When the Sun Went Out

I can’t really start with the exact moment, when the sun disappeared from the sky.

For weeks beforehand we knew that something had gone terribly wrong, as the light grew fainter, and the days got colder with each one that passed.

So let us begin about 2 weeks before everything finally went to shit, the day before they announced in the news that something was Wrong with a capital W.

Where I lived, the schools had already been closed for about a month, as the growing cold had beaten out the school buildings’ limited heating systems, and the school board’s limited budgets for doing something about it. Children were kept home much like covid-times, with their classes meeting online, and teachers struggling to keep distracted kids on-task.

I think that on some level, the children subconsciously knew that this was something more than a pandemic. Whether it was the adults’ distraction, or the creeping chill that nibbled at their little fingers, they were probably the first ones to realise that it was all downhill from here.

As adults we knew that things were serious, but I think that we kept trying to convince ourselves that this would be like every other speed-bump in the progress of humanity. So much had been overcome, why would this be any different?

I had been working for about three years by this point - despite a degree in English Lit and Ancient History, I was stacking the shelves and serving the customers of our local book store and cafe, “Hooked on Books”.

Covid had actually helped us some, as people were inspired to shop local - the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, and the bookseller. So we bent over backwards trying to keep our shelves filled with books that were different and interesting enough to draw their attention, but familiar enough to keep them coming back.

By that last couple of weeks though, people had pretty much given up on reading. Even without an official announcement that the end was nigh, we had all started to feel it in our waters. It was like an itch that couldn’t be scratched, a craving that couldn’t be satisfied, no matter how much chocolate ice cream we poured down our throats.

My boss refused to give up, though. She made sure that from 7am to 7pm there was someone working the coffee machine (although we’d long since run out of fresh milk, and were resorting to the powdered kind), and that someone was manning the post behind the book counter.

The internet had gotten spotty, so I couldn’t even reliably waste my time with online quizzes or gossip columns while I waited for someone to come to me for assistance. I had previously mastered an expression of focused annoyance that I would direct at the computer monitor, so that my colleague on the food side of the business would think I was too busy to come and help serve their (even pre-apocalypse) entitled and ungrateful customers.

By this point the expression was moot. My compatriot and I stood at opposite counters, wiping away non-existent dust, and awaited customers who were unlikely to join us. All the conversational options had been used up, so we could go a whole day without saying more than “Hi” and “See you tomorrow”.

It was one such day, about three days before the sun went out, that the funniest little old lady hobbled into the store.

The bell over the door rang with a firm “ding a ling”, reminding me that I had meant to pull it down. Until today it had only served as a sad reminder of busier times, each time that I went out to bring in the racks of greeting cards, and buckets of almost-dead flowers.

It gave me quite the startle, when it rang, I genuinely almost dropped my mug of top-notch espresso mixed with gritty powdered milk.

The woman who walked in was not a regular (such as they still were) but I thought I may have seen her out and about in the neighbourhood in the Times Before. Over what had become all of our standard uniform - long underwear - she wore a gauzy, diaphanous dress of blue and green, shot through with sparkling threads of silver. A floppy knitted hat covered her head, with wisps of grey-blonde hair escaping from underneath.

“Hello my dear,” She smiled, and her voice was so wavering that it almost sounded put-on.

“Good morning ma’am, how can I help?” Best customer service voice, best customer service smile.

“I’m looking for a book I saw here a few months back. I can’t tell you much, but it had a blue cover, and the author’s name started with an A.”

Months back? Jesus. She was lucky I was so desperate for distraction that I was willing to entertain searching for it, instead of telling her to rack off.

“Of course, I’d be glad to help!” My smile so wide, it should crack you’d think. “Can you tell me anything else? Was it fiction, non-fiction? Do you recall where it was in the shop?”

Her eyes crinkled as she searched her memories. One hand was by her temple as if to jump-start her brain, the other waving vaguely in front of her, depicting an image that only she could see.

“It reminded me of something I read when I was a child.” She managed. “Perhaps it was down towards the back, where you keep the books for young people?”

Clearly a regular, then. The kid’s section was in the back corner, with a reading nook that lately had only been visited by myself. After my shift ended and the doors were locked, this was where I’d curl up with a childhood favourite while I pretended that everything was normal and I wasn’t freezing half-to-death in the middle of summer.

“Do you remember how old you were when you read it?”

Many questions and about an hour later, we were no closer to finding this book than we were to discovering the meaning of life.

“Babes, are you sure you’re happy for me to close up?” Tam called from the front. She’d been packed up for half an hour, but when you have the first customer in a week, you feel like you should stay open until they’re done looking.

“All good chook!” I called back. “I’ll see you here tomorrow.”

“Same Bat time...” She smiled.

“...Same Bat channel.” I finished our sign off. “Have a good night, okay?”

I heard the door click as she set the lock to prevent unwanted entries, and I turned back to my customer.

“Now then Wendy, let me just make sure I’m across everything we know about this book.”

She nodded and smiled beatifically from her spot in the armchair in the children’s reading area.

“It has a blue cover,”

Nod.

“And it was written by a woman,”

Nod.

“You’re pretty sure the main character’s name is Margery,”

“Yes!” Her eyes lit up, “That’s why I named my daughter Margaret.”

I smiled as patiently as possible, and rubbed my tired eyes as I tried to visualise the children’s section and the remaining books in it.

“Great, so if you could remember anything about the title, or the author’s name, I can try and do an online search to see if I can narrow down—“

I had opened by eyes expecting to see a fuzzy old lady with too many scarves, still perching on the worn-out armchair that we used to sit in to read stories to the little kids.

Instead, I was faced with a lithe figure, dressed all in black, and the scarves strewn about her on the floor as she stood between me, and the exit.

Before all this, I would have liked to think I was the kind of person who would stand up for themselves if something like this happen. Ask them what the fuck they were doing, who did they think they were?

Instead, I just slumped against the Older Fiction shelves, knocking a copy of Ursula Le Guin’s “Earthsea Quartet” to the floor.

“Oh, well that’s no fun!” The Woman in front of me pouted. Along with her floaty scarves, she had also ditched her floppy hat, and apparently had peeled some very thorough makeup off her face to reveal that she was definitely not the elderly customer I had thought I was being locked inside with.

“I’m... sorry?” I shrugged in her general direction. “If you’re here to rob us, you’re shit out of luck. I haven’t made a sale in the last fortnight. It’s the only reason I was being nice to you in the first place.”

At this point I also noticed the silver knife she was holding in her left hand. Actually, knife undersells it, this was a dagger. A winding blade, and what I could see of the handle had intricate designs of vines and flowers.

She noticed me noticing, and her eyes lit up with laughter. “Ah yes, old Rosie. This was my grandfather’s in the war, an apocalypse seemed like the right time to break her out for one last hurrah.”

“What kind of hurrah are you planning?” I edged backwards. In retrospect moving further into the back corner of the store, making it easier for her to corner me. But it really is a lot easier to criticise your choices after you’ve made them, and seen the outcome.

She moved like a snake would, if it had legs and a knife, undulating toward me

“What do you want?” I demanded. “I’ll help you, whatever you need, just get out of my shop”.

“Oh sweetness,” She smiled gently at me, it almost felt like sympathy. “My little “end of the world” scavenger hunt list doesn’t have any books on it.”

She was standing very close now, the tip of the dagger a hair’s breadth from my throat.

“I-I-I see,” I was scared to swallow the fear in my throat, lest it bring me that little bit closer to the gleaming blade. “W-w-w-hat does it have on it?”

She didn’t answer with words. I felt the knife slide along my collarbone, so light the touch that I couldn’t tell for sure if she had cut me.

I closed my eyes. Just when I had got to the acceptance part of grief when it came to my inevitable demise-by-dead sun, the tables had turned.

With a sudden movement she flicked the blade. For a split-second I thought I would open my eyes to see a flood of blood spilling from my throat.

But when I looked, I saw that the heart-shaped locket I wore around my neck, had dropped softly into her black-gloved hand.

“Lucky you,” The woman smiled at me, with a hit of regret. “I had two things left, and a locket is one of them.”

She turned and stalked out of the children’s section. I heard her unlatch the door and the tinkle of the bell as it opened, and closed again.

I would have run to close and re-lock it, but I was too busy sitting, shaking, in a puddle of my own piss, on the grass green carpet.

Even though the world would end in one week, six days, eleven hours, and fifty-three minutes, I would never be so scared for the rest of my life.