The End Is Now

Sally was still trying to talk, tears coming down her cheeks. I gestured that I couldn’t hear her. She grabbed her phone and fumbled with the buttons. A second later, my phone vibrated. A text message: wtf im deaf. I texted back: me 2. She wrote: we need help.

She hauled me to my feet and found a safety pin in her bag for my stupid pants. Then we rushed down Mass Ave., looking for someone who could call an ambulance. I still felt jumpy crossing the streets without being able to hear cars or other vehicles coming up behind me. Plus I kept turning to look over my shoulder in case someone ran up behind me. We found a guy up near Commonwealth Ave., but we could see from a distance he was clutching his ears and crying. Same with the half a dozen young people we saw near the boarded-up Urban Outfitters at Mass Ave. and Newbury. They all had blood on their shoulders and were texting each other or using pidgin sign language. They tried to plead for our help with their hands, until they realized we had the same problem.

Everywhere we went, deaf people wigged out. Sally texted me that we needed to get off the streets, that this was going to get ugly. I knew what she meant. Carrie texted me that she was deaf, and I told her to get indoors. Sally and I found bikes and rode back to her house as fast as we could, not stopping for traffic lights or any of the people who tried to flag us down.

Janelle kissed her knees on the sofa, her back heaving. The television showed people, all over the world, with bloody ears. Somewhere an airplane had crashed, and somewhere else a power plant had blown up. There was no newscaster, just words scrolling across the screen:

THE SITUATION IS UNDER CONTROL. STAY TUNED FOR UPDATES. DO NOT GO OUTDOORS. HEARING LOSS APPEARS TO BE WORLDWIDE. DO NOT GO OUTDOORS. AUTHORITIES HAVE NO EXPLANATION. STAY INSIDE.

We went on the internet and read everything we could find. If anyone on the planet could still hear, there was no sign. Every blog, every email group, was full of people freaking out. Only the people who had already been deaf were calm, and they posted teach-yourself-sign-language videos. I knew right away I would never have the patience to learn sign language.

It only took a few hours for people to start speculating. The Pan-Asiatic Ecumen had tested out some weapon. Or the U.S. had. A weapon test had gone wrong, or maybe it had gone right. Someone, somewhere, could still hear and was going to enslave the rest of us. It was the red bandanas. No, it was the anti-war crazies. No, it was the Chinese.

For now, all you could see on television was people wigging out. Trampling each other to death in Shanghai, or throwing themselves off the Brooklyn Bridge. A mob in Cleveland stormed through Shaker Square breaking everything in its path. In a mob of the deaf, how would you know what to do? You’d just have to look at the other mob-members to figure out what they were doing and try to play along. How could anyone talk a deaf mob down? The Cleveland cops didn’t even try, they just broke out the rubber bullets and tear gas.

Day two or three, I got fed up and decided to go to work. By then, we were running out of stuff at Sally’s house, and Janelle and even Sally were starting to get on my nerves. They could feel the vibrations from my fidgeting and the impact when I broke something of theirs, even when they couldn’t see me. And I could feel their grief like a blanket all around me. My thumbs got sore from text-messaging Sally when she was sitting right next to me. I could have just as much of a conversation from long distance. Sally didn’t want me to go out because the television was still full of people thrashing each other, but I said I’d be careful.

I didn’t even know if the convenience store still existed, and nobody had told me to come in to work. But nobody had told me not to, either. And this could be my contribution to society’s continued existence, selling spam and condoms to people. I passed plenty of looted stores on my way down Commonwealth, and people were lighting all sorts of things on fire that were probably terrible for the environment. But when I got to the Store 24, it was still there and in one piece.

I opened it up. It occurred to me that people would have a hard time asking me how much things cost. So I got out the pricing gun and went around making sure every single item in the store had an individual price sticker, even down to the 37-cent instant noodles. After that, I had to learn how to stay alert, because the little new-customer bell was no longer any use to me. An hour or two went by, more boring than anything I’d ever experienced before.