DEATH AND TAXES
The world is ending and not one person fucking cares. The sky is as if it’s night all the time, like the sun is just gone. The moon too, but the moon was only visible because of the sun’s light to begin with so what that means for the end times is unclear. Maybe the sun is taking a break. At least someone got their PTO approved.
The scientists investigating this, NASA or something I guess, say the sun’s not really gone per se, we wouldn’t be alive if that were the case. Why it’s emitting heat and not light, who knows? Not them which means certainly not me. The oceans are doing fine so presumably the moon is also fine. I don’t personally care for the distinction between the sun being invisible and it being gone when in any case it’s night all the time now. A constant moonless night. But the heat could also stop at any time, the tides could stop at any time, both of which would be cataclysmic (I don’t know what the tides stopping would really do but I’m sure it wouldn’t be good). In short, at the flip of a switch all life on earth could end. And there’s a pretty good chance it will, according to all the scientific and religious experts.
Some would argue the sun is pretty important to humans, that the celestial body making life possible is important on a practical level as well as having pretty universal cultural significance and hell, personal significance to a lot of people. Some would include me, and I in fact did argue this to my boss. He wasn’t moved.
“You work graveyard, you should be used to nighttime.”
“Nighttime isn’t the issue I’m having, why are we distinguishing nighttime from daytime anyway? It’s dark, plants are dying and the birds aren’t singing. I don’t want to be flipping burgers, I want to be with my family.”
“You only work eight hours a day and your family sleeps through most of them anyway, right? Are your kids up by eight thirty?”
“I don’t have kids, you’re thinking of Jess again.”
I could see the look flash across his face. The ‘that’s right, kids are a sore spot with you’ look. It was a look that didn’t signal much sympathy, just annoyance. “So what family do you mean? Just your husband?”
“My husband, my parents, my siblings, sibling’s kids, I don’t know, whoever’s important.”
He gave me a look and shrugged. “Quit if you want, but you should know we’ve had three people quit already and you’ll be screwing us over if you do too. We can barely stay open as is, the overtime will be insane and who’ll get yelled at for that? Me. Like it’s my fault some people don’t have bills they have to think about before leaving a job.”
“Of course I have bills, but I also have a fa- a husband to think about.”
“The bills aren’t going to stop, Maggy. Only two things in life are certain, right? You’ve heard that phrase?”
Perhaps in my quest to achieve freedom and maybe enlightenment or self actualization or something before the end of everything I’d forgotten about corporate and government greed. Probably objectively shutting the entire economy down would be bad, but making people pay for things at a time like this? Paying bills, paying for food, for basic necessities? Maybe I’d thought the value of human life would supersede that bit of tabletop wisdom.
My boss took that pause as an opportunity to fully sway me. “Look, finish your shift today and I’ll see about getting you less hours, okay? That’s the best I can do under the circumstances, with three people gone corporate would have my head for approving any PTO.”
“Yeah, that’s fine.” It wasn’t, but I should talk to my husband before making a decision like that. Maybe if I was lucky he’d already quit his job and would think I was stupid for staying at mine. We could travel the world like we’d always wanted to, or something adjacent to that.
I went back to my station, sulking just a bit. The store was dead and I thought we might be better off closed down, surely the overhead costs alone weren’t worth being open when the likelihood of anyone coming for some better than average fast food was close to zero. I said as much to Jess, who shrugged and carried on making fries.
“The whole thing is stupid. It’s eight o’clock and it’s dark outside and not one soul gives a damn besides me.”
“Everyone gives a damn, but the world hasn’t stopped spinning.” She tossed some salt into the fries.
“Yet. Anything could happen at this point, yeah? My niece is going to college now, she said she wants to make something of herself before the world ends. I was thinking, ‘that opportunity’s come and gone don’t you think?’ but of course I didn’t say that. She’s just a kid, and she’s coping.”
“My kids are too young to cope by themselves. I guess some pastor’s kid told them God’s angry with us and we’re all gonna burn in hell, now they’re scared out of their minds and I’ve got to tell them everything’s okay. Told them in a lot of places the sun going away is totally normal and it should be considered normal everywhere else too, nothing to panic about. It’s just out of sight, not gone.”
“Why are we open?” I say, deciding against arguing that nothing’s okay and the distinction between out of sight and gone doesn’t particularly matter in terms of end times. “Shouldn’t essential businesses be the only ones open?”
“I think this is considered an essential business, so truckers can eat or something like that.”
“Why are truckers trucking? Out of everyone they should get some time with their families, right?”
“Truckers are how we get product from one place to another, we wouldn’t be open without them. Nowhere would, including whatever you think essential businesses are.”
“I guess. Why should anything be open? I would think an essential business would be like a grocery store, or a gas station, but whoever works there probably wishes they didn’t have to work either.”
“Everyone wishes they didn’t have to work, that’s human nature.”
“Well yeah, but you know what I mean.”
“How would we get food with the grocery stores closed?”
“I don’t know, does it matter? We’re all going to die, you know, I’d thought we’d all be a little more alarmed.”
Jess threw the fries away. “It’s ten minutes until you’re off, why don’t you just go home? No one’s forcing you to stay.”
So I went. The streets were empty, a dense fog had settled over the face of the earth which made it dangerous to drive if you didn’t have to. I usually got off work right after the rush anyway, children were all at school and most adults were at work. All the public schools were still open, a very controversial move by local governments but I guess even in a doomsday scenario no child should be left behind. School funding is based partially on attendance which is probably why they’re still open, some board of directors just hoping for the best. I’d never let my kid go to school at a time like this, that was why I’d started graveyard in the first place. Not this exact scenario per se, optimistically I’d been hoping the end of the world would happen well after I died, but so there would always be a parent with them in case they needed anything at all.
I walk into my house and sit on the bed next to where my husband is sleeping. I work from midnight to eight thirty, he works from noon to nine, so when sleep schedules are factored in we get precious little time together. Sacrificing hours of time that could be spent together to work very different shifts had made a lot of sense when we were hoping for a baby, but caused me a lot of regret and heartache in recent weeks. Everyone wishes they’d spend more time with family on their deathbed.
“Baby.” I shake his shoulder to wake him up. Usually I’d let him sleep until his alarm wakes up, and if anything he normally wakes up before his alarm, but today I desperately needed him to comfort me and assure me I wasn’t crazy.
He turns over and burrows his face into my thigh. I mess with his hair and smile. “Baby, call out of work today.”
“Yes ma’am.” He sits up and fumbles for his phone.
“I think that’s the least effort it’s ever taken to get you to do that.” He shrugs and calls his boss. It occurs to me he may be having the same conversation about the current value of money versus time I’d been having myself. That everyone’s been having. I lean against him and close my eyes. “We’re all going to die.”
“Yeah.” He strokes my cheek. “Looks like it.”
“Doesn’t that scare you?”
He looks at me with those soft brown eyes with a morbid certainty I’ve been seeing in my own reflection lately. Maybe my reflection in his eyes is what put it there. “We were all going to die anyway. I’ve been thinking about it like that these days. Disaster could’ve struck at any time, and even if it didn’t we’d die of natural causes at some point. The world was always ending, we were always dying, Revelation was always the last book. It is, and was, and is.”
“The fertility treatments, tracking my cycle, all the pregnancy tests in the medicine cabinet and the trash, it can’t be all for nothing.” I’m pleading with him as if he’s God, as if his agreeing would save us and let us go on trying. He just bites his lip and holds my hand more tightly in his.
“It’s less upsetting when I think it was always going to be this way.” He says after a few moments. “It was always going to be this way, but I mean when you really think about how this has always been coming. That was all for nothing, and if we’d known we wouldn’t have even tried.”
I tear up at that. By some twisted, fucked up, perfectly sensible if not entirely sane logic he was right. The apocalypse was always nigh, death was always upon us. We couldn’t have just acted like the world was always ending and thrown all responsibilities to the wind, but why not? Why shouldn’t we have? I could do my taxes and also die tomorrow, and then what were the taxes for? Only two things in life are certain and I was living as if I only had taxes to think about.
I get up and go to the bathroom. I open the medicine cabinet just to stare at it. Those pregnancy tests weren’t worth anything now, just dreams of a life now dead in the water. I rip a box open and throw the two tests in the trash. I do this to all the boxes, all the attempts we were going to make at that dream life. I shriek in agony and throw a box at the wall. Then I pick it up and take out just one test. I sit on the toilet and cry, shaking, holding this worthless piece of garbage that meant everything to me once. I take my pants off and shove the test under me, peeing on the test like the results matter and everything is normal. I’m going to work tomorrow, my husband is going to work tomorrow, we’re all going to work every day from now until we die, and maybe something can mean something in the meantime.
I ignore the test and look in the mirror. Morbid certainty, death and taxes.
Hope Nitta, 20, Spokane, WA - USA ✯ IG: @cringewright ✯ hopenitta@outlook.com
“My name is Hope, I’m a 20 year old writer from Spokane, Washington. This story is inspired partially by my region’s response to the covid crisis and partially by my hatred for corporate America. Quite upsettingly, I’m going to work tomorrow.”