Waking Dead

I awake to the sound of my grandfather's old AM radio. The one he listened to Red Sox games on when I was a kid. Funny thing is, that radio has been gone for years; gone since before he died on the dock. It fell off his lobster boat and met a crackling demise at the bottom of the oily harbor. Its last breath as laborious as his, both to never be revived. It was never retrieved. Here now, somehow, in my room 1100 miles away, it sounds like a continuous scratch on a record: "End of days. End of days. End of days." It continues.

I fumble for my glasses on the nightstand. The ones with the cracked frames that will not last me a week. The right lens keeps popping out. I have been meaning to go to Costco and get them replaced, but money is tight and I push it off like an unwanted chore to the bottom of my list. I can see well enough to get by.

Glasses on cockeyed and wavering on the tip of my nose, I sit up and scan the room dizzily for sign of that forgotten radio. How can it be here? Am I dreaming still? I pinch my arm, an all too real feeling, and scan the room again. Not an antenna in sight, but the words keep broadcasting as if piped in from the universe. "End of days. End of days."

A flash behind my eyes takes me back somewhere between consciousness and dreaming - who was that child? What was she trying to tell me in the early hours of dawn as the sun was not quite up to rising. Her eyes were wide and black as peppercorns; empty and haunting with her misplaced smile. But, in a second flash the memory is gone and I sit bolt upright in despair. End of days.

It is true. I know it in my core. End of days. We are finished.

I try to shake it off. Nonsense. Anxiety. Too much wine last night, binge watching Netflix and grinding on things beyond my control. Stress caused by political turmoil and a disintegrating society. Web propaganda. Too much surfing and friending - reading ads as they flash by in pop-ups, making me question the very essence of my own being. A global warming of despair holds me. This is real.

"End of days. End of days..." Where is that damn radio?

I stumble out of bed, my too long pyjama bottoms, shredded, catching on my toe nail, tripping me, I stumble. I catch myself and spin around, thinking I might spot the phantom radio, catch it off guard. I snort a half laugh of digust and absurdity. What am I thinking?

It is true. End of days.

I stand very still. The radio stops. I listen. Nothing. The message has been delivered. I know now. Seven days for seven deeds. The house is silent.

My roommate must be asleep. That's all she does of late. Sleeps and watches TV from bed. Her depression has worsened this month, and I have no idea how to help her. I bring her junk food and try to pry her out of the house with promises of adventures, martinis and puppies and bike rides through the park, but she just sighs. "I don't want to. I'm fine. Let me sleep." But she is not fine. Does she know? Is this why she clings to her sheets like a snail to a moss covered rock?

Does anyone else know? Has it begun? Am I the last to hear? How did I --

Should I call my father? What would I say to him? "Dad, I'm not sure how I know, but we have seven days 'til it all ends. I don't even know how I know, but I know. I just know." How do I explain the radio? My 90 year old father, sharp as a tack and rugged enough to fight off the zombie hoard should it come crashing through his door, would surely think I am losing my mind. Unless he knows.

Surely if I know, he must. But how --

It is said that God created the Earth in seven days - is it God who will take it away? Is that what this is? The big universal joke of humanity. I sit. I cross my legs, pretzel style, a Kindergarten Yogi. I breathe in. I breathe out. I count seven breaths. Seven days. Not even time for ten plagues. I expect the locusts aren't coming. I close my eyes and picture the darkness. It is oddly peaceful, but I'm still breathing. What will it be like to no longer draw breath? Will the darkness feel the same? Will the darkness feel?

Seven days to destruction. Seven days to live. My eyes open. I jump up and fumble through my dresser drawer for the sacred box of contacts. I open it to reveal - exactly seven pairs of Dailies. Is this a joke? I open a left and a right, and without washing my hands place one in each eye. The world is clearly still here. The question is, what will I find beyond my front door?

It does not matter.

I have seven days to get home.

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