“It gives people something they can touch,” she says.
Silence gathers again, thick. Farah smiles ruefully.
“If someone were to find this years from now,” she says, “if someone could survive and find this place on their own, would they even know what to do with it? Do you think they would understand this?”
“I don’t know,” Beth admits. “But it will be here, just in case.”
The Sixth Match
Beth does not open up easily, if at all. She has never wanted to fall in love. She dreads travel, new jobs, new co-workers. She would rather reread a book she loves ten times over than risk picking up a new one. She had many acquaintances in college, and some even endeavored to stay in touch, but it never seemed worth the effort to her. It’s hard to get in touch with people now, what with the evacuations, the earthquakes, the fires. If she’s honest, she prefers it this way.
Farah smiles rarely, but when she does, it is extraordinarily pretty. She talks little. Beth has memorized her makeup, the brown lipstick on her full lips, the heavy eyeshadow with a hint of green, the precise curve of it beneath Farah’s straight, high eyebrows. Unlike Beth, she has no preferences for ink or paper; she writes on napkins, the backs of receipts, envelopes from the electric bill. She touches everything in the apartment. Her rent checks are always on time, never a day early or a day late. She moved to D.C. right after the Yellowstone eruption; the air was clear when she signed the agreement, but by the time she moved in, the DOI warnings had already been issued. I don’t mind, she’d said. I stay inside anyway.
Beth knows nothing about Farah’s family, her friends, her preferences. Doesn’t know if she’s ever been in love.
If Beth’s honest, she prefers it that way, too
The Seventh Match
One week before the end of the world, they take a taxi down to the west end of the Mall. The buses have stopped running. The downtown streets are eerie and unfamiliar: food carts abandoned at long-expired parking meters; newspaper vending machines empty or still filled with last week’s papers; plywood and plastic affixed over full-story windows, to protect against looters and smog. Both measures, Beth thinks, are overly optimistic.
It may be Beth’s imagination, but the air feels a little fresher down by the thick old trees, down by the wider stretches of the river and the tidal basin: a little less gritty against the skin her mask leaves exposed. The seven small aquariums fit in the trunk of the taxi, just barely. They’re obnoxiously heavy. Farah needs her crutches, so it’s Beth’s job to carry the boxes, one at a time, past the stone barricades and down the shallow steps to the place that Farah has selected on the lip of the reflecting pool.
“Is there a special way to do this?” she asks. “Should we say something first?”
Farah shakes her head.
They place the Houses Without Air in a tight semicircle with the open edge facing the pool. As Beth sets each aquarium in place, Farah crouches down across from it, inspecting the landscapes inside. She’s anchored them well; nothing has shifted except the sand. Farah’s custom-fitted lids have puckered, rubber-lined openings in the top corners large enough to take a matchstick, just barely airtight.
Beth hasn’t come down to the Mall in almost three years. The haze is so thick now that she can’t make out even a suggestion of the white obelisk far above and across the pool, and the Lincoln Memorial is only a pale, heavy smudge to their right.
Farah stays crouched over the seventh box, her crutches stretched out to either side like the barest framework for wings. Her eyes look red and damp, irritated by the air. Beth wonders what her lips are doing behind her mask.
“You can start,” she says.
The box of long matches is in Beth’s jacket pocket. When Farah nods, she strikes the first match, pushes it down flame-first through the opening in the first aquarium’s roof. They practiced back at the apartment; if they aren’t quick enough, the flame will go out before they can pass it through the lid. The flame makes it in, but there’s only a sliver of air between the lid and the surface of the water inside. It smothers quickly.
Farah lets Beth light the second, too. It lasts a little longer, but then the oxygen is gone, and the matchstick smokes over dunes of sand and pink gravel. Farah holds out her hand for the matchbox.
The third House is the desert, layered with miniature cacti in shades of green and pale, waxy blue. The fourth is a rainforest, as much as Farah could fit in the little box, broad leaves, flower petals, two inches of water along the bottom. The fourth flame burns halfway up the matchstick before it suffocates.
The fifth match is Beth’s again, and it takes three tries to strike. Beth curses under her breath, worrying that it’s the air, but of course it’s just her stiff fingers. The red tip catches, and she pushes it into the fifth box; Farah has added a chain-link fence to the low gravel mounds, bright flecks of paper caught along its foot. The sixth House holds a tiny city block, the colonial rowhouses tall, identical, red and white, with red brick sidewalks and slender trees marching along the front. The sixth flame rises as high as the fourth.
Beth passes the matchbox to Farah. “Thank you,” she says.
The seventh House is a flight of shallow white steps leading down to a sheet of dark, reflective glass. Farah closes her eyes. It is a race to see which is consumed first: the oxygen, or the match.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Megan Arkenberg lives and writes in California. Her short stories have appeared in Lightspeed, Asimov’s, Strange Horizons, and dozens of other places. She procrastinates by editing the fantasy e-zine Mirror Dance.
Scott Sigler — THE FIFTH DAY OF DEER CAMP
“There’s a rabid badger in my skull,” Toivo said. He looked up from the bucket in which his face had been hidden for the last ten minutes. “I’m sure of it, eh?”
George tried to ignore Toivo. He took another look at his poker hand, as if somehow the cards had changed in the four seconds since he’d looked at them last: nope, still three kings.
He looked across the table. Jaco had a glint in his eye, at least as much of one as George could see behind the cabin light glaring off Jaco’s huge glasses. Jaco was a good player—as one of the top accountants in Houghton, he could do the math with the best of them—but the little guy had never been able to control his tells. The tip of his tongue peeked out from the left corner of his mouth. That only happened when Jaco had something good, but was what he had good enough to beat three kings?
You’ve got two pair, you little shit, I can tell. Your lip twitches like that when you have two pair.
Toivo let out a long groan. “Oh, jeeze,” he said. “I don’t feel so good, eh? And it’s freezing in here, did someone leave da door open again?”
To George’s left, Bernie set his cards flat on the table, set them down hard enough to rattle the empty cans of Pabst and jostle the semi-full ones.
“Holy crap, Toivo,” Bernie said. “Either get back in da game, go to sleep, or just shut up. We’re trying to play cards here.”
“A woodchuck,” Toivo said. “Rabid. I’m telling ya.”