Monday, July 31, 2017




She Lives Above a Chinese Laundry
A story by Cindy Ascanio,  NW Arkansas, August 2017



Her name is Sanya and she is 26 years old.  She lives above a Chinese laundry in a small studio with any one window facing the red brick wall of the building next door.  Very little light comes through. The buildings are so close together and so very tall, it is often hard even to tell day from night.  At night the glow from city lights gives the room a perpetual gloomy look.

The laundry owner is normally at work by 6 a.m. so Sanya never needs an alarm clock (she doesn’t have one anyway).  The washing machines and clothing conveyor rattle are the first sounds that greet her each day.

Today though, there is only silence downstairs.

Sanya wakes from the same familiar, recurring dream and for a moment is disoriented in the silence.  She realizes as she turns to look at her watch on the nightstand, that it’s 9 a.m. and there are no sounds from the laundry.   No machines, no voices, no tinkle of the door chime, nothing.
The silence is a loud roar to Sanya, she imagines she can hear her blood whooshing through her heart and brain.  “What made me sleep so long?” she wonders.  Slowly, as if she has been under the influence of sleeping pills, she gets out of bed and goes to the bathroom, flipping the light switch as she enters, but nothing happens.   Flicking the switch up and down two more times (just to be sure!), Sanya smiles to herself at that, and sits down on the toilet.   “Just a power outage” she reassures herself, “there must have been a storm overnight, or maybe a car hit a pole.”

Those thoughts are followed immediately by the desire for food.  Sanya is not usually hungry upon waking but its three hours later than usual, and Sanya’s stomach growls at the mental image of a big breakfast.  “Dream on” she thinks to herself, remembering that she only has one small muffin left in the white paper sack she brought from the bodega a few days ago.She makes her way to the dim little kitchenette, removes the muffin, and chews slowly and with pleasure.


Later that morning, Sanya starts violently, waking up still sitting in her kitchen chair, muffin crumbs in front of her and in her lap.  “What on earth!” she thinks, “I can’t believe I slept again just sitting down to eat”!  She has no idea what time it is, her watch is in the bedroom area, so she goes to get it, blinking away sleep and a sense of being out of time, out of routine, out of sorts.

The dream she has over and over is not exactly scary, but rather disturbing and sometimes follows her for a few hours afterwards.  She wakes (in her dream), and she is the only human left alive, everyone else is gone.  Like that tribe or civilization that just disappeared she muses,  “what were they called?  the Anastazi?”  “Yes”, she thinks that’s right…..anyway, poof, just gone one day.
Her watch reads 7:00 and she quickly calculates that it must be 7 p.m.   “Wow”, she thinks, “9 a.m. to 7 p.m., what on earth could be wrong with me? Am I sick?”

By 8:00 (a.m.?  p.m?), Sanya decides to go downstairs, is pretty sure she can walk a little bit better now.   She has only been into the Chinese laundry twice, first when she rented her living space, and again about a month later when she had to ask the owner for repairs to her leaking sink.
Her door opens to a hallway, then to stairs that split at a turn, one way leads to street level, and the other to the laundry floor.

Both doors are locked (and sealed tight).  She tries again and again, but they are sturdy and won’t budge, her final, frustrated kick at the street door was weak and only made her foot hurt.  And she was so tired.

Sanya returns to her studio and goes to the window.  She has never opened it, and it will not open now.  She considers breaking it with a chair or end table, but dismisses these thoughts immediately.  The window is thick glass, with wire mesh inside, and has been painted many times. 
“Lock-picking” she thinks, “What do I remember about lock-picking?”  Well, there are tumblers, and if a thin wire or blade is manipulated just so, the lock should open.  “Who are you kidding?” she thinks, “YOU don’t know squat about locks.”

Sitting down, Sanya gets a whiff of herself and decides to take a shower and think things over.  Once undressed (which seemed to take a very long time), she lifts the shower handle, but nothing happens.
“Oh no”, she whispers….”the water is off too?”   That thought brings tears to her eyes, and in despair for the first time, she flops down on the bed to have a good cry over her (now) seemingly desperate circumstances.

Hours (days?) later, she awakens to murky light and a ravenous hunger.  She uses the toilet, it flushes but doesn’t refill, and searches her small space for food.  There are dried beans, some stale crackers, and – yes! peanut butter!

After the meager meal, Sanya sits down in her easy chair and tries to decide what to do next.  But it’s so hard, her brain doesn’t seem to work, she can’t concentrate, or even hold a thought for long…..and in a few minutes, Sanya goes back to sleep.

………………………………………..

The discovery of the blue planet was a lucky one, they were nearly out of fuel and starting to worry when they found it.   Plans to settle on the little world came together quickly.  First was release of the base gas layer, extending around the planet from the surface to a height of about 20 feet.   A mixture of sofamide and marchuload, the gas was deadly to all living things.  It hovered, and settled around every structure, it permeated all matter (it fused locks and turned metal into rigid rock-like stuff that would be ground into raw material later).   Next was the ash (but that’s not what it was called).  It settled too, but down through the air, falling softly like a gentle snow.   This chemical worked more slowly, testing each layer of atmosphere from the surface up and adjusting composition and strength as needed to transform oceans, mountains, skyscrapers, dams, and bridges.

To the human race, and the living creatures on the planet,  it was an attack of devastating and total effectiveness, but to the settlers, it was no different than spraying a nice yard of carefully tended grass to eradicate every insect living in it, ants, chiggers, ticks, spiders, centipedes and the like.

Within two days………..the little blue planet was lifeless…and ready for occupancy.

END












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