We watched the movie in Julie’s basement. Back when she had a mansion. Back before her parents got divorced. The plot was convoluted. The runtime was excessive. They’d filmed it like 20 minutes away in La Crosse, and we recognized about a million Wisconsin landmarks, or I did anyway. I was sitting three feet from the screen. Julie fell asleep on Keith’s lap, and I could hear occasional rustling behind me, Keith moving softly, Keith trying not to make things weird. In the movie, there’s like some kind of minorly mutated flu virus, and a bunch of old people refuse a vaccine. What happens is they die. They die, and they do so in enough numbers to constitute like twelve percent of the difference in a real close presidential election that swings to the Democrat, and there are media stories. Academic studies. Outsiders flood this town, and a bunch of kids like us get together and use rose petals to write “STAY STRONG” in front of every single former home of a now dead voter. The roses look all bloody on top of the snow. It’s hard to tell if the movie switches to black and white or if everything’s just so grey that it’s all indistinguishable. I caught Keith in the glare. He was scrunched way to the side of the sofa, Julie snoring away with her hair rolling over his legs.

“I figured you were having some kind of boner situation,” I said, on the way home.

“I was trying to like move her head real gentle on account of I didn’t want her to wake up. It wasn’t supposed to be creepy at all. And then like two clumps of her hair came out in my hand, and I kept daydreaming she had cancer.”

“Fuck,” I said, looking at him. Not wanting it to be true. But also imagining if it were. Watching Keith do the same.

“I’m not good with sickness,” he said, and I told him how the thing about cancer was that people who had it didn’t want to think about it, and you could do a lot by mostly ignoring it. Mostly waiting, which was all we could do. We waited for Julie to show up bald or dead, but the closest we got were wigs. I liked the blonde one. Platinum with bangs and cut tight shoulder-length. Keith was into the same style, only he preferred it jet black. Nobody else seemed to have an opinion. Julie’d walk by, and the hall would kind of tense up, and Keith would give her his math homework. Statistics, it was. I didn’t have much to offer until Julie started sleeping at her mom’s new place. Maxine’s. It was a lot smaller. Two blocks from the high school. We got invited over more often. We invited ourselves. Julie laughed louder. The movies got lighter. We tried to play games. Sometimes, Keith had an early curfew, and before he left, he’d look at me, kind of ambivalent, kind of asking.

“Gonna catch a ride with someone else,” I’d say, and he’d nod and shut the front door real quiet. One time I stayed until 2AM, and we watched music videos while Julie played with her bangs. We talked about the bands you play when no one’s awake to hear and she told me not to tell Keith how late I stayed, “Not because anything happened, but he’s probably not ready to hear it.”

“Okay,” I said, and I never told Keith. Even though I wanted to. Too scared he’d see right through me. 

Julie lost weight, then she put it back on. We didn’t know if she was getting better. Time was passing. It was senior year. Winter. Some weekends she’d spend at her dad’s place, and Keith and I would drive by. Julie drove this yellow Jeep, and sometimes it would be parked there. Sometimes not. Sometimes there was music. Sometimes not. On one of the quiet nights, Keith kept driving in circles. We couldn’t see the Jeep.

“Didn’t you say she’d be here?” said Keith.

I shrugged. “I don’t remember what I said.”

Keith pulled over. The mansion was behind us, built into a bluff. Somewhere below was the river. We couldn’t see it in the dark. “Listen,” he said, “If you want me to, like, stop, you just need to say so, okay?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said. I looked at the house and thought about movies and basements and the way people fall asleep.

“Like.” Keith drummed on the dash. “I’m just trying to make her feel better, I guess, is what I’m saying. If it makes you feel weird or whatever. That’s all.”

“I don’t feel weird,” I said.

He nodded a little. I nodded back. He put the car in drive, and we wheeled around town for a while. Stopped at the Hy-Vee. Keith grabbed some roses, and I did too, and we found the Jeep parked outside Maxine’s. The lights inside the house were on. Julie was talking to her mom in the kitchen. Her hair was short and a little patchy.

She didn’t see us write “STAY STRONG” in rose petals on her lawn, but, on Monday, at school, Julie shrieked and hugged the two of us, hugged us like the ship was sinking and here were two logs in a broken life raft, and she went to prom with Keith. He said nothing ever happened, “nothing except some cloudy intense shit I don’t even understand,” but I didn’t know if I should believe him. I didn’t know how much I cared.

But that night with the roses, the moon was on us. We fought a little over the last petal or two, Keith in front of me, me in front of Keith. Laughing. Joking. Then Keith drove us away. Keith was more confident. Keith always drove. And the whole way back to mine we talked about last summer. About this uniform they made Julie wear at the drive-in, this knock-off nostalgia place where the high school girls put on roller skates and shorts that were too long to be sexy and too short to be chaste, and we let that image hang there, whispering. No music. No more talking. The bluffs cast frozen shadows, and the purity of our intentions sat there between us. Its levels were static and jumpy, all of them muddled as leaves beneath the reddened snow.

Brett Biebel is the author of three collections of flash fiction, 48 Blitz, Winter Dance Party, and Gridlock; and A Mason & Dixon Companion. His work has appeared in many magazines and been selected for Best Small Fictions and Best Microfiction. He lives, writes, and teaches in Illinois.

Robin and I are coping well with the end of the world, by which I mean we usually wake up by eleven and agree that eleven is not bad at all. We start our day with reading: Robin prefers Plato, while I prefer Garfield. My love, ever the philosophy major, has drawn up a list of essential texts and downloaded as many as our laptops can hold, since the Internet will go out any day now. We argued for weeks over whether Garfield deserved to survive the apocalypse. Robin said everyone would hate a fat cat when they were starving, and I retorted that wrestling with Plato would burn too many calories. Eventually I pointed out that matters would likely snowball too fast anyway for starvation to be our cause of death, and if Robin wanted me to be bearable to live with until the end came in whatever way it did, they’d better stockpile some Garfield. They’ve never been able to resist me.

Once we’ve read our fill, it’s time for a late lunch. Robin insists that we discuss our respective literatures to keep our minds agile. They say we’ll need our problem-solving abilities when things get worse. This is another reason they resent my Garfield: they say it does not stimulate the brain. But I point out that, unlike Plato, Garfield is very good at procuring sustenance. While Robin descends into the cellar to make a selection from our menu of freeze-dried camping food, I go out to the yard and look up. Each day it becomes more difficult to breathe. The sky toys with the hues of an oil spill, sometimes green, or yellow, or purple. Most of the time, though, we are cloaked in a grayish-brown that shimmers vaguely, like some vengeful god changed his desktop to a color named death.

We force down our reconstituted pad thai or bun-less lentil sloppy joes or scrambled eggs which, in their freeze-dried form, are crispy like chips. For now we’re still vegetarians, but the vegetarian meals down in the cellar are getting low, and pretty soon we’ll be reverting to a more primitive carnivorous state. The idea makes Robin anxious, even though I point out that the animals we’ll be eating have already been dead and bagged for years.

After lunch, we have our nature walk. If I were in charge, I would probably take a nap instead. Doom’s approach makes me snoozy. But Robin says we have a responsibility to exist in the world while it lasts. I slip my hand into theirs, and they lead me into the woods and make me look at things. They make me look at trees and mushrooms and birds (if we’re lucky), and they call them immense rough-skinned intelligences and fleshy fruiting bodies of fungi and the ones who could still escape if there was anywhere to go. They exhort me to fix the images in my mind, and I say what good will it do for a dying beast to remember other dying beasts?

But I only say this in my head, otherwise it makes Robin pull their hand away and pat at their eyes. Robin still finds hope useful, and I try to be sympathetic.

The woods are quiet these days. When we stand still, my ears feel the fuzzy silence of earplugs, like there might be something to hear if only I could take them out. But I can’t. So we don’t stand still very often; instead, we create the illusion of life by cracking twigs under our feet. Today I nearly step on something else: a matchbook. Robin bends to pick it up. The cardboard, still dry, bears the unfamiliar insignia of a bar called Dante’s. Someone has been burning the matches; only two are left. Robin says, Who—? And I say, Don’t think about it. Robin stares at the packet in their palm, and by the time I lead us home, it’s nearly dark. The sun doesn’t set because it’s never there to begin with. The pall just dims and dims.

After dinner, Robin usually tries for something more contemporary: Hegel or Nietzsche, or Foucault if they’re feeling cheeky. But tonight they make me sit while they read Mencius aloud, and for a few minutes I admire the length of their fingers absentmindedly turning the matchbook over and over. They’re looking for answers, but I already have mine. So I excuse myself to the bathroom. They think I have a weak stomach, that the camping food doesn’t agree with me. I let them think this even though it isn’t particularly flattering. In the bathroom, I sit with my back against the tub and grope around in the depths of the cabinet under the sink. From beneath the rolls of toilet paper, I pull out a stack of small square pages that I ripped off years ago from a cartoon-a-day calendar. If we’re still alive when the toilet paper runs out, these pages will see things they never asked to see. But for now, I peruse a few of the cartoons every night. Sometimes I find one that makes me laugh even though it never did before. People used to get that worked up over a family dinner? A fender bender? A fractious boss? Ha-ha. The days are hopelessly out of order, and I never bother rearranging them.

Robin and I go to bed early. I fit myself against the soft curve of their back and nestle my nose into their neck, where the musk of wheat and lilies soothes me just the same as it did when our ends were not so imminent.

In the darkest part of the night, I wake. Robin is sitting up. They’ve lit one of the matches, and it blazes towards their fingertips. Their face is shining with silent tears. Mencius, they say, believed in the fundamental goodness of humans. Shouldn’t we be struggling towards survival like the products of evolution that we are? Shouldn’t we be devoting our time to useful pursuits, figuring out how to hunt and forage and make fire?

I hold my breath as the flame gobbles its own lifeblood. For months this question has hovered between us unspoken. Robin has tried to ask it before, and I’ve stopped them with kisses, eaten the words out of their mouth. Yes, my sage, I want to say. You and I will be the library, and the library must go on.

Just before the flame blisters their fingers, Robin extinguishes it with one sharp hiss of breath. Into the black silence, against the blue memory of fire that twitches before my eyes, I find I can only speak the truth.

I fumble the matchbook out of Robin’s hand and rip off the last match. I fold the book around the nubby tip; from it, I pull a conflagration. And to Robin’s question, I say no. Because survival—isn’t that how we got here in the first place?

Julia Rose Greider lives in New Hampshire and works in Vermont as a public librarian. Her fiction has been published in Nat. Brut, West Trade Review, and CALYX Journal, and she is an alum of the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop.

The world might end in 30 minutes. For months, there’s been speculation on the Chicago news channels about electronics failing, of planes falling out of the sky, of the market crashing, of chaos on the streets because we will run out of food and water.  

My baby bump is enormous, I can’t see my swollen feet. My husband’s in jail for being a pendejo but technically for drinking and driving. I’ve huddled myself and my children in the bedroom to wait for whatever Y2K will bring.

“And if we need to use the bathroom?” my eleven-year-old daughter snarks as she bounces her baby brother on her hip. She’s been mad at me for a while now. But who else can I make help me with these kids?

“Pues ahí está, Sofia,” I point to the bedroom door, letting her know she can go in and out as she pleases. 

Sofia rolls her eyes at me and switches to cradling the baby to try to get him to sleep.

“It’s okay. You’re okay,” Sofia whispers and sticks the bottle in her brother’s mouth.

I wish I could go back in time when I’d cradle her.

Meanwhile, Pao, my middle child, bounces from the love seat to the edge of the bed and back. 

When the doctor said I was for sure pregnant again, I took my daughters to La Michoacana for ice cream, to share the happy news.

“No, the baby’s not here yet. We have to wait 5 months.”

“Five months?! The world’s going to end before then. Sorry, baby!” Pao exclaimed and kept eating her rocky road ice cream. 

Sofia pushed away her vanilla scoops. The slight shadow growing underneath her eyes darkened.

“Ya no quiero.” She glanced at her brother in the stroller. When I was Sofia’s age, I took care of my little sisters whether I wanted to or not. But, yes, I worried, too. How were we going to care for another child?

I placed my hands on my belly, thanking God for this miracle, and praying for the ones I’d lost before. We ate in silence while “Livin’ La Vida Loca” blared from the radio. I craved the charred taste of burnt tortillas.

The phone rings at 11:45 pm and we all flinch at the unexpected noise. The baby stirs and Sofia glares at me like I somehow made the phone ring. 

The answering machine picks up, “This is a collect call from Cook County Jail…”

“Papi!” Pao hops from the love seat to the floor to grab the cordless phone before it’s too late. “I accept!” she yells into the receiver and Sofia shushes her. 

“¡Dámelo!” I lean as far as I can from the bed and pull Pao by the shirt to snatch the phone away. Her little face scrunches as if I had reached into her tiny chest for her beating heart. 

“¿Q’vole? How are things over there?” I can barely hear Manny over the yelling happening behind him. 

“They’re doing lights out in 5 minutes. Everyone in their cells before midnight. Se nota que los guards are all tense and shit at the thought of their fancy locks not working when the clock strikes twelve.” 

“Whatever, Manny. If you miss the birth of this baby, I swear to God!”

On the screen, the news switches between people in bedazzled “2000” glasses and images of people looting a Wal-Mart in the Southside, running out with giant TVs. Food is what I’d take. A lot of diapers. Formula for sure. Clothes for the girls. Oooh, maybe a new winter coat. Some lipstick. Hoops that don’t turn my ears green.

“Te habla tu padre,” I hand the phone to Pao, who leaps for the cordless. The sound of Manny’s voice makes the baby inside me kick and vomit rise in my throat.

“Papi, I can jump from the couch to the bed without falling!”

I try to hand the phone to Sofia, but she refuses. I motion for her to place the phone near her brother so Manny can talk to him, but Sofia turns her back.

“Si, si, we love you, too!” I begin to cry because if the world is ending, I wish my husband was at home with us. If the world is ending, I wish I had had a chance to see my mother. The last time I saw her was 5 years ago when we left Mexico. But if the world is ending, I might finally get some rest. 

Sofia yanks the phone and quickly says, “Bye, papi. Happy New Year,” before she hangs up.

I look out the window and see that soft white petal snow is falling—my favorite. I pray this storm isn’t like the one that hit us at the beginning of the year. We were snowed in for days. The snowplows didn’t come through our street. There was no way to drive anywhere. We stocked up on food when the news reported that we should expect the worst blizzard “the windy city” had seen since the late 60s. We got all the formula and whole milk WIC would let us. We didn’t know how long we would be trapped, but at least then we were together.

Sofia gently sits on the loveseat still holding her sleeping brother. I struggle to get myself off the bed and Pao comes from behind to push me up. I scoot in next to Sofia and feel her inching away from me. I pull Pao next to me and she dozes off on my lap.

Someone on TV announces it’s almost time for the countdown. Behind them, someone holds a large poster with the words, “We ❤ robots!”

I take Sofia’s hand, and she presses her sweaty palm into mine so tightly I can feel the intensity of her pulse. I kiss the top of her head.

The announcer counts down: 10, 9, 8, 7, 6… 

My heart pounds and my throat tightens. The baby inside me kicks, their little leg protruding from my stomach. The kick lands near Pao’s head and Sofia bursts out laughing. Soon I’m laughing and shushing at the same time, trying to keep the younger children asleep. 

On the TV, confetti fills the screen. Fireworks and gunshots echo outside. 

“Diosito santo, protégenos.” I hold my children close when the lights go off. 

Sonia Alejandra Rodríguez (they/she) is a writer and educator living in Queens, New York. They’ve participated in writing workshops at Tin House, VONA, and Kweli. Their stories have been published in Latino Book Review Magazine, Kweli Journal, Variant Lit, Strange Horizons, The Acentos Review, Longreads, Okay Donkey, Reckon Review, and elsewhere. Sonia Alejandra’s writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fiction, and Best Microfiction. Follow them on Instagram at @soniaalejandrawrites.