Custody

Of course everyone else had the common decency to go quietly.

I was the only person around. I'm not sure how it happened. I just woke up one day and saw that everyone else was gone. I walked across the emptied streets of what used to be this busy city. I always got some satisfaction from being able to find solitude in the centre of it. It used to make me feel special. Well, I suppose it still does, in a way.

That morning I went for a walk by the river. It was the silence that first struck me as odd as I moved closer to the city centre. I walked upstairs onto the street and noticed it was filled with motionless cars, most of them idling. It sounded as if they were all waiting for something.

I opened the nearest car. There were no traces of human beings inside. 

I wanted to shout, but found it almost impossible. Raising my voice felt embarrassing. 

"Hello? Anyone?"

My voice was shaky. I suddenly felt that if someone were to hear me I would have made a terrible first impression. I felt an overwhelming sense of numbness. I tried to call my friends and family but a part of me already knew the result. I was not given even the slightest chance to place my faith in something.

I went to a nearby convenience store I had never visited before. It used to always be packed with tourists. I grabbed a can of soda and scanned it at the self-checkout booth out of pure habit. I didn't actually pay for it, but I left the item on the purchase screen as I left the store.

I walked down the middle of the road, sipping my drink. I still shouted once in a while, each try less enthusiastic than the last. I think for a moment there I felt a sense of relief. It was like coming to terms with death, very slowly, in a very roundabout way. For all intents and purposes I was dead no matter what had happened. Either they were gone or I was. It did not matter. I was the woman who inherited the world.

Eventually, the cars ran out of fuel and stopped idling one by one. Farewell to them.

For the first few weeks or so I would still come back to my apartment for the night. The new world filled me with dread during those dark hours. Finally I began to enter other people's houses to find one I would feel most comfortable in. It still felt like a guilty intrusion. Doing this meant admitting to myself yet another layer of solitude.

Is is strange that I stayed in my city? There were beautiful places I could have visited, but it would require preparation, getting a decent car, stocking it up with supplies. Maybe it was just my own laziness but I preferred to regularly go to a store and get a few cans of tuna or whatever. I enjoyed the routine and I wasn't going to run out of food any time soon.

Most of my time during that initial period I spent driving around various neighborhoods playing loud music out of my car. I figured if anyone was out there they would have heard me by now. I wondered if there could be someone out there just hiding, avoiding contact. I didn't think it possible. After a while I stopped driving around. It seemed desperate and it just made me feel worse.

The animals were gone as well. In a way, this realisation affected me even harder. I was denied not only my mere humanity. My entire pass to the animal kingdom had been revoked.

I was curious about coral reefs. My gut flora. I wanted to know where the line was drawn, if there was one.

There were stretches of time when I would not say a word out loud. When I opened my mouth my voice would be hoarse and weak. The prospect of losing even this part of my being made me scared. I promised myself to start vocalizing my thoughts, anything that comes to mind, just to sustain the routine.

"Beautiful day," I would say. "I wish you guys could see it, the sunrays bouncing off the river. Where are you? Mom?"

There is a language phenomenon where if you repeat a word many times you begin to lose any understanding of its meaning. You begin to see that it's really just a cluster of sounds. I felt this happening to me in an irreversible way. 

"Mom?"

Without a conversation with another human being I couldn't make sure what a dog was or what a door was or what a hope was. The mapping of the concepts was all off. I began to read more books and watch movies in an attempt to stop this from happening.

My mom was a good person.

I started to feel like this world was pushing me out. Like it must have omitted me by accident and now it was waiting for me to politely show myself out. Of course everyone else had the common decency to go quietly.

I have contemplated suicide, of course. There had been such times in my life before but this was different. It would have been done out of some warped sense of necessity and I just know it wouldn't have worked. I wouldn't go to the same place they went. My attempt to join them would be nothing but superficial, an empty gesture. In my own perverse way I appreciated being left here with my mind functioning the same as before, more or less. Thinking about afterlife, I've always thought eternal bliss and eternal suffering would start feeling the same after a while with any possible frame of reference sanded down by sheer time. So I enjoyed being in this one particular place at that one moment, still, despite everything. 

I'm sorry if I don't seem too impacted by all of this. I've felt emotionally stunted for a while now. It takes me a good while to understand anything, and I'm still not sure if I've processed what happened at all. I thought writing about it would help. I'm not entirely sure why I'm using English here either. I suppose it’s always helped me distance myself from the actual cores of my feelings. Also I hope this way if anyone ever finds this journal they will be able to read it more easily.

---

The quiet began to get to me. I desperately needed to occupy myself with something. One night I went to my favorite local theatre and watched a movie I had been meaning to see. It was about love. The world portrayed in the film was even more distant than I had remembered.

I must have fallen asleep in there with tears dried on my face. It was already dark when I awoke. I felt a sudden need to get out of there. You can't stay in the theatre too long after the movie's over. You have to get up and move on.

I was walking back to my new apartment in the middle of the night when I suddenly heard the roar of a car engine. It came from far away. I couldn't quite tell the direction. 

'Hey!' I screamed. 'Ey!' I repeated over and over, each time a bit quicker, rougher, less resembling human speech. I fell quiet to listen again.

The engine sound was still there somewhere. I began to walk in what I thought was its direction. It was hard to tell, but after a while it got a bit louder. I ran and shouted. Finally, I turned a corner and saw the car idling in the middle of the street, lights on. I ran up to it, waving my arms. There was a woman inside.

For a moment after I approached the car she didn't react. Then she rolled down her window like I was a cop stopping her to write up a ticket. The whole scene seemed perversely funny to me.

"Hey." She looked up at me.

"Hey."

"Am I dreaming?"

"I don't think so."

"Emily."

"Ada."

We shook hands. She paused for a moment as if too embarrassed to ask the only question left there was any point in asking.

"Where is everyone?"

"I have no idea."

She got out of the car and we hugged and cried for a little bit.

---

We were sitting on the roof of her car, smoking.

"I just drove here. I'm not from the city but I visited it a few times since, you know."

"Where were you back then?"

"Camping trip with some friends. We all got too drunk. I woke up around noon with a headache and no one to split it with."

"Did you think they were pulling a prank on you?"

"Ha. I still do."

She flicked the cigarette butt into the distance. The flame lingered for a bit in the dark.

"You wanna know something stupid?"

I nodded.

"I lost my phone. I gave it to one of my friends for safekeeping the night before it happened."

"I'm sorry. It is nice to have it, still."

"Can I see it?"

"Sure. This is the last message I sent to my friend." I handed her the phone. She smiled reading it and then suddenly turned serious.

"Wait. The day it happened was June 18th, right?"

"It was the 17th. What?"

"I woke up with a hangover on the 18th."

"What?"

She was freaking out a bit.

"When I saw that there was no one else around, I shouted for a while. I would have called some cops except I didn't have my phone, like I said. So I got into my car. I drove around some more and went into a nearby town. This is when I noticed all the cars. I got into one of them and the display said June 18th."

"Are you sure?"

"I think so."

"You sounded so sure for a moment."

"Look, it's been a couple of months. I really believe it. Or I really want to believe it."

"What does that mean exactly? Assuming you're right."

"It means someone else could show up too."

---

In a month or so it started snowing. I had not expected just how good it would make me feel to see snow again. I took it for a genuine blessing. Water did not abandon us nor did the sun. The moon and the stars were still there.

"I'm scared," Emily told me one time. This was at her new place in the city.

"Scared of what?"

"I'm afraid that I wasn't a good person back there. Sometimes I was a piece of shit to people."

"I'm sorry. We all are, sometimes. I know it won't make you feel better to hear that."

"The last time I talked to my boyfriend we argued about something really insignificant. Washing the dishes or some shit."

"Well, I mean. It's actually pretty important."

"Ha."

"I actually enjoy washing the dishes now."

"Really?"

"I had this feeling in the old world too sometimes, the need to clean up after myself. I wanted to make sure I leave everything in order. I feel it here, too."

"Is it because you think someone might come and check?"

"The easy thing to say is that it's a part of my delusion. That I do it to entertain the idea that someone else could show up. Like it's a way to practice hope through my actions."

"Is that really it?"

"I just feel better in a world where dishes are washed rather than left lying around. A world in which dishes continue to be washed."

"Was I lucky to find you."

---

"Are there any places you'd like to visit?" She asked me once. The sound of this sentence threw me off. It was something I could have been asked by a friend during a casual meet. I was sure I had answered it at least once in my old life.

"I've always wanted to visit Tokyo. I think I used to love big cities in general. But I don't know how to sail or fly a plane. You?"

"Rio." She livened up for a moment. "It was mainly because of the people, though. I wanted to see the carnival."

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay. We could learn to operate a boat, you know."

"It's okay."

We sat for a moment.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Sure," I said.

"Are you trans?"

"Yeah."

"I'm sorry. I was just curious."

"It's all good. I haven't really given it much thought lately. I take my hormones and I go about my day. I have a decent stash."

"That's chill."

"It's not a big part of my identity right now. Maybe being here changed things as well. I mainly just see myself as human I guess."

"That sounds pretty good all things considered."

We talked about work and university. I recalled an embarrassing moment when I started an email to a professor with the Polish equivalent of 'Welcome.' It's an acceptable greeting but only when you are the host inviting the other person into your home. I'm not really sure how it works in English.

She nudged me.

"If anyone else shows up, do you want to pull a prank on them?"

"What?"

"We could get naked and pretend we don't know any language. Freak them out."

"That is a great idea. We’ll do that."

---

One time we threw a party in the main square. I made a small fire and Emily played some club music over her car speakers and we drank a ton. I jumped into a fountain. We fell asleep on a bench. If someone were nearby that night all they would hear was a faint beat and all they would see was a small flicker of light surrounded by all the dark. The night encroached on the small bit of territory we carved out for ourselves. We had to fight against it.

There was a week or two where I didn't see much of Emily at all. She had found a phone somewhere just in case we needed to talk. I was surprised to see they still worked. Anyway, I wanted to respect her privacy. My guess is that she drank a lot in that time. I used to do it myself but I was never too good at it and ended up falling asleep really fast.

When she returned she looked miserable. We hugged for a long time. This was the first time she seemed genuinely crushed.

"I'm sorry. I just can't get it out of my head."

"What?"

"The guilt. The thought that we're both being punished. Then I start to think about what if the fact that we're not here alone... what if that just makes it worse? What if I'm your punishment and you're mine? I still feel self-conscious, I feel awkward, attractive, confident, shy, good or bad. I only feel that because you're here. If you weren't here I could just be an animal."

"We could be animals."

"Too late. Best we can do is play at it."

"I'm sorry this is what I am to you. I wish I could be anything but that."

Her breath calmed down gradually.

"Please don't do anything stupid," I said.

"I don't want to do stupid. I want to take responsibility for all this. As we both should."

"What do you mean?"

"I know you've given up on this and I did the same for a bit, but I think I need to search for others again. I think it would be good for both of us."

"To do something fruitless?"

"Exactly."

I stared at her intensely. I truly wanted to believe what she seemed to believe. She began again.

"I want to make sure that anyone who comes here feels wanted. I want to guide them to us. Whether this world belongs to us or is against us, we have a duty.

"I can't force myself to believe that."

"Then do it for me."

We stared at the sunset.

---

"Are you sure this is how we should phrase it?"

"What's your idea?"

She added a line of text in between the others.

"Can we really say that?"

"I really think we should."

"I'm sorry."

"I need it to say that."

"Okay. I don't know. Okay."

This is where we are right now. Every day we head out with backpacks filled with sheets of paper. We try to enter every house and apartment building and leave one piece of paper in the doorway. We leave them in the streets as well. Sometimes I just tape one onto a wall because it makes me feel good to see it there.

On most days we stick together although once in a while each of us needs a day just for ourselves. At first it was mainly Emily but recently I found that I have a need for it too. We still fall into despair once in a while, one at a time. We just hug each other and keep talking and keep going.

We still have plenty of streets to go through, but once we've covered the city we're heading to another big one a few hours away. This is the kind of work that is never over.

Sometimes I still wonder if there is anyone who upon ending up here would prefer to never see us. They could have the whole place to themselves, I suppose. But I just don't think that kind of person exists.

The other day as I was leaving my place I think I heard a cat. I’m not sure. It was a high pitched noise, most probably the wind. But now I can't stop wondering about it. I wonder if they would keep their distance just like they used to. Maybe I will fall asleep in the park one day and wake up with a kitty on my lap. Wouldn't that be something.

Each one of the many, many, many pieces of paper has our phone numbers printed in bold letters. Below it the text says:

WELCOME!

YOU ARE NOT ALONE

THIS IS NOT HELL

give us a call to see whats next.