dream of women, step into the street.

Where is everything? I hear nothing. See no traffic, no passers. 

A thin yellow disc attempts to nudge its way through claggy cloud, a weak tongue fighting gummy saliva in the mouth of the dying.

Betrayal, I think. My world has betrayed me. Our world has betrayed us. This wasn't supposed to happen. We expect to awake to commuter sounds and morning radio, earworm ditties and ambiguously cheery local stories about homeless people who selflessly aid those who might once have condemned them, upend the narrative; weather updates on downed branches from last night's windstorms, power outages and traffic tales, how a set of lights are down at Marine and Boundary, how there's a stall on the Lion's Gate, and how a visiting dignitary from India is closing down large sections of Surrey, which we're advised to avoid.

Panic. Intoxication. Are there still bluebells? Wherefore schools of dolphin, sleek musculatures undulating through waves? Icebergs calving? LED-lit whores in Amsterdam, dark triangles glistening behind windows? Grief and drama? The Falls and the Shankill? Quickies in department store change rooms? The best jokes ever told by the funniest women? A different woman making soup? A shallow urban stream? Midnight mass with your drunk non-Catholic friends? Premature birth? Courage in the face of bigotry? Ativan or Xanax? The exhaustion following an assault? Your precious story of violation? Where is your limit? What momentous dreams did you abandon?

I stand on the street. Where buses would hiss and whine. Where cabs would whisk and disgorge. Where pedestrians would play a jaywalk dance with the inside lane, with the righteous right-turners, where bicycles would joust with trucks, middle fingers ready like tiny lances, the morning choreography guided and shaped by something invisible, something never seen, barely even acknowledged. Until it books out. Until it absconds.

Silent. Empty.

I take out my phone and call Sophie, the last person I remember from the night before.

Amazingly, she answers.

"Kurt?"

"Yeah."

"Where you at?"

"Home."

"I'm glad you called."

"Why?"

"Not sure. A friendly voice?"

"What makes you think I'm friendly?"

"Fuck off."

"Ha."

"Kurt?"

"What?"

"You hear anything?"

I consider confounding, befuddling, but go with honesty: "Nah. Nada."

"Fucking creepy, huh?"

"Yeah. Yes, it is."

"Can you come here, brother?"

"Sure. I'll hike it. Stay put. Give me an hour."

"Okay."

I think she's hung up, but she adds:

"Kurt? Hurry, okay?"

"Yeah."

When I get to her place she's gone. But I shouldn't be surprised: everyone's gone. I don't know what to do or where to go next. So I go sit in the street.

I imagine a distant sound, like music by Brian Eno: electronic, ambient; swelling and droning. Perhaps I even hear it, but I doubt that. Real or not, it seems to come from the far limits of the sky, where indigo meets ink-black, right at the edge of the world's rind. Right where the frigid and terrifying universe begins.

I lower my gaze to the smudge-grey asphalt and wish for ants, spiders, worms, weeds, anything. But none appear.

I haven't heard a single siren in hours.

Sophie's phone goes to voice mail.

The sun never even breaks through.