The 32nd – a short story
I’ve tried to figure out how I knew something was off. It could have been the quality of the light, but really the curtains were drawn too tightly for that to be noticed–though later I would see that the light had indeed changed. The noises rising from the street? Maybe. It should have been quieter, I suppose, but how often do street noises separate themselves from that incessant din our city-dweller brains file away as universal static? The hum is as irrelevant to my primate ego as the cosmic microwave background. Probably what alerted me was something much more immediate to my being: I’d woken up oddly well-rested. I can’t remember how many years it’s been since I emerged from sleep like that.
Despite my unusual freshness, I started a pot of coffee brewing just like any morning, and slumped into my office chair, fingers tapping through muscle memory for the World News subreddit online, where at a glance I could see what thousands of strangers felt were the most relevant global happenings.
That’s when I knew for sure something was out of place. No Covid-19 headlines, no mention of the Black Lives Matter protests across the US or elsewhere in the world, and no updates on the Space X manned launch to the ISS. There was plenty of news, of course: a quick scan down the page revealed tragedies and conflicts in abundance, but they all seemed strangely alien, like oddly-patterned mushrooms that had sprung up overnight in the yard. Historical sites in Iran overwhelmed by summer tourist numbers; Deadliest Everest climbing season in more than 20 years; Politicians under fire for anti-LGBT Visit Brazil 2020 ads.
Perplexed, I Googled for George Floyd, the man who’d died pleading beneath the knee of a Minneapolis cop a week before. A short list of results appeared matching that name, but I could see nothing of the man whose face had been everywhere when I went to sleep the night before–the man who’d been murdered, whose last moments had been seen around the world in civilian phone footage, and which had sparked mass protests and riots. Despite the heat, a distinct chill came over me, sweat breaking out on my back.
I called Ryan immediately, even though it was barely 8am. We’d been chatting about this no more than 12 hours before. He answered after a few rings.
“Dude, what’s going on. It’s kind of earl–“
“Ryan, who was the guy that was killed?”
“What? Who and by who?”
“In Minneapolis. The black man who was killed by the white cop. The cop was pressing down on his neck with his knee.”
“Huh. Minneapolis . . .? I think you mean Massachusetts, right? Er, the name was . . . Darren Jackson. It wasn’t his neck. The cop drove his knee into his back and broke his spine.”
“Darren . . .? What? I’m talking about George Floyd’s murder in fucking Minneapolis! The thing America’s a war zone over right now. We talked about him last night.”
“Are you having me on? No we didn’t. We didn’t talk about any of this stuff at a–“
I ended the call, frantically opening WhatsApp to our previous messages. There was our conversation, coming back to me in scraps as I scrolled up through it: bbq–Bitcoin–lambo–lol–BOTW–Netflix . . . Nothing about George Floyd and protests, nothing about the pandemic or lockdown, nothing about anything relevant at all. When did these conversations happen?
As I returned to my phone’s home screen, I saw, for the first time, the date displayed there: May 32nd.
I stared. Blinked. I tapped at the number, as if it were a mirage that could be dispelled by contact.
I phoned Ryan again, panic taking hold of me now. Either I was in the most vivid dream of my life, or I was developing a severe mental issue.
“Hey, did you just hang up on me befor–“
“What day is it?” I almost shouted.
“Monday.”
“I mean what day of the month?” My heart hammered, and I felt almost sick. “May what? What day?”
“It’s the 32nd,” Ryan replied impatiently. “That’s why I’m trying to sleep in. You forget that I don’t have to work today?”
“I . . . “
“Now c’mon man, let me sleep. I can call you later.”
“O . . . okay.”
I glanced out the window and saw, for the first time, the pall of smog settled over the city. The smog that had all but disappeared during the lockdown, with so much traffic off the road. The morning light was strained a bluish amber through it. I’m sure I couldn’t have noticed it through the curtains in my bedroom, but there it was now. Only a city packed with running vehicles could create such haze. This world didn’t know the novel coronavirus pandemic. This world had not seen two astronauts launched into space by a Falcon 9 rocket. This world didn’t know the name of one George Floyd, because, presumably, that man was still out there living his life.
This was the 32nd, a day that slipped through some crack in reality. It was no departure from tragedy and injustice, certainly–what had Ryan said about a Darren-something, body broken from an officer’s knee to his spine? No, it was merely a departure from the world I knew, and it occurred to me then that it had not slipped through a crack in reality, but the other way around: I had slipped into it. The departure was mine alone.
I wanted to go outside, but didn’t. What if I merely passed through another rift in this damaged fabric of the universe? What if I found myself in a world irradiated and ruined by nuclear war? What if I passed into any strange timeline where the privileges of my birth didn’t exist, where history had progressed differently along any of the infinite paths of variation, or where I had essentially traded lives with any of the billions of people that in my heart of hearts I didn’t want to tread through life in the shoes of? No, I had to stay where I was, like one lost in the forest. Straying could only put me at greater risk.
If I stayed put, I thought, I might pass back into my own tragedy-riddled universe–and maybe once there I could try more to play my part in making it a little bit better, a little less tragic where it didn’t need to be, to view my moment in history as relative to all possible futures. All this I told myself as I huddled there in fear of what other realities might await me, where I wasn’t born under so lucky a star.
Eventually the sky darkened, and I slept. My slumber was dreamless, seemingly momentary, and when I awoke it was June 1st, 2020. A few internet searches and reviewing my phone’s message history showed me I was home, as full of suffering and struggle as that home was.
I expect I have a month to play my part in this world, and then I’ll see if there’s a June 31st.
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