Know No End
by Samantha Penturf
Sunlight swiped the side of my face and woke me from my blank sleep. I swallowed hard, hoping my spit would be enough to coat my dry throat. Do dead people get thirsty, I wondered. My eyes opened and began to focus. I was in the same room. The room where last night I had accepted my demise. The place was a disaster but one on our own making. A fly zapped over a pile of crusted plates in the sink. Empty prescription and liquor bottles littered the floor, marking the territory where they were emptied. Newspapers covered the kitchen table. And in the middle of all this mess, there was Kevin.
Kevin lay stretched across the couch, slack-jawed and motionless. He was dead or in a slumber close enough to it. The night before he had mixed a drug cocktail for the final big event. “Do you want any?” he asked as he shook the medical maraca, and his hips gyrated with the rattle beat.
“No, I want to see it happen,” I responded, even though I later managed to drink myself to the state I was trying to wake up from. In the movies the male lead would have said something profound in response, possibly joined my efforts in solidarity. Unaffected by my dramatic response, Kevin threw a handful of colored dots to the back of his throat.
I couldn’t wait to be rid of him, even if it meant my riddance, too. I did try to break up with him once over a text. That was the week the broadcaster announced there were no other efforts that could be done. All missions had failed. Kevin appeared at my door that night sobbing and saying he couldn’t imagine spending our time left without each other. I felt guilty but mostly embarrassed by the front porch display. His snotty heaves and the moths were under the spotlight. I finally let him in, and he never left. There we were in that same room, possibly purgatory.
Whatever realm I was in, it still had hangovers. The sharp light penetrated through my eyes and made my brain feel dried and shriveled. The headache was more evidence that I was still alive. Kevin’s status was still undetermined. Anxiety started to stir in my core. It crept through my bloodstream as I let my thoughts run unchecked. What if nothing has happened? My heart pounded as the complete uncertainty intensified. My dog, Mike, popped his head up from the pile of clothes on the floor that doubled as his bed. He always jumped from my lap when I passed out for his own space to watch me sleep. A good guard dog. I crouched on the ground and teared up as Mike wiggled his sausage shaped figure over to me and licked my face. “Oh, Mike,” I cried, as I wrapped my arms around his tiny body. He squirmed, anticipating I would take him outside before his bladder popped.
I opened the front door and put one foot out, as I held Mike on my hip to shield him from whatever was on the other side of the door. My leg appeared fine, not melted off my body. I crept forward and football tucked Mike into my stomach. I looked up at the sky with a squint, further challenging the sun. I was in a trance seeing the clear blue sky until Mike’s whine knocked me out of it. I set him on the grass but walked my bare legs on both sides of him as a potential shield against this world. The street sat early Sunday morning quiet, but I could not recall the day of the week. It wasn’t supposed to be any day. The nearby highway used to sound like a distant river, but the flow dried up weeks ago. As soon as Mike looked up at me in relief, I snatched him up and ran back into the house. “Mike, we’re alive,” I whispered to him with my back to the closed door, my eyes still spangled from being outside. His black button eyes blinked at me. He fidgeted to freedom and trotted over to his food sack. It was empty after I drunkenly poured the entire contents on the floor last night, so Mike could die happy. I grabbed Kevin’s pork rinds bag and poured the rest on the floor for Mike’s celebratory breakfast. I began to chug a jar of boiled water, carelessly dribbling some on my shirt until I stopped to inhale deeply and leaned over the countertop. I took another look at Kevin. What are we going to do about Kevin? I threw down some newspaper to soak up the spilled water. The paper on the floor began to water blur the ink. “Global Scientists Confirm All Attempts to Stop Collision Have Failed,” the murky headline read.
I grabbed my bra that was draped over the back of the chair. I put it on under my t-shirt, feeling newly modest in case Kevin woke up. He had seen these boobs a dozen times over, but he was no longer welcome to viewership. My mind began to wonder if some sort of rapture had occurred. All the Christians got sucked up and left the losers behind. That didn’t explain why the Earth was still intact, though. I tried to recall the Sunday School lesson about the fiery rapture beast when I remembered the gun Kevin stole from an abandoned sports store. I pulled it out from underneath the sink and perched myself back in the same chair I had previously waited for something to happen to us.
I finally heard Kevin shift around on the couch and I met his eyes when they opened. “Are we alive?” he rasped, little confusion or shock on his face with a slow yawn. He had this remarkable ability to benignly operate his life at the dullest bare minimum. The fact that he could oversleep for the end of the world, or lack thereof, was pathetically typical. He propped himself up on his elbows and looked at me, “What’s going on?”
“I am pretty certain we didn’t die last night,” I said.
“I guess the collision time estimation was off. Of course, they can’t even get that right,” he said, as though the weatherman reported no chance of rain and then received an afternoon sprinkle. He reached for what was left of his pill collection.
“No, there is nothing in the sky anymore either,” I corrected him. I hoped this might bait a reaction, but he just fell back on the couch and rubbed his hands over his face.
“Now what are we supposed to do?” he said.
“We are not doing anything,” I said. “You’re leaving.” He froze with his hands still on his face.
“What are you talking about?” he asked through his fingers, his degree of hangover evident by the exhausted confusion in his voice.
“I am saying I want you to leave,” I said. Finally, he jolted up.
“We just spent the end of the world together. You were going to die with me,” he said.
His voice trembled. Again, I felt embarrassed, but everything continued spinning on its axis.
“Yeah,” I said flatly as I walked to get another glass of water. “And we were not going to die together. You passed out early last night and I stayed up staring out the window alone,” I said. Kevin bent over to grab his pants and shimmied them up his legs. I remember the first time he did that after we slept together. I wasn’t upset that it happened, but I wasn’t happy either. It was just something that I did. The only thing I was mad about afterwards was how little I enjoyed it and how much he did. But now, he wasn’t pulling up his pants in joy; rather, in agitation.
“You are just being emotional because things are crazy right now,” he said. “I’m not leaving you. We love each other.”
“Yes, you are,” I said, still in my affectless tone.
He stood there silent with his head tilted, as though he was waiting for me to come to my senses. I stared back until I broke him, “You are a cold miserable bitch, you know that?” Nothing back from me. He hastily started to grab his things scattered around our former doomsday den. He yelled with each movement, but I only registered the sound, not the words. I waited until he walked to the door, and then I followed him. “Where am I supposed to go?” he asked as he turned around to show me his lost eyes.
“Kevin, you have an apartment,” I said and shut the door. After a moment of hearing no movement, I opened the door where Kevin still stood. He started to smile before I pulled the gun from the back of my shorts and said, “Fucking leave, Kevin.”
“Jesus,” he yelled as he jumped back. I slammed the door and locked it. I set down the gun and I felt adrenaline flood my stomach as I started to laugh. I slid to the floor where Mike came to me. I picked him up and placed him between my bent knees and face. My cheeks pushed into the soft fur of his neck. Every time I hugged him, his glow absorbed into my body and rerouted my faulty wiring. I used to cry when I would drink too much and then thought about him dying. I should have known I wasn’t in hell due to Mike’s presence.
The first time I saw Kevin was in a photo on my phone. Swipe left or right to reject or accept this potential suitor. I began to fill the empty bar seats next to me with warm bodies that I could easily pluck out of a photo on the app.
“So, how long have you lived in this city?” Jeremy asked, his glasses were too small for his face.
“Do you have siblings?” Zach asked, he had one long gray hair in his eyebrow.
“What’s the weirdest question you’ve heard on a date?” Thomas asked. He had on flip-
flops.
“They said it wasn’t a threat to our atmosphere,” Kevin said, as he flipped his beer bottle cap. Kevin didn’t really ask questions. Kevin just talked.
“Let’s hope,” I said.
On that first date I ended up going for the third drink. One was obligatory while you got to know each other, a second drink signaled you both were interested in carrying on the conversation. A third drink meant you would likely be kissing or maybe more if the logistics of a location worked out. I continued to drink until my guard was low enough that I would take him home and entangle our bodies long enough to forget we were all going to die. His smile was nice, and his beard gave me the sense that he was open to new ideas and had decent taste in movies.
That morning after our first date, Kevin woke up and kissed me on the lips. As soon as I swung my feet over the bed to collect my clothes, he grabbed my hand. “I have to get ready for work,” is what I said. Please get the fuck out of my house, is what I thought. When he finally got up to leave, he leaned in and kissed me as I tried to shut the door. “I’ll text you later,” he said. I had no intentions of responding later. A text later meant he was convinced we would carry this forward into next week. Then maybe in continuum until we moved in together and I finally agreed to marry him. After that, I would just let it go on and wait the whole thing out. We would be together until the end of our boring lives. Or the end of the world. One in the same.
Kevin lay stretched across the couch, slack-jawed and motionless. He was dead or in a slumber close enough to it. The night before he had mixed a drug cocktail for the final big event. “Do you want any?” he asked as he shook the medical maraca, and his hips gyrated with the rattle beat.
“No, I want to see it happen,” I responded, even though I later managed to drink myself to the state I was trying to wake up from. In the movies the male lead would have said something profound in response, possibly joined my efforts in solidarity. Unaffected by my dramatic response, Kevin threw a handful of colored dots to the back of his throat.
I couldn’t wait to be rid of him, even if it meant my riddance, too. I did try to break up with him once over a text. That was the week the broadcaster announced there were no other efforts that could be done. All missions had failed. Kevin appeared at my door that night sobbing and saying he couldn’t imagine spending our time left without each other. I felt guilty but mostly embarrassed by the front porch display. His snotty heaves and the moths were under the spotlight. I finally let him in, and he never left. There we were in that same room, possibly purgatory.
Whatever realm I was in, it still had hangovers. The sharp light penetrated through my eyes and made my brain feel dried and shriveled. The headache was more evidence that I was still alive. Kevin’s status was still undetermined. Anxiety started to stir in my core. It crept through my bloodstream as I let my thoughts run unchecked. What if nothing has happened? My heart pounded as the complete uncertainty intensified. My dog, Mike, popped his head up from the pile of clothes on the floor that doubled as his bed. He always jumped from my lap when I passed out for his own space to watch me sleep. A good guard dog. I crouched on the ground and teared up as Mike wiggled his sausage shaped figure over to me and licked my face. “Oh, Mike,” I cried, as I wrapped my arms around his tiny body. He squirmed, anticipating I would take him outside before his bladder popped.
I opened the front door and put one foot out, as I held Mike on my hip to shield him from whatever was on the other side of the door. My leg appeared fine, not melted off my body. I crept forward and football tucked Mike into my stomach. I looked up at the sky with a squint, further challenging the sun. I was in a trance seeing the clear blue sky until Mike’s whine knocked me out of it. I set him on the grass but walked my bare legs on both sides of him as a potential shield against this world. The street sat early Sunday morning quiet, but I could not recall the day of the week. It wasn’t supposed to be any day. The nearby highway used to sound like a distant river, but the flow dried up weeks ago. As soon as Mike looked up at me in relief, I snatched him up and ran back into the house. “Mike, we’re alive,” I whispered to him with my back to the closed door, my eyes still spangled from being outside. His black button eyes blinked at me. He fidgeted to freedom and trotted over to his food sack. It was empty after I drunkenly poured the entire contents on the floor last night, so Mike could die happy. I grabbed Kevin’s pork rinds bag and poured the rest on the floor for Mike’s celebratory breakfast. I began to chug a jar of boiled water, carelessly dribbling some on my shirt until I stopped to inhale deeply and leaned over the countertop. I took another look at Kevin. What are we going to do about Kevin? I threw down some newspaper to soak up the spilled water. The paper on the floor began to water blur the ink. “Global Scientists Confirm All Attempts to Stop Collision Have Failed,” the murky headline read.
I grabbed my bra that was draped over the back of the chair. I put it on under my t-shirt, feeling newly modest in case Kevin woke up. He had seen these boobs a dozen times over, but he was no longer welcome to viewership. My mind began to wonder if some sort of rapture had occurred. All the Christians got sucked up and left the losers behind. That didn’t explain why the Earth was still intact, though. I tried to recall the Sunday School lesson about the fiery rapture beast when I remembered the gun Kevin stole from an abandoned sports store. I pulled it out from underneath the sink and perched myself back in the same chair I had previously waited for something to happen to us.
I finally heard Kevin shift around on the couch and I met his eyes when they opened. “Are we alive?” he rasped, little confusion or shock on his face with a slow yawn. He had this remarkable ability to benignly operate his life at the dullest bare minimum. The fact that he could oversleep for the end of the world, or lack thereof, was pathetically typical. He propped himself up on his elbows and looked at me, “What’s going on?”
“I am pretty certain we didn’t die last night,” I said.
“I guess the collision time estimation was off. Of course, they can’t even get that right,” he said, as though the weatherman reported no chance of rain and then received an afternoon sprinkle. He reached for what was left of his pill collection.
“No, there is nothing in the sky anymore either,” I corrected him. I hoped this might bait a reaction, but he just fell back on the couch and rubbed his hands over his face.
“Now what are we supposed to do?” he said.
“We are not doing anything,” I said. “You’re leaving.” He froze with his hands still on his face.
“What are you talking about?” he asked through his fingers, his degree of hangover evident by the exhausted confusion in his voice.
“I am saying I want you to leave,” I said. Finally, he jolted up.
“We just spent the end of the world together. You were going to die with me,” he said.
His voice trembled. Again, I felt embarrassed, but everything continued spinning on its axis.
“Yeah,” I said flatly as I walked to get another glass of water. “And we were not going to die together. You passed out early last night and I stayed up staring out the window alone,” I said. Kevin bent over to grab his pants and shimmied them up his legs. I remember the first time he did that after we slept together. I wasn’t upset that it happened, but I wasn’t happy either. It was just something that I did. The only thing I was mad about afterwards was how little I enjoyed it and how much he did. But now, he wasn’t pulling up his pants in joy; rather, in agitation.
“You are just being emotional because things are crazy right now,” he said. “I’m not leaving you. We love each other.”
“Yes, you are,” I said, still in my affectless tone.
He stood there silent with his head tilted, as though he was waiting for me to come to my senses. I stared back until I broke him, “You are a cold miserable bitch, you know that?” Nothing back from me. He hastily started to grab his things scattered around our former doomsday den. He yelled with each movement, but I only registered the sound, not the words. I waited until he walked to the door, and then I followed him. “Where am I supposed to go?” he asked as he turned around to show me his lost eyes.
“Kevin, you have an apartment,” I said and shut the door. After a moment of hearing no movement, I opened the door where Kevin still stood. He started to smile before I pulled the gun from the back of my shorts and said, “Fucking leave, Kevin.”
“Jesus,” he yelled as he jumped back. I slammed the door and locked it. I set down the gun and I felt adrenaline flood my stomach as I started to laugh. I slid to the floor where Mike came to me. I picked him up and placed him between my bent knees and face. My cheeks pushed into the soft fur of his neck. Every time I hugged him, his glow absorbed into my body and rerouted my faulty wiring. I used to cry when I would drink too much and then thought about him dying. I should have known I wasn’t in hell due to Mike’s presence.
The first time I saw Kevin was in a photo on my phone. Swipe left or right to reject or accept this potential suitor. I began to fill the empty bar seats next to me with warm bodies that I could easily pluck out of a photo on the app.
“So, how long have you lived in this city?” Jeremy asked, his glasses were too small for his face.
“Do you have siblings?” Zach asked, he had one long gray hair in his eyebrow.
“What’s the weirdest question you’ve heard on a date?” Thomas asked. He had on flip-
flops.
“They said it wasn’t a threat to our atmosphere,” Kevin said, as he flipped his beer bottle cap. Kevin didn’t really ask questions. Kevin just talked.
“Let’s hope,” I said.
On that first date I ended up going for the third drink. One was obligatory while you got to know each other, a second drink signaled you both were interested in carrying on the conversation. A third drink meant you would likely be kissing or maybe more if the logistics of a location worked out. I continued to drink until my guard was low enough that I would take him home and entangle our bodies long enough to forget we were all going to die. His smile was nice, and his beard gave me the sense that he was open to new ideas and had decent taste in movies.
That morning after our first date, Kevin woke up and kissed me on the lips. As soon as I swung my feet over the bed to collect my clothes, he grabbed my hand. “I have to get ready for work,” is what I said. Please get the fuck out of my house, is what I thought. When he finally got up to leave, he leaned in and kissed me as I tried to shut the door. “I’ll text you later,” he said. I had no intentions of responding later. A text later meant he was convinced we would carry this forward into next week. Then maybe in continuum until we moved in together and I finally agreed to marry him. After that, I would just let it go on and wait the whole thing out. We would be together until the end of our boring lives. Or the end of the world. One in the same.
Samantha Penturf went to The New School University’s Eugene Lang College and studied journalism and creative writing. She then accidentally stumbled into law school and practiced civil litigation in Austin, Texas for almost a decade. She did continue to write throughout that time; however, it was just for the sake of sanity and having a creative outlet. Currently, she works remote legal projects while pursuing writing and exploring new places.