this world’s just gonna keep on ending ‘till she don’t eat that fruit.
She had meant to blast “Hoppípola“ as the stars darkened, sucked backward into the void. She had actually planned for it this time, when she started her sophomore year, when she said to her roommate, who barely even nodded, “This song will be with me at the end of the world,” and she had it in her phone, within its own, lonely playlist…
Most people don’t plan for that kind of thing, but she wasn’t most people. First of all, her name was Pinecone, so that’s really something. Her actual name. Her father thought it significant, like somehow he’d played his part in protecting the planet, and he called her Pine most of the time because he thought it sweet. Her mother didn’t think anything about it. Her mother didn’t think anything about anything, but that was just a side effect of Day 1. Before that, before Day 1, she had probably thought something and probably tried to get her daughter a real name, like Monica or Rachel or something wholesome, right? That’s what Pine used to tell herself. Something she could carry with her besides the guilt. But Day 1 was decisive, and the baby was stuck with Pinecone.
But her dad, he tried most of the time, and he called her Pine, and he took her to the shop with him. She stood barefoot behind the counter, dusty toes and oily hair. Her mother’s friends came in to flirt with him, and they looked at her, imagining what she might look like at sixteen, twenty, thirty. Would she look like Evie? Wouldn’t that be nice?
Well, she was thirty-three at the end of the world, she always was, and none of them were there to witness the culmination of all their hard-fought predictions. This time, her hair was an electric red bob, made violently bright by the extraterrestrial glow cast across the city. The tattoos chased themselves in circles up and down her arms, watercolor lilies facing down ashen skulls. The skin between offered breathing room, full of vibrant life, but most people didn’t notice. Of course, the women would have been shocked and thoroughly tickled to see her grown out of the knees and elbows of her childhood. Here, at the end of the world. They didn’t know this person, though, who left town right after high school and never called. They’d heard rumors, through the years, and tasted those on their tongues like fine wine shared delicately, in surreptitious whispers.
Pine never really had much of a chance; she was taken and tasted, and she took too.
Over and over. Every time it came to this, Day 11,881 or something, here at the end of the world. And she always had a plan, and it always ended anyway. It was so crafty, as if sentient, stealing into her room in the dead of night, whisking her away in the throes of a new romance. Or this time: showing up on the day, the only day, her phone died, taking with it her Icelandic soundtrack.
Pine glanced down at her feet, rooted in place. First, the muscles stopped. In all of her planning, she’d always tried to be running. Or dancing. For once, she just wanted to be moving when everything froze. Would her momentum break the spell?
Instead, her feet looked quite peaceful, with no ill conceived intentions of going anywhere. She let her gaze float lazily upward, back to the tree under which she had been sitting when the shivers started. The same tree beneath which she had met him, three years ago, and shrugged him off.
She had eaten the spoiled fruit of her decisions for so many lifetimes…the cycle jammed in repeat. And still, was she to meet that guy, with that haircut, on that park bench, beneath that tree, every time? And did he always have to be the same no matter what she changed? Always when she was thirty. Always waiting for an answer.
Here she sat again, but without him for the first time, as still as the leaves that shone with autumnal flare in early May. She felt alone – as if the bodies scattered throughout the park were already empty. And, yes, she could see those that were howling wretchedly and the others that wept. Yet, she couldn’t seem to hear the cacophony of their desolation. Everything. Silent.
And so, she gave her mind permission to drift, remembering old boyfriends and missed opportunities first, like a tragedy in rewind, ending happily at the beginning: their trailer home on the Missouri River.
As the stars dimmed and the sun grew cold, these final lights flickered away from Pine, until she became enveloped by the reaching shadows. Just as movement didn’t and sound wasn’t, neither did nor was light, and her mind circled around those earliest years. Her rocking horse with a pink and fraying mane. First steps through cigarette butts and gravel. Dancing with her father to Florida-Georgia Line in the waning moonlight. Pictures of her mother held nervously.
Why was it always her fault? Day 1. Day 11,881. She could almost swear these people in the park were evaporating because of her; their shrouded faces triggered looping memories of humanity receding into the distance.
That kind of bummed her out a little and she opened her eyes. She was supposed to be dancing here, at the end of the world, per schedule. Run first. Resist, a little. Then, nobly turn toward the apocalypse and dance with abandon. But life is what happens…
It didn’t scare Pine anymore that she couldn’t move or feel anything. She was used to it. And when the sound went, so did the screams, so that was nice. And in the absence of light, she felt a sleepy invitation. She wished for a coffee, and then she chuckled to herself, thinking it childish at first. But, as the minutes became hours, she allowed herself to indulge in petulance. If it really did have to be the end of the world, couldn’t it at least be punctual? And then she laughed again, but because she couldn’t tell what it meant to laugh in such a void, she stopped. And waited.
And her mind ran on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on until