THE DOT

It wasn’t until a friend said something–“What’s that on your hand?”–that she noticed the black dot on the back of her hand.

“Maybe it’s ink.” Though after scrubbing it dozens of times it didn’t wash off.

The skin around it turned pink and then red from all the scrubbing. But the dot remained the same, like a small black hole on the back of her left hand.

It wasn’t huge, but it was gargantuan to her own mind because it hadn’t been there yesterday. She hadn’t noticed it when washing her hands earlier in the day. Yet there it was. A black dot about the size of the end of a mechanical pencil eraser.

A perfect black circle somehow attached to her skin. Unmoving. Unrestrained. Vaguely threatening in all its what-ifs.

What if it’s cancer?

What if it’s benign?

What if it’s malignant?

What if it spreads?

That dot became an inescapable horror as soon as she realized that it wasn’t something separate from her. It was part of her skin.

A new part of her skin that brought with it a creeping, growing sense of dread.

It was the mystery of it all. the unknowingness.

To look at that dot and not know whether it was nothing or the end of her life.

She sleepwalked through the rest of her workday. Then spent her night at home running online searches about skin cancer and how deadly it could be.

She rubbed her thumb over that black dot and wondered if they were going to have to cut off her hand. If she was going to have to go through chemotherapy. If all her hair was going to fall out. If she was going to be sick and vomiting and dealing with it all alone because she had no one in her life to take care of her.

That black dot became a proof of vulnerability. A visual sign that she had no control over her own life and health, only a shallow belief that she was in control.

She was so afraid that she had to take a hot shower to wash off the cold sweat and stop her limbs from trembling.

In just a day, that black dot became the center of her world. And she hated it.

To get to sleep, she drank nearly an entire bottle of wine.

She knew that alcohol was never the answer. Even as she sloppily cried herself to sleep, she knew the wine wasn’t going to help anything.

And maybe it was the wine that made her dream once she fell asleep–passed out–but it definitely blunted her surprise when she found herself having such an odd dream.

Surrounded by darkness. A lack of light and sound so deep that she couldn’t see herself. That she might have thought she didn’t exist if she couldn’t feel herself lifting her arms and moving her feet as she walked forward, searching for anything in the eerie nothingness.

It was near madness to be in such nothingness. Even knowing that it had to be a dream–hoping that it was a dream and that she hadn’t died in her sleep–the absolute blackness and silence made her deeply and absolutely afraid.

She couldn’t hear her own footsteps. Couldn’t hear her own breaths. Her heart beat hard in her chest, but she couldn’t hear it. As though someone had clicked the mute button and silenced the entire world.

She was alone in absolute darkness. Couldn’t hear herself to prove that she was alive.

It felt like she wandered forever. A small eternity that could have been a few minutes, a few hours, a few decades, she didn’t know how long. It just felt like forever in the darkness. The emptiness that had swallowed her up, leaving her to wonder if the world even still existed.

She wondered if that black dot had waited until she fell asleep to expand and cover her whole self. If she had been swallowed up by that dot. Disappeared.

She walked for hours–minutes? Years? Centuries?–and thought that she would always be walking. That she would exist forever in this world without light or sound or sense of being.

But then she saw it.

A mist of golden light. Lingering in the distance. Becoming larger as she ran toward it. Strained to reach it. Desperately willed herself to grasp onto that bit of light.

And as she drew closer, that sparkling golden light took on a vague outline of a shape while still remaining unrecognizable and unrealizable. A shape that she knew belonged to a living creature, while at the same time was nothing that she could identify.

The closer she looked at it, the blurrier her eyes felt.

The light… it stung. She had been in the darkness for so long.

But she was so glad to see it. So desperate to not be so lost and alone.

“Are… are you real?” she asked, and was surprised and relieved to hear her own voice. It was as though being in the presence of that creature of light gave her reality. That without it, before there was light in her world, there was no possibility of being anything.

She knew she was human. That she had thoughts and feelings and memories. But if she couldn’t see herself, hear herself, feel herself touch one hand to another… without that anchor of sense there was no proof that she truly existed as more than just a thought. A wishful desire of being.

“Welcome,” a voice said. But she couldn’t have described what it sounded like. Whether it was male or female or human. Whether it was words or simply a concept of meaning shoved into her mind.

She was simply glad to no longer be alone.

“Where am I? Why am I here?” she asked. “Did you bring me here?”

“I brought you nowhere that you didn’t bring yourself,” the voice said. “This is where you were always going to be. The purpose that you were always meant to fulfill. The reason why you ever existed at all.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You are here. You have the choice. Your world is going to end. Soon.”

She choked on her shock. “The… the world is going to end? Are we all going to die? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Your world is going to end. But you are not going to die. Not yet. But you only have a small amount of time to do what needs to be done.”

“What needs to be done?”

“You can gather supplies. Food and clean water. Clothes. The things a person needs to live in a world without. Gold and jewels that can be traded with others you might find. You have three days to prepare yourself for the end of your world.”

“Three days. The world is going to end in three days.” Panic took her breath away. She trembled and shook, tears filling her eyes. “The world is going to end in THREE DAYS?”

“You are lucky enough to receive this warning,” the golden light creature said. “You have three days days to prepare yourself for the end of your world.”

“How will it happen?” she asked. “An apocalypse? A virus? A natural disaster? Should I fill a backpack and keep it with me? Can I fill my car and have it ready to go? What do I do?”

“You have been given a space.”

“A space?”

“On your hand.”

“That black dot?”

“Yes. That ‘black dot.’ It connects your physical self to this plane of existence. This vast expanse within which you can place anything and everything you would like to save. You touch the dot to put things in. You touch the dot to take things out. You have three days to gather whatever you can before your world will end.”

“Oh, but what…” She didn’t get to complete her train of thought as the dream broke around her. Cracked and shattered and disappeared, leaving her to wake up sweaty and gasping in the messy sheets of her bed.

She jolted up into a seated position, dazedly looking around her bedroom.

Daylight came in through the windows. Morning light. And with it came the relief of escaping a nightmare that had felt too real.

She patted her chest and flopped back on her pillow. “It was just a dream. Just a dream.” She laughed. “Ridiculous. The end of the world? No way.”

She rolled her eyes at her own ridiculous imagination.

That she could find a possible melanoma and immediately dream that she was some kind of chosen one destined to survive the apocalypse. As though a black dot on her skin was some magic portal that would let her survive the end of the world.

She laughed. “So I just touch this dot and touch my pillow and poof! My pillow will disappear,” she joked, touching the dot with the forefinger of her right hand and touching the edge of her pillow with the fingers of her left hand. “Poof!”

The pillow disappeared, leaving her head to bounce against the mattress.

It was an hour later before she managed to dress herself and calm down enough to retain her conscious thoughts. By which time she had poofed away not just her pillow, but her bedside table, a stack of bath towels, a kitchen chair, a tower rack of ceramic mugs, a small trash can, and her couch.

It was then that she began to believe that her dream was real. The world was going to end in three days.

She had three days to gather everything she would need to survive. Because after that, everything would be gone.

She touched the dot and held out her left hand. Thought of a single bath towel from that stack. And gave a giddy laugh when it popped back into existence and fluttered to the floor.

She touched the dot and closed her eyes, concentrating on what it felt like. Trying to sense if there was any kind of magic or something to it.

And with her eyes closed, and her forefinger on the dot, in the darkness of her mind she could see all of the things she had put inside. The towels, minus the one she’d brought back out, the rack of mugs, the bedside table, her pillow. Everything was there, waiting for her to bring them back out.

She opened her eyes and crouched down. Reached out to pick up the towel. Felt it with her hand, half expecting that it would be hot or cold or the fibers would be stiff, changed somehow. But it was the same towel it had always been.

Three days, she thought. I have three days.

She jumped to her feet, leaving the towel on the floor, and hurried to the kitchen. She filled the electric kettle with water and set it to boil.

She grabbed the digital food thermometer off the refrigerator and a mug out of the cupboard, setting both on the counter next to the kettle to wait. She watched the digital display as the temperature of the water raised to 212 degrees Fahrenheit.

The kettle made a musical dinging sound and switched off. She poured boiling water into the mug and inserted the probe of the digital thermometer to check: 212 degrees.

She balanced the digital thermometer in the mug. Then she touched the dot on her left hand with her right forefinger, and touched the handle of the mug with her left forefinger.

The mug of hot water disappeared.

She glanced at the clock on the wall. It was eight-thirty in the morning. Then she walked around her house putting everything inside the dot.

She didn’t know what she was going to need, so she figured she would just take everything. Blankets. Clothes. Furniture. Tools. Books. Electronics and chargers. Everything that she owned. She would keep it all.

Within two hours, the only things left in her house were a few changes of clothes, her everyday purse, her bed, her hygiene products, and the food in her fridge.

And then, at 10:35 a.m., she called out the mug of boiled water.

The digital thermometer that automatically shut off the light after 10-seconds and completely shut off the display after 30-seconds was still lit up. And the temperature read “212 degrees Fahrenheit.”

While it’s in the dot, time doesn’t move, she thought.

And she laughed. Because it meant that if she were to put cooked food inside, it would still be hot and ready to eat when she brought it out.

So she pulled her phone out of her pocket and began opening apps and placing delivery orders from dozens of restaurants. Transferred money from her savings to her checking account and continued placing delivery orders.

Once that was done, she called out one of the kitchen chairs and sat down to continue working.

She went on her favorite shopping app and began ordering anything and everything she thought she might need.

Clothes for all seasons. Boots, gloves, walking and running shoes, packaged underwear, socks, everything she could think of. A camping tent. A camping stove. Tarps, ropes, a bicycle in a box, a mattress in a box, whatever she could think of, all set for next day delivery.

Once she could be sure her orders would arrive the next day, she changed apps to her local department store and began ordering things for next day pickup. She made multiple orders because her car wasn’t big enough to pick everything up in one trip.

By the time the first food deliveries began arriving, she had already spent $15,000 and completely emptied her bank account.

It was stressful to spend so much money. To know that everything she had scrimped and saved was being spent in one extended burst.

She began collecting the arriving restaurant deliveries and put them into the dot. It took hours. Then she lay down on her bed for a nap. She felt drained of energy.

So much had happened in such a brief amount of time. And there was so much she still needed to do.

Three days until the end of the world, she thought, closing her eyes. She was tired but it was hard to sleep. It took her much longer than usual to fall asleep.

She slept for five hours, waking up at nearly 8-o’clock at night. It was dark outside.

She got up and dressed in dark nondescript clothing. She braided her hair then put it in a bun and wrapped it with a scarf, tucking the edges. Then she put on a plain black baseball cap and tucked a black surgical mask into her jacket pocket and left with her keys in her hand.

She felt nervous, but not as afraid as she thought she should be. Like, there was a sense that she could be arrested and end up in jail, but it would only matter because of the time lost. There would be less supplies, and that would be regretful, but she’d already packed up her whole house and had enough food to survive a couple of months.

With the dot, she thought she could survive and thrive whatever happened.

Her car was small, but that didn’t matter. Not for what she was about to do.

She drove to the next town and parked half a mile away as discreetly as she could manage, put on the surgical mask, then walked the rest of the way. She wasn’t 100% sure where cameras were, but she tried her best to avoid surveillance, keeping her head ducked.

In three days it wasn’t going to matter what she did. The world was going to end. None of this was going to matter.

That’s what she told herself before approaching the large department store.

It was 8:35 p.m. and the store was open until 11. She had a little over two hours.

It doesn’t matter if I look suspicious. Being weird isn’t a crime, she told herself. I’m just a weirdo being weird in the store. Unless there’s proof, there’s no crime.

She avoided people as she wandered around the store, touching nearly everything in as casual a way as she could manage. Though it probably looked strange when she’d reach out with her left hand, then touch the back of her hand with her right forefinger. But that was the only way to activate the dot.

She would flip through stacks of clothes, and unnoticed a shirt or two or a pair of pants would disappear from the bottom of the pile. She wandered through the grocery section and gallons of milk would disappear from the back of the cooler, packages of butter and cheese and containers of yogurt would pop out of existence with no sign of how they disappeared.

She wandered through the store, and everywhere that she went things disappeared. And the cameras caught nothing because she wasn’t sticking things in her pocket or tucking things under her clothes. They were simply disappearing without a trace.

She went to the bicycle section and two boxes disappeared from the back of the rack. She went to the camping section and took tents, fishing gear, hunting supplies, cookware.

Everywhere that she went, things disappeared from the middle or bottom of piles or from the back of the racks. Boxes remained at the front of shelves while others disappeared from behind them.

It was oddly exhilarating. She had never felt a desire to steal before, and what she was doing now didn’t feel like stealing at all. It was more like she felt like she was a character in a movie. A dashing and daring adventurer, avoiding looking into the cameras as she touched this or that and magically made them disappear.

She pushed a cart in front of her and occasionally threw something inside as a cover, but the small amount she ended up buying was nothing compared to the massive amount she tucked away into the dot.

When she left, she made a point of opening her jacket to take out the cash money from the inner pocket. Showing the cameras that she didn’t have anything hidden as she fed the bills into the bill collector of the self-checkout machine.

Then she took her receipt and her two store bags and left the store. No sign that she had stolen tens of thousands of dollars worth of stuff.

She caressed the dot on the back of her hand, and when she closed her eyes she could see the massive amounts she had already accumulated. Enough to last her for years. But at the same time not nearly enough.

She walked the opposite direction from where she had parked her car. And once far enough away from the store, she reached into her bags and slipped the things she’d bought into the dot. Then replaced them with a short crowbar, a flathead screwdriver, a hammer, and a spray can of paint.

She felt both excited and afraid. She was doing things completely unlike herself, and it was thrilling to see how far she was willing to go. She had never pushed herself outside of her safety zone.

It felt like she was a stranger to herself, while at the same time she was the most her that she had ever allowed herself to be.

She wandered the nighttime streets committing crime and feeling unstoppable.

It was amazing.

0 – 0 – 0 – 0

The next morning, after hurriedly eating a bowl of cereal, she went online and began searching for quick loans. Ways to get immediate access to money.

It felt like a physical pain, but she sold her house on a sketchy seeming site. But when she gave her banking details, she did receive the promised money.

It was much less than her house was worth, but it was immediately available and that was what she needed since the world was going to end in two days.

After a night of stealing, she wished that she could just steal more. But there were cameras and police and prisons, so it was better to legally buy things as much as possible. And it wasn’t like money was going to mean anything after the end of the world anyway.

With money in her account, she drove from store to store and bought, bought, bought until she was near exhausted. And sometimes she would touch this or that and things would disappear unpaid for into the dot, but mostly it was her own money that she spent. Her own debt that she built and surpassed.

But she couldn’t let herself care because the world was going to end.

She spent the entire day and night going from store to store with trips home in-between to collect the arriving deliveries. It was exhausting, but she could not let herself stop.

To stop was to die.

And she was going to survive the coming end of the world. Whatever she had to do.

She barely ate. Barely slept. There was the sense that the walls were closing in on her. No matter what she did, time was getting away from her.

She thought about telling people that the end of the world was coming, but hesitated and finally decided not to say anything. Nobody would believe her. And the last thing she needed was to have someone worry about her and try to “help” her by having her committed into a hospital.

She wasn’t having a mental breakdown.

She wished she were having a mental breakdown.

But she had the dot on the back of her hand to tell her that things were really happening. She could see things disappear into the dot and could bring them back out again. She could see all those things gathered behind her eyes, the supplies that would let her survive and hopefully thrive after the end of the world.

She felt terrible for all the people that were going to die. But there was nothing she could do for them. Because if she said anything, they weren’t going to believe her.

It hurt to know there was nothing she could do.

She could only keep moving. Keep focused on what she had to do. Force herself to tunnel vision her way forward. It was hard, but she maintained that iron focus every minute that she was awake.

When she tried to sleep, she would cry. Sobbing so helplessly that her body would curl like a shrimp and her pillow would be soaking wet. The weight of what was going to happen made it hard to breathe. But if she didn’t sleep, she could feel herself on the verge of collapse.

She felt exhausted. Physically, mentally, emotionally exhausted.

Knowing that the world was going to end was almost too much for her. It felt like the life was being drained from her body.

Yet she was thankful for the warning she’d received. Grateful for the dot that would help her survive the coming days. Even if the knowing was terrible, it was better than having the end of the world happen with no warning.

She worked herself to exhaustion gathering supplies and downloading survival information off the Internet. The printer she’d bought was a constant screaming sound in the background as she made hardcopies of everything she thought might be useful.

After another late night of stealing anything and everything she thought might be useful, she fell into bed without changing her clothes. She was so exhausted. She barely managed to kick her shoes off before she fell into a nightmare filled sleep.

0 – 0 – 0 – 0

The third day started and she felt hectic. She didn’t know exactly when the end of the world was going to happen (today or tomorrow?), but she knew it could be at any moment. At any second. It could fall upon her between one breath and the next. She had no way of knowing the exact when or how it would happen.

It was terrifying and stressful. And exciting.

It felt as though something new was about to begin. Her entire life was going to change and she would no longer be the same boring her but someone thrilling and new.

Her whole life she had done what she was supposed to do. She’d gone to school and gone to work. She’d walked the path that had been set before her and steadily treaded forward the way she was supposed to without ever once daring to even dream of living a different life.

She’d lived the boring and predictable life she’d been told she was supposed to want. And for the most part she’d never felt a sense of regret. Mostly because she’d never allowed herself to consider living differently.

Yet here she was. Looking down the barrel of an exciting and unpredictable new life. One where she could be anyone she wanted to be, rather than the stereotype of “happiness” she’d forced herself to fit within.

From childhood, she’d lived knowing that she would go to school, then she’d go to work, and she’d get a house and retire someday, and it would all be within the confines of a boxlike existence. She was born, she would work, and that was it; that would be her entire life.

Her life was a checkmark to be fulfilled.

She’d never thought about how unhappy she was. Not until the dot completely changed her perception of her reality.

The world was going to end, and that changed her everything. Forced her to rearrange her every thought process as the future that she’d thought was hers became a figment.

The reality around her was not real. Society and civilization still existed for the moment, but it was all going to come to an end and she knew it. None of it was going to be around or matter.

It was as though she was in a world of ghosts. They were going through the motions of their lives, unaware that their everything had already ended. They could see each other and touch each other, so they thought that they were real. But she knew different.

She knew that the world was going to end. And she was going to live through it. And that was all she could focus on. Herself.

By noon she ran out of money. Her accounts were completely empty. Her credit cards were overdrawn. There was nothing else she could do.

So she went into her empty kitchen and used her remaining saucepan to cook a packet of spicy ramen.

Slurping noodles directly from the pan while standing at the counter reminded her of her childhood. When her mother would make her ramen as a special treat. And they would eat directly from the pot, huffing at the spiciness and the temperature, gobbling down the chewy noodles.

She looked around her empty kitchen and empty house and it felt like saying goodbye to everything she’d known.

She’d put everything she had into the dot and now all she had to do was wait for the end of the world.

She wondered how it was going to happen.

An earthquake? A meteor? An atomic bomb?

She finished the last of the noodles and drank the soup, not wanting to waste a drop. She had a lot of ramen packs in the dot, but after the end of the world there wouldn’t be any more. Every single thing she’d put into the dot was precious because it would be a last remnant of modern life.

She finished eating and washed the saucepan and her fork, then touched the dot to put them away.

Nothing happened.

She furrowed her brow and tried again.

Nothing happened. The saucepan and the fork remained in front of her.

Over and over, she tried again and again, and nothing happened.

Then, with a growing sense of panic and disbelief, she tried to take something out of the dot. And while she could SEE the things inside, nothing came out.

And she didn’t know what to do. Didn’t know what to feel.

Didn’t know how to process the overwhelming frantic panic that overtook her.

“The world is going to end. The world is going to end,” she said, over and over again. Then realized. “Your world is going to end.”

That voice wherever it came from and wherever it was, it hadn’t said that the world was going to end for everyone. It had said that her world was going to end.

She looked around her empty her house. Thought about her empty bank accounts. The mountain of debt she had built. Remembered that even the house had been sold.

And she began to laugh, an out-of-control hysterical scream of a laugh. It burst out of her so hard that she couldn’t breathe. It hurt her throat. Made her diaphragm ache. Yet she couldn’t stop laughing. Choking and crying as she laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

Then she was running. Didn’t know where she was going, but knew that she had to get out. Had to get away from herself.

Burst out through the front door and ran down the front steps, nearly tripping and falling until she caught herself on the railing, but didn’t stop. She ran down the driveway and into the street, running away from the house that was no longer hers. Ignored the car that had to swerve to keep from hitting her and the honking of horns.

She ran wildly down the street, scream-laughing the whole way, her mind–her world!–completely broken. Destroyed.

Ran until her legs seemed to turn to rubber from exhaustion and they flailed out from under her control and she fell, barely catching herself with her hands to keep her face from hitting the ground. Her knees and palms stung and there was blood and her right wrist may have been broken, but she didn’t care.

Because she saw the back of her left hand.

And the dot was gone.

Disappeared as though it had never been there.

And maybe it hadn’t ever been there? Maybe she had gone crazy? Had sunk so deep into delusion that she didn’t even know what she had been doing for the last few days?

But for sure her world was ended. Her comfortable life destroyed. Her financial security gone.

And the things she had done those nights when she had thought there would be no consequences for her actions? The crimes she had barely done anything to hide as she’d committed them?

Terror made her cry more than the pain in her knees and hands. The growing awareness that if the world didn’t end, she would have to face the consequences of the things she had done.

She wanted to get up. Wanted to keep running. Knew that she needed to get somewhere where she could think and plan if she wanted to get away. But her legs hurt so bad. And she was so tired.

She’d worn herself to exhaustion over the last few days. Had barely eaten or slept. She had nearly been to the point of collapse even before her mad dash, and now she was so tired that she could barely roll over on her back much less climb to her feet.

I’m fucked, she thought. And then she screamed, “Fuck!” And she kept on screaming, mumbling, cursing as loudly as she could, kicking her heels and wailing with her rage and despair. Her utter awareness that her world was over.

Then the police were there. Someone must have called them. And they spoke nicely, but their hands were firm, and she was not getting away. They pulled her up, half letting her walk, but mostly carrying her to the police car.

And she didn’t notice the golden ring that separated from her body and fell to the ground with a tiny tink, tink of a sound. Didn’t see it roll along the road and off to one side, burying itself in some leaves.

She was too busy focusing on the reality of her situation.

The whole world was not going to end. She was not going to be some miraculous survivor with a lifetime of supplies letting her live in luxury while everyone else succumbed to the horrors of the end times.

With a crowd of people watching, she was put in the police car and taken away. Never to return to the life she once had. Her previous world ended…

/END

~Harper Kingsley

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