Faith's entry for the Henderson Library Youth Writing Contest

Solipsism

by Faith Evans

April’s steps were light and fast on the wet pavement. The world was unraveling, and she didn’t want to get caught in the splitting seams.

    She’d first noticed the difference that morning as she approached her tall office building. It was a skyscraper situated in the city center, a monolith that had stood tall for almost a century. Yet, that morning, its edges were chopped and blurry, as if it were a fraying ribbon extending into the sky.

    She’d brought up the difference casually to a coworker who had been caught in the elevator with her (“Our building is getting quite old. May need to replace those decaying beams near the top, huh?”) The woman looked at her in a most peculiar way and kindly suggested that she use the company benefits package to get her eyes checked.

    Later in the day, during April’s lunch break, she’d noticed the fountain in the foyer malfunction. However, when she mentioned it to the nearby custodian, he’d given her a peeved look and said that the fountain worked just fine. She assumed that he couldn’t see the tiles cracking to pieces, sending water everywhere.

    Now, as she made her way swiftly to the train station, the squares of the sidewalk shuddered lightly beneath her feet, pulling themselves apart. She leapt onto the platform, grateful to get away from the wobbly sidewalk, but in her haste she bumped into a thin, elderly man.

    To April’s absolute horror, the man teetered for a moment then fell forward. He let out a startled noise, but the sound was cut off as his body hit the pavement and he shattered into a million tiny pieces. April screamed and dropped to her knees, fingering the glass-like fragments. She looked up, worried that the other waiting commuters would share her same panic, but rather than staring at her with fear and bewilderment, only a few gazed at her with mild contempt.

    A nearby woman clicked her tongue in annoyance. “Get off the ground, screaming psycho,” she muttered.

    None of them appeared to have noticed the disconcerning scene. The train rumbled toward the station, and everyone filed on as if nothing strange had happened.

    April picked herself up carefully and brushed the rocks from her knees. She stared at the shards on the ground for a moment, then swiftly left the scene of her atrocious crime, boarding the train with more haste and force than she usually exerted.

    The doors slid closed behind her, and she stared silently out the window as the train jolted forward. It picked up speed slowly, and soon the trees, houses, and buildings passed by in a blur. April tried to lose herself in the passing scenery, glad to be traveling away from the fraying city center.

    A man bumped her elbow, and she shifted her grip on the pole she was holding to give him more room. However, he bumped her again, and she turned to him in annoyance. The last thing she wanted to deal with was some sleazy businessman hoping to find a train-companion for the weekend. She had just murdered an old man and wasn’t in the mood to put up with this stranger’s antics.

    She turned to give him a piece of her mind, but he spoke first. “I never was fond of George, but what you did was utterly uncalled for. You should not be taking advantage of situations like this,” his whisper-yelled.

    His eyebrows were drawn into a fierce scowl, and his storming eyes burned down on her. His words and his look were supposed to instill fear and guilt, but for the first time all day, April let out a long sigh of relief.

    “You see it, too,” she whisper-yelled back. “Thank God! I’ve been worried sick all day. What are we going to--”

    The train had been slowing, and as it screeched to a halt, the man cut her off with an irritated look. He turned away swiftly and disappeared into the flow of people exiting the train.

    April jumped forward frantically, throwing her purse over her shoulder. She called into the crowd, begging him to wait. She pushed past people, through the train doors, trying desperately to find the man, but he was gone.

    The train pulled out of the station slowly, and the exiting-commuters dispersed. April watched as the crowd thinned until it was just her standing on the near-empty platform. It was only five thirty, but the cloud cover had ushered in darkness earlier than usual. Street lights were already flicking on. John would be expecting her home any minute.

    April climbed down from the platform and sighed as the sidewalk began to tremble beneath her feet. Cracks erupted beneath her toes. Her condo was only a block away, but the entire walk felt like an elaborate and deadly game of hopscotch.

    She finally reached her doorstep, and, ignoring the fraying flower beds and the splintering windows, she unlocked her door briskly and pushed through the entrance.

    “I’m home!” She shouted.

    “Me, too!” John yelled back from the kitchen.

    April grinned despite herself. She dropped her shoes and bag at the door and rounded the corner to find John at the microwave, popping popcorn.

    He smiled warmly and met her at the kitchen’s middle to give her a peck on the lips. “Guess what,” he murmured, taking her hands in his.

    “You found a million dollars on your way home and we’re going to move to the countryside,” April whispered back, fighting the smirk that wanted to travel across her lips. Part of her wished that that really was the answer to this guessing-game.

    “Not quite,” John said. “I rented a movie and ordered a pizza. Sorry to disappoint.”

    April kissed him lightly. “That sounds pretty good, too,” she said.

    John let her go gently and turned back to the almost-done popcorn in the microwave. April bit her lip anxiously. She hated to put a damper on a stay-home date-night, but she really needed to tell him that either she was going insane or the end of the world was approaching.

    “John,” she started, her voice shaking. He turned back to her, and she took a step forward. However, as her foot came down on the ground, the floor shattered and she found herself falling.

    In an out-of-body moment, April watched as she fell down, down toward the tile. John pushed forward to catch her, but he wasn’t going to be fast enough. Her body twisted and her head connected with the granite countertop. The world spiraled, frayed, unraveled, shattered, and then disappeared.

    Bright, white light pulsed against her eyelids. April didn’t want to greet whatever world awaited beyond the darkness of her mind. She didn’t want to see the unraveling structures, and she really didn’t want to be told that she needed psychological help.

    A hand touched her shoulder, and a muffled voice said something. She tried to shrug off whoever was touching her, but the hand gripped her more firmly and started shaking her.

    As she peeled back her eyelids, April came face-to-face with the man from the train. Her eyes widened and she grabbed his arm.

    “It’s you!” She yelled. Her voice echoed strangely, and she looked around at the strange setting. The world really had unraveled.

    The ground was a plain tile expanse that went on forever in every direction, and the sky looked like pure fluorescent light. April felt like she was afloat on a sea of white. The only things obstructing her view were long black tendrils that looked like torn particles and fabric from the fraying world. They extended in long, upward spirals, wavering like the strings of rising balloons.

    In an absurd way, the scene was comforting. April finally felt like she had received some resolution to the worst day of her life.

    The man was speaking, but April scarcely heard him. She was already off on her own train of thought, dazzled by the possibilities of the world around her.

    She cut him off. “This is beautiful.”

    He frowned at her interruption. “Yes, yes,” he said. “But-”

    “So, where’s John?”

    The man frowned again, but this time in confusion. He made a gesture with his hand that pointed to nothing in particular. April looked around, not seeing whatever he wanted her to. She quirked her eyebrows at him.

    “Ms. Green, only you know where John is,” he said.

    April was starting to feel uncomfortable lying on the tile. She pushed the man’s hands away and rose to her feet.

    “No, I’ve only been awake for a minute,” she said. “You seem to know what happened, so where is my husband, and where are the others that could see the unraveling. It can’t only be us.”

    Now the man looked as confused as her. “You didn’t make any others,” he said, a worried look spreading across his face. “Were there supposed to be others? I didn’t know, I’m so sorry.”

    April started to panic. “Of course there are others. There have to be,” she said. As the words left her lips, the oddness of the man’s statement hit her fully. “Wait, make others? What are you talking about?”

    The man looked more and more confused. “I don’t know, I just...There weren’t others. You never said there were any others,” he said anxiously.

    April glowered at him. Her panic was quickly replaced with a deep disliking. This man knew something, maybe many things, but he wasn’t sharing. “Obviously you know what’s happening here, so spill, or…” April didn’t really have any way to threaten the man, but her words seemed to work anyway.

    He scowled back. “No. Actually, I know nothing more than you. We’re stuck in the same boat here.”

    April sighed in exasperation. “Well, what do you propose we do?” She asked.

    The man shrugged. “I woke you up so that you could decide that,” he said, sounding sorely defeated.

    April looked around once more. As they were talking, the pieces of the world had ascended even farther into the distant white expanse. The tendrils were nearly all gone.

    “We should walk,” April said, thinking aloud. “Either we’ll find something soon, or it will be obvious that it’s only us.”

    The man nodded at her, and the two began walking.

    April had no way to measure time, but as she followed the swirls of the tile ground, she decided that time was an elusive concept in this setting. The only thing she had to mark its passing was her tapping footsteps and her scattered thoughts.

    “What is your name,” she asked the man.

    He shrugged, not meeting her eyes. “You don’t know?” he asked.

    April stopped, and the man followed suit. “There’s nothing, is there,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

    “You didn’t build anything,” the man answered. “You only unraveled and shattered.”

    April turned a full circle to take in the world. It wasn’t actually a world yet. It was just her and an empty figure, a man who didn’t even have a name.

    No, it wasn’t a world. It was a blank canvas. “Then I guess we need to build,” she said.