A Short Story

Adam Sandler makes coffee in the bathroom sink by stretching a pair of women’s underwear across the sink mouth. The steady plink of brown water into a red solo cup pounds between my ears.

“Fuck off Adam Sandler,” I mumble. I look down, watching my skin knit itself back across open tissue and bone. The process used to fascinate me. Now I pick at the edges with a black nail aimlessly.

I shift in the bathtub and ice clatters over the sides to the cracked tile floor. Adam Sandler ignores me and takes a gulp of coffee before shuffling to the next room. His tattered, overlarge shirt reveals deep, charred burns across his shoulders. Bits of his spine poke out and catch the early morning sun.

“Damn that woman,” I mutter, staring at my pinky finger as it slowly reforms, “Adam Sandler, come get in the tub so your back can heal.”

He ignores me and sits on the couch, switching on the television and pouring Captain Crunch into a Frisbee. My stomach growls.

In dramatic effort, I heave up out of the ice and stand in front of the mirror, looking at my naked body in the toothpaste-flecked mirror.

“Well, so much for the left tit,” I poke at the right one and it swings mournfully. What remains of my torso is ragged, scarred, and bloated. I peer closely and watch gray hair begin to sprout between my legs. The aging process marches onward but still I refuse to die. We all do.

As if on cue, a small tremor rocks the house, accompanied by delighted, feminine laughter. Adam Sandler freezes and stares at me with unabated fear, a spoon of cereal halfway to his mouth. I throw on a t-shirt and gym shorts before running to the window. Modesty is habit.

The second story apartment looks down on an inner courtyard, though the opposite side of the building resembles a ragged mountain range of brick and concrete. Rebar twists towards the blue sky with the long, black fingers of a trapped, anorexic giant. A mid-sized station wagon, with a car jack replacing its front right tire, leans lazily on the courtyard’s hardened earth. The hatch back swings up to reveal a dirty mattress and two strawberry blonde girls with Slim Jims in hand. They trot over to the edge of a wide crater, where the bright updo of Jan Cartwright bobs about a small uranium centrifuge.

“Jan!” I shout down at her, “Can’t this wait until lunch?”

She barely glances my direction as taps a perfectly manicured nail against her lower lip in thought, “Not now, dear, I have to make it to my PTA meeting.”

I sigh and look back at Adam Sandler, who has resumed watching The Flintstones intently. His nose is almost back to normal, recovering flesh pushing out flecks of gravel and metal that scatter across the coffee table. He chews on undeterred.

It is our last box of Captain Crunch. I don’t particularly need food to endure anymore and neither does Adam Sandler, but he gets difficult when we run out of Captain Crunch in particular. I slide into ratty sneakers, shoulder a trusty 12 gage, and grab a pitchfork from the umbrella stand.

“I’ll be back, Adam Sandler.” He disregards my absence just as he disregards my presence.

My steps echo in the empty stairwell and I emerge into the harsh sunlight of a world without an ozone layer. The UV rays have already started to turn Jan’s children red but they nibble Slim Jims disinterestedly and watch her work. When I approach, their bright eyes snap around and they bare broken teeth.

“Jan, your demons are threatening me,” I shout down into the crater. She turns, squinting her piercing green eyes and resting freckled hands on a delicate waist.

Jan Cartwright belongs in freeze frame with Jackie Kennedy, her auburn hair perfectly coiffed around an oval face, a perfect smattering of freckles across her delicate nose, big pearls on her ears and at her perfect throat, a pastel green blouse loosely tucked into white, high-waist jeans. I can see her diamond wedding ring from here, catching and throwing the devil sun around the crater. If not for the muscle slowly rebuilding around a limp, dangling right humerus, I would consider her unscathed, at least on the surface.

Meanwhile her children circle me cautiously. I poke at them with my pitchfork. They bite often.

“I’m going looking for stuff,” I say, “Do you need anything?”

“Fluorine,” she turns back to her small reactor and begins to tinker with something, something, science.

“I’ll try,” I turn and exit the ruined courtyard to an equally-ruined street. It’s your standard post-apocalyptic day. Small fires burn across the landscape, ruined buildings slump into one another, and a pack of wild dogs pull apart an unidentifiable carcass.

You’ve watched scenes like this before in movies like Resident Evil. You’ve read more vivid and darker descriptions in books like The Road. Just picture that.

The sun continues to bear down relentlessly. My skin prickles as it continually burns and heals itself. All of my key body parts are back, including my left tit, which is a nice surprise.

A K-Mart looms on the horizon. I whistle as I stroll into the parking lot and grab a cart. I stop to appreciate the mural of graffiti penises that cover the cheap red brick walls. I hear the collective click of five revolver hammers behind my head.

“You lost?”

I slowly raise my hands and turn. Five men – or women, I can’t tell under all the protective clothing – stand there, weapons raised.

“That’s nice, you all have matching guns,” I remark.

They seem confused.

“Are you human?” the leader asks, dragging words across the pavement.

“Ah, yes,” I look down at my decidedly unattractive figure, ribs still visible through holes in my shirt, “This must be a weird look but I assure you I am alive. Sort of. It’s hard to explain. I just recommend that you don’t attempt to kill me and instead direct me to the nearest cereal aisle.”

Predictably, they growl and bristle. I shrug and decide to return to shopping. As I do, two bullets whistle through my body. One proceeds outbound and smashes into a display of cheap K-Mart jewelry. The second puts a perfect hole in the forehead of a Dale Earnhardt cardboard cutout.

“You know it’s pretty remarkable that this place hasn’t been looted to the extent of so many others,” I tell my new friends, “But I guess you guys are determined to change that.”

Predictably, the leader comes charging up with some sort of cliché barbed-wire baseball bat and takes a swing. He misses and screams in rage. I hoist the 12 gage to my hip and return the attempted favor. Once. Twice. No need for him to suffer.

I turn again to the remaining assailants, irritated now, “Look. I obviously don’t like doing this but if you keep pestering me, I have to shoot you and it’s a waste.”

“What are you?” the new leader asks, more cautious than the first.

“To keep it simple, there’s this crazy nuclear physicist soccer mom named Jan in my apartment complex who keeps trying to build a reactor but she keeps fucking up and detonating them and I’m not sure why but somehow the five of us just don’t die.”

“Five?”

“Me, Jan, her two demon spawn, and Adam Sandler.”

“Adam Sandler? Like The Ridiculous 6 Adam Sandler?”

“Not the movie I would’ve referenced but sure, yeah.

“Weird.”

“Yeah.”

The new leader moves forward and pulls down their protective face shield to reveal that she is in fact a woman, with dark skin and eyes. She instantly reminds me of a person I once loved and I can’t help but feel sad. The apocalypse is a lonely place.

“Can we come with you?”

“What?” I pretend the question surprises me, “No, why the fuck would you want to? If safety is something you seek then I can tell you this is not the place. If immortality is something you seek then I can tell you this is not the way.”

“We seek neither,” another steps into the shade and pulls his mask down to reveal a young face. He must be no more than fifteen or sixteen, “Only a one-way ticket out of this bullshit.”

I nod slowly and look out through the big sliding doors, to the hazy sun, sinking past its zenith towards a broken horizon, “Alright let’s get some beers and go. You want to be drunk for this.”

I find a box of Captain Crunch in the next aisle over. I load a 20-lb sack of dog food into the cart for Jan’s kids. I’m not being cruel. They genuinely love dog food.

Two aisles down, I find the beer.

“Corona or Guinness?” I ask the leader. I figure they ought to be the ones to pick.

“Corona.” The others nod. I add it to the cart and head for the door.

A bullet rips through the back of my neck and out the front.

I grab my hanging larynx and tattered esophagus as I turn. The organs immediately begin to mend in my hand but all I can do is glare furiously until my voice is restored.

“What the fuck?!”

The leader looks embarrassed and lowers her revolver, “I’m sorry. I . . . I thought maybe . . .”

“I was lying? If you want to die, I don’t mind but it’ll hurt way more.”

“Ok, ok. No, just take us to your apartment complex. Please.”

“Fine.”

I walk ahead because I’m still pissed off and curious to see whether they’ll shoot me again. As usual, the dog food draws a crowd of vicious strays. My new friends mutter anxiously among themselves but the dogs aren’t idiots. They smell whatever I am and it terrifies them. I’ve woken up in the middle of the street before, thrown blocks by Jan’s failed experiments, and found a perfect ring of rats and vultures around me, drawn by the smell but reluctant to come any closer.

We take a left from Old 91 onto Sardis Road and soon my building comes into view. A loud racket emanates from inside as Jan approaches the end of her daily Sisyphean journey. I hear the whir of the centrifuge and a fearful yelp from Adam Sandler. I drop the dog food next to the station wagon and the bag bursts, sending hard knobs of kibble rolling through the dust. Jan’s children appear and begin eating by the handful, growling at me for good measure. They are almost fully healed from yesterday, soft curls of hair giving them the appearance of feral cherubs. I offer them a beer but they look at me with disgust.

“Fair enough, Corona is pretty terrible.”

Down in the crater, Jan pays no mind to any of us, happily humming as she pulls out a schematic with SECRET written in bold red at the top. I’ve stopped asking how she finds this shit. I take a seat on the edge of the pit and crack open a warm beer, letting my feet swing back and forth. The leader of the group comes over and sits next to me. I look up to see Adam Sandler’s eyes just above the windowsill. He’s not big on company.

“Will it hurt?” she pulls off her mask, no longer afraid of the dying sun. She pretends to be causal but her hand shakes slightly as she puts a beer to her lips.

“It always does but it should be fast.”

We are silent for a time but for the occasional cackle of Jan as she works.

“We are not the first to ask this of you.” A statement, not a question.

“No,” I admit, “I find people every other week trying to escape. This is the best anyone can give them.”

Her eyes, softer now in the twilight, focus on Jan’s bent shape, “Does she actually know what she’s doing?”

“Oh absolutely. She just doesn’t know how to stop.”

The woman nods slowly, “And what about you?”

“I’ve tried to stop a thousand times. But I keep waking up in the same damn apartment with the same damn tit blown off, listening to Adam Sandler watch the same damn cartoons.”

I watch her swallow ten different questions and I chuckle. It’s no use asking anymore.

“It’s working!” Jan shouts up excitedly as pale steam billows around her frame. The boilers shudder and churn. The whole reactor lurches to life. “Kids, hook up the jumper cables!”

Of the many words spoken to the evil Olsen twins every day, this is the only phrase they ever understand. They quickly run to the car and pop the hood. Jan tosses up two cables and they attach them to the car battery.

“Try the keys!” Jan looks at me earnestly, her perfect cheeks red and sweat glistening her brow.

I nod and get to my feet. Inside the station wagon, a dusty old key rests on the driver’s seat. I pick it up, tracing the manufactured ridges and lines thoughtfully. Cheap, cracked plastic embossed with the VW emblem. I slowly insert the male end into the starter, dirty metal grating on dirty metal.

Sensing something, the two of the four guests huddle together. The third takes off out the courtyard and down the street, his animalistic instincts persuading him to endure. The fourth, the woman, slowly stands and maintains eye contact with me.

I wink at her and turn the keys.