The Morning

The first full day of house arrest was torture for elizabeth. By 11:35 am her leg started twitching. She itched to leave the coffin of an apartment. Since she woke up, at 4:30, she had been waiting for something, anything to happen. Of course nothing did happen – at least not on her radar. Plenty of things did happen.

mr. livral, forgetting, or neglecting, the fact that elizabeth was their only guest, made a breakfast buffet fit for the star hotel. He was not in the least bit offended when no one, not even himself, had much appetite that morning. He carefully rationed out all the leftovers into portions that would last them the next six meals.

sempere busied himself down in the bookstore searching through the magazine archive for stories about prior mass disasters. Whenever he found an article, he scanned it onto his tablet. After scouring the archives, he planned to create a collage, employing the lessons of the social contagions class he was taking. He would post the final product on his blog, which cataloged all the emergencies he had gone on as part of his paramedic training.

elizabeth paced sempere’s room that had been hurriedly tidied for her.

After rationing food for the week, mr. livral began scrounging together end-of-the-world disaster kits with combinatory plans for every possible arrangement of every possible situation. Once he had revised the plans three times he typed them up on the typewriter center-staged on the desk in his room.

sempere found that his blog as well as the rest of the internet was in a state of “temporary control” and no activity would occur until further notice. So his disaster collage would have to wait. Wait, that is, until after he researched internet hacking. After two hours or so back in the magazine archives (you are now probably wondering why he didn’t just find a book about computer hacking but the bookstore, as all bookstores in nilbmah, was more of a magazine store; nilbmahians had insatiable appetites for magazines past and present but liked books as much as raw garlic.) So after searching the archives, sempere found lots of interesting things about hacking but nothing that would quite help him with the current project. But, in his opinion, it was time well spent. He put his collage project on hold and then started creating a disaster playlist on his tablet.

elizabeth had almost managed to tolerate the muffled typewriter tapping, when sempere started playing the beginnings and endings of songs over and over again. Within 36 seconds, she lost it. She started pounding her head against the wall.

Before all this, she had read the letter from jacob but that did little at all to calm her nerves. Quite the opposite. All it said was:

I regret leaving you this way, but now you know.

Yours,

JM

OHMYGOODNESSGRACIOUSANDAWHOLEBUNCHOFCURSEWORDSTOO!!!!

Everything had to be so annoying. Bang. What was she supposed to make of that? His spider thin handwriting wasn’t rushed so how could he have known he would leave like that? What did she know? And yours? Bang. Oh my goodness, yours? It was so creepy. Bang. elizabeth couldn’t think about it anymore but she did. Over and over again. Bang. Bang. Bang. She couldn’t even distract herself by walking the city. She was trapped in an 800 square foot cage that smelled too heavily of earl grey. Bang. And the worst of it was she had the key to leave. But she would only save her sanity to lose the resistance. Catch 22. Bang. Bang. Bang! BANG!

When elizabeth finally looked up she saw mr. livral and sempere both hunched at the door whispering to each other. When they noticed she noticed them, they both muttered apologies and shuffled away. elizabeth didn’t say anything.

While this awkward moment forced perspective onto elizabeth’s outward appearance, her insides still bubbled. She came to dinner composed with a bit of make up to conceal the large red welt she now wore on her forehead. She swiftly apologized to the livral’s explaining that the whole experience was just too overwhelming for her frail composition. The livral’s in turn brushed her apology aside and told embellished stories of how they were coping with the ordeal. They all had a little more appetite than breakfast and no one seemed to mind that they were having leftover pancakes for dinner.

The next day was even worse. The livrals continued to make odd jobs for themselves while elizabeth plunged into mental entropy. She hadn’t sat around this long since she had the sertoba virus in the second grade. And even though she kept the nauseating current of thoughts and emotions bottled up, the frenzy shown in her eyes and the livrals walked on eggshells when they passed her door.

The third night elizabeth gave up trying to sleep. So unlike the rest of nilbmah, when pounding came from the door at 5 am, she sprang into action, before the livrals even woke up.

“Who is it?”

“Your presence is required in the square. Everyone must come at once.”

“Who is it?”

elizabeth's unworried persistence earned a pause before the next reply.

“You must come at once. Open the door.”

“I will only open the door if you tell me who’s there. You don’t have to make this difficult.”

Another pause.

“Everything will be explained at the square.”

“You didn’t answer the question.”

The response came louder and with unmasked edge this time, “I will not ask you again.”

“That’s great. Thank you. Have a nice day?”

Now shouting, “I will break down the door in 5 seconds if you don’t open it. 5. 4. 3.”

sempere, his father two steps behind him, both in only their bathrobes came running to the door before the soldier at the other side could finish counting.

sempere offered a string of apologies for elizabeth even after being told to be quiet, while mr. livral tried to tone down elizabeth.

The soldier repeated the original demand and asked if there was anyone else in the house.

Elizabeth remained firm. “We are not going with you until you tell us who you are.”

But sempere jumped in, “Of course we are going with you. Don’t listen to her. She’s very much shaken up by all the recent hullabaloo. Do forgive us.”

While mr. livral quietly cautioned “elizabeth, can’t you see his guns. You can’t do this. Aren’t you glad to get out? Don’t make a scene.”

mr. livral’s warnings seemed marginally effect and elizabeth gave into the soldier’s demands.

At the square they found half the neighborhood already gathered in their night cloths and the street lights still the only light. A stage had been set up at one side of the square. It took only five minutes for the rest of the neighborhood to gather. Everyone was dying to talk to their neighbors but too scared to let anything out. So they all stood shivering with cold and expectation.

When the crowd seemed to grow restless, a woman in an ornate military-meets-corporate uniform took to the stage with three other soldiers.

As you already know, this woman began to tell the nilbmahians the story of how they had been saved by the generous and timely intervention of her people. Just as in all the other squares and plazas across nilbmah, she painted a Foggistan that had come inches from usurping nilbmahian rule, a Foggistan that still loomed with its massive star fleet, a Foggistan that that they needed to be protected against.

By the end of the speech, elizabeth couldn’t stand it any longer. She knew she couldn’t draw any more attention to herself. She knew she couldn’t cause a scene. She knew the resistance depended on her complacency. But she just couldn’t put up with it. She took a deep breath to project her voice across the square when sempere thrust his hand over her mouth and pulled her into his chest, pinning her. elizabeth tried to wiggle free but sempere was stronger than he looked. To prepare for lifting bodies out of wreckage as an EMT, sempere had been lifting twice a day for a month. elizabeth wasn’t going anywhere.

Of course she struggled for the rest of the speech and all the way back to the apartment. mr. livral was quite surprised by his son’s behavior but he didn’t say anything.

Once back the apartment, mr. livral noticed elizabeth had a new look in her eyes and he didn’t dare seek his son’s. He noticed that sempere took her, no longer struggling, to his room and shut the door. Then mr. livral went to his room and started typing and stopped noticing things.

And that, unfortunately dear reader, is where I must leave it. elizabeth of course refuses to answer any questions about that morning and sempere, rest his soul, closed his story long before I started mine. So mr. livral offering is all we have. The rest of the morning has been lost to the clouds.