A Personal Apocalypse

approx 1400 words, ~10 min read time

When the first horseman arrives, you see him through a microscope. Mini gallops amplify the buzzing of your phone, followed by a trumpet that you don’t remember having set as your ringtone. You step away from your tools to pick up your phone, brush the white horse with its crowned rider off the screen, and see a message from a close friend. 

smth came up. sry

And while it sucks because you’d been looking forward to it for a while, you shoot back a quick response.

np, busy at work too, ping me next time you’re in town

You know you’ll see your friend on Instagram later, happily taking pictures somewhere else, but right now you focus on the microscope again. There are many things in this lab to analyse and discover, to approximate with distributions and models, but the probability of your friendship falling apart is not one of them. You’re just overreacting anyway, you tell yourself, chest loaded with words you’ll aim at that friend someday.

You see the horseman again on your feed that night, an emoji of a white horse in the background of your friend’s pictures, crown emojis on the heads of other people you know. Realistically, it’s a coincidence, but it’s still uncomfortable; you mute their accounts. You’re good at spotting patterns.

*

You’re in a fight when the second horseman bursts through your apartment wall. It doesn’t feel like a fight. There aren’t any strong emotions crashing through to the surface, but the red horse standing between the two of you suggests you might be missing something. Long distance isn’t something you’ve ever had a problem with, but for this relationship it feels wrong. 

Yes, you’re sure it’s about this relationship. Why would it be about anything else? At least that’s what you say— it’s what you believe, too— but now there’s a horse in your apartment and a horse-sized hole in your wall, and your lover isn’t seeing any of it. Or are they? They ask if you’re talking about the pale horse you set as your profile picture, but you haven’t changed your profile picture since you got this phone.

But this isn’t the point, you both decide, and move back to the topic at hand. You don’t think they should take the overseas job offer, at least not while you’re still doing your thesis. They hang their head, but they agree. They don’t want you to feel pressured to move anywhere. You part amicably.

And then you break up via text. You do the honors, the bright red horse staring over your shoulder as you type. It huffs when you put your phone down, and you pet it only for it to bite you. You can’t see the horseman’s face during any of it, but their smugness is more of an aura, anyway.

They jump back out through the hole in the wall. You wake up in the morning with texts from most of your friends, and a block from your now-ex. 

You promise yourself you’ll get a job now that you don’t have your ex’s financial support, but you forget the promise under a pile of reports at the lab.

*

The third horseman chats you up as she manoeuvres her black horse into the subway seat next to you. You look like shit, she says with a laugh and offers you a cigarette, which you decline only because you’re in a subway, and she says she’ll remember that for later—you will too, because you don’t smoke. 

Where are you going, she asks, and, for a second, you slip-up and say home, even though you’re headed to the lab, though it’s not inappropriate at this point. As you consider correcting yourself, she says she lives right near the university labs, and you falter for a moment. Wouldn’t it be nicer to sleep in an actual bed tonight? With someone else?

Exiting the subway together, you decide to take her up on the offer. And the cigarette. It tastes like shit and you have to cough so hard you almost vomit, but you’ve been doing the same thing for so long that any kind of change would wring your gut, you figure. Knowing these things are bad for you, you decide you’ll just have one or two, and then not do it again. A learning experience of sorts.

You spend most of your nights in the next few months at her place, and one or two cigarettes become weekly packs. It’s good for the stress at least.

*

When I arrive on a pale, skeletal horse, your booze-drenched snoring is so loud I can barely think. A heavy chest-sized asteroid floats behind me, but passes through the walls without moving even a speck of dust. I wait by the side of your bed, watching the minutes tick by, until you wake up.

The first thing you do when you see me is shoo me away. Something about having to pay your bills first, though I don’t really care. Don’t you see the asteroid I brought you? Didn’t you hear the trumpets? This is the end of the world, and I need you to start acting like it.

You roll your eyes at the phrase then look at the asteroid. Single objects from your apartment have started to float in its direction, creating trash-moons for an asteroid planet. You raise your voice for a second and ask if this was all my plan—ask why it had to be you—and I laugh. This was never about you, you just decided it was, and like the asteroid, it all began to orbit you.

A pause. Finally, it seems like you’re listening, but before I can smile and stretch my hand out ominously, you start grabbing the objects flying around the asteroid, to put them back where they came from, but they simply float back. That’s when you realize what the objects have in common. Things your friends gave you, things your significant other gave you, packs of cigarettes. I know, I know, it’s on the nose, but you wouldn’t believe how long people take to notice if I don’t make it this obvious.

At some point you tell me to shut the fuck up—I wasn’t really aware I was talking, but I don’t make an effort to stop—and you grab a suitcase, pack all the floating objects, in the hope that maybe that would stop them. No. Of course it doesn’t. 

I take this moment to hold out my hand, but you just look at me with distrust in your eyes. Lesson not yet learned, I guess. You’re not ready to give it all up and finally move on. Well, I can still wear you down some other time. I’ll keep returning, and eventually, eventually you’ll see this is the right thing to do. You’ve let your life fall apart. Nothing is keeping you here.

But as I make my way to the door, you clammer to the asteroid. Every time something gets near it, you grab it and you put it back down, and you even try to pull the asteroid away from me (the hubris!). It doesn’t budge. Still, you don’t stop trying to keep it here. Even as my horse leads me out of the wall, four stories above the ground, the asteroid threatening to pull you out the window, you don’t give up.

So I pause. I hop off the horse. And I approach you, hanging onto the asteroid just over the kitchen sink with panic in your eyes, to look deep inside.

There are flashes of images, of all the people you’ve fallen away from, all the passion you’ve lost, and a deep-seated regret, and for a second, I am so fascinated that I lose my hold on the asteroid—you anchor it to the sink. 

This was not what I expected.

I float back up onto the horse, then turn back one last time. The asteroid continues to float over the sink, and as things float up near it, you take them in your hands, and you make a note. It’s intriguing to watch, but eventually I compose myself again. I did not expect your endurance.

And as I gallop away, a massive comet remains frozen in the sky; an extinction event turned into a new moon.

 

Léon Othenin-Girard (he/they) loves writing queer speculative fiction filled with hope, playing video games with confusing stories, and petting his cat. Currently, they’re studying Computer Science, and have figured out how to use the daily commute for writing, inspiration, and homework.

Photo by Jez Timms on Unsplash