THE DUST

A story about an apocalypse I wrote a few years back.  Nothing to do with the current virus.

The second last thing the man on the TV had said was that the Dust would arrive in Sally’s village in less than an hour.  Sally sighed and glanced around her living room. Writing her name on the dust that had gathered on her chair’s arm, she wondered, and not for the first time, why was it that the TV was always behind the times. 

Of course the man hadn’t actually mentioned Sally’s village by name, not with Edinburgh only ten minutes up the dual carriageway. That was without the traffic of course bumper to bumper.

Today you could have made it in ten minutes, Sally reckoned. Maybe less.

How ironic Sally thought. The Dust had done what years of planning couldn’t. 

No Sally’s village hadn’t been mentioned just lumped in with Edinburgh as usual.

This annoyed her as it always did.  Her village had just as much right to get a mention as any city.

She started to cough and could only stop herself when she stood up, stretched her neck, as tight as its sixty seven years would stretch, and coughed out a cloud of dust.  Then she pressed her lips as tight as she could manage, but she felt the dust gather and wait until she breathed, or climb up towards her nose.

Grit scratched at the back of her throat. The feeling of having to cough or choke was overwhelming.

She coughed, thought again of what was the last thing the man on the TV had said.  

‘If anyone is left. Get out now.’

Silly man. 

It was the last thing the man had said for right after the TV had crackled and died.

Sally had smiled at that. Better off without it anyway. 

She’d pulled the Hoover out of the cupboard then and back and forth she’d gone, first the living room; then into her own room; and then the hall. 

When she’d switched the Hoover off and glanced around she’d sighed, and choked, and had had to sit down in her favourite chair.

She was fighting a losing battle. Then she’d thought of her mother and how when Sally had been a young girl everything had been spic and span.  Sally too: not a hair out of place, or a crease anywhere to be seen on her school uniform.  Sally thought of some of the other houses she’d been in.  Places a tip. How could anyone live like that, clothes all over the places, dished left and unwashed? 

Busy or not you have to have pride in your own little place.  In yourself.  You never knew who was going to pop in.  That’s why she reckoned she had never married. Imagine the mess a man would make.  She had only to think of her father trailing through their house with his mud splattered boots.  It had made her mother weep.

Sally stood now in her own living room, and for the first time since it all started, she felt the tears.  She wiped them away. Her mother would have been ashamed of her.  Her mother would have hovered and hovered until every bit of dust was obliterated and wouldn’t dare come back again.

Sally flicked the Hoover back on, but instantly the socket crackled, choked, smothered to death.

Sally coughed and choked back the rise in her throat.   Then it came again. This time it spilled out over her lips and down her chin.

Sally took out the hankie from up her cardigan sleep and wiped her lips and chin.

 The hankie was saturated a flowing red that dripped onto her wrist.

Sally walked slowly into the bathroom and discarding the hankie down the toilet she washed her mouth and face and hands. She watched the blood swirl pale when mixed with the water. She watched it even paler and grainy as it mixed with the dust that covered the sink.

Sally muttered. 

‘ An hour indeed.’

Then she made her way through to the kitchen and put on the kettle, filled a cup with a spoonful of instant coffee, and then just a touch of semi skimmed milk.

She paused at the sugar. No she had promised herself. No more sugar.

Just like the living room, TV, and the bathroom sink, the kitchen was covered with a fine, almost invisible layer of silver looking dust. 

The kettle died but Sally poured the lukewarm water into the cup anyway and drank.

She choked spraying the coffee all over the work surface. The liquid cut patterns in the dust. The cup, the coffee, the milk gleamed silver in the sun blurring the kitchen window.

The whole kitchen gleamed and Sally for a moment thought that it was exactly the shade she had been looking for.  Now if only there was more time she could gut the place.  New cupboards. She was always looking for more space.

Still, maybe not.  She liked her old kitchen.  And she had all the space she needed.

Sally choked and threw up a rainbow of red and silver onto the kitchen floor.

This time her eyes watered and she couldn’t stop them.

She liked her old kitchen and it was no longer hers.

 Searching underneath the sink she found the cleaner and she scrubbed and scrubbed but all she did was move the dust to another place. And then more replaced it.

Her kitchen was gone.

Like a Saturday night drunk she staggered through to the living room, bouncing off the walls, coughing up more and more silvery red as she went.

The living room glittered and shone as Sally straightened and walked as steadily as she could manage to her favourite chair.

With an effort and her chest racking she picked up her book, wiped the dust the best she could, and settled her self, like she always did this time in the evening.  She read half a sentence and then glanced out the living room window. It was covered in the silvery mist.  Like early morning, thought Sally, as she could just make out a huge cloud rise above the hills less than half a mile from her house.

She went back to her book, realised that she had already read it before once upon a time.

She knew the ending. Still she read on, and waited.