I read on the internet that soon, maybe next year, there’ll be a heatwave somewhere that will kill thousands of people, because it will last long and it will be hotter than ever, and people won’t be able to cool down or leave, because of power outages and internal combustion engines failing. The rest of the world will only watch from afar and nobody will be able to help, because cars and planes and helicopters won’t work to reach the region, and that scared the hell out of me, because I thought we are doomed, but then I forgot. 

Mom storms into the room like she’s running from something. She sighs, waits for a couple of seconds, and after she catches her breath, she tells us she and dad are getting a divorce. I think I hear my heart breaking into pieces, but it isn’t my heart, it’s the plate I had been holding in my hands. My brother runs to the closet, he comes back and vacuums the floor, then picks up the larger pieces and takes them to the trashcan. He is calm and composed like he had been expecting this. 

I tell my colleague about the climate apocalypse I read about online, and he stares at me for a while, then takes a sip of coffee and looks out of the window. There’s a storm coming, he says but what he means is I talk nonsense. We’d better hurry then and go home early, he tells me, after I remind him of the last storm when a lightning killed a man on the beach, and I think about lightnings, how they could be alien weapons to kill people and save the planet. I say that jokingly but he turns away, he says, oh, that’s creepy, like that’s another story I made up to scare him.

When dad came home late, mom didn’t mind. It didn’t happen often but sometimes he came home after midnight, and mom didn’t speak, didn’t even wait for him. I was the one to ask sometimes why he had been late and he’d casually say, business, and mom always nodded, like it didn’t matter and I could almost see the truth lingering above our heads like a bird everybody in the room tried hard to ignore, only the truth kept growing and growing and growing into a flying monster, and mom would turn around, and she’d whisper in my ear, what you don’t know won’t hurt you.

I’m at the bus stop and it’s pouring with rain. I tell the man beside me about what I read, about how people will die from extreme heat soon, he says, look around, it’s June and it’s raining, then he moves away like I’m contagious. The lady behind him is laughing, she claims that’s fear mongering and that it’s always been hot in June anyway, and I say, not like that, then she sighs like I’m a lost case.

Dad keeps talking about how mom is ungrateful, about how people show their ugly side once they don’t need you, he asks why, why now, and mom doesn’t answer back, she breathes in, she breathes out, like there’s something inside her that wants to come out, but she won’t let it.  While she’s leaving the room, she whispers something, and I think she says, duh, because you have always treated me like shit, but I’m not sure, what I’m sure of is mom always knew, she knew about dad, about how dad cheated on her, but she had chosen to turn a blind eye up until now.

When I tell my husband about what I read, he laughs and says, imagine there’s a wildfire too along with the heat, and oh my, I hadn’t thought about it, and I wonder how you can put out a fire without firefighters coming to your rescue. My husband nods, things are worse than you thought, he says, like it’s not that important, because the tires would melt away before the engines fail, because of the fire, the heat, or both, and I hadn’t thought of that, but it’s legit I guess, and I say, stop, I don’t want to know, stop talking, but he keeps talking, because he sees truth, he accepts truth, and I don’t close my ears, but also I do, I walk to the fridge while he keeps talking, and I ask, when he pauses, what’s for dinner?

Mom dies unexpectedly before the divorce. Another truth unveiled, a small apocalypse, because the word literally means ‘uncovering’ in Greek, like the truth is always revealed at the end, when my brother says mom was sick, that she was very sick, but she ignored the symptoms until it was too late. My brother is a doctor, I had this stupid certainty that what I know is theoretical garbage, he says, that it was about other people, he bows his head like he’s ashamed, and the way I see it, he had the certainty that what he knows would be our shield, because he isn’t stupid but he’s part of the gang, he’s one of us, we let the truth linger above our heads, like the truth is the thing with feathers that will always fly around but will never bother us. I ask why he didn’t tell me. He shrugs and says mom didn’t want me to know, because she didn’t want to frighten me. Then I think that if someone won’t tell you they need help it isn’t because they don’t need you, but because they think you wouldn’t care enough to help, but I forget about it, truth isn’t like hope at all, it asks too much in return, and that’s what we do, we do our best to ignore threats, even each other, because we need normal, we fight for it, and when it kills us, we act surprised, as if we tried hard to catch the thing with feathers but it kept flying away. 

+++

Mileva Anastasiadou is a neurologist, from Athens, Greece and the author of “We Fade With Time” by Alien Buddha Press. A Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best Microfiction and Best Small Fictions nominated writer, her work has been selected for the Best Microfiction anthology 2024 and Wigleaf Top 50 and can be found in many journals, such as the Chestnut Review, New World Writing, Bending Genres, and others.