Dare to Shout Love at a Dying City

This could have gone in any number of categories. On reflection, it being a love story, I think it belongs here, in Romance. I hope you enjoy it.

Prudence slumped on her sofa. Lifting her eyes to her image in the large mirror on the wall opposite, she vaguely felt that she should be ashamed of her low mood. Her father had always stressed bravery to his daughters.

"Even if you aren't brave, kitten, pretend you are; nobody can tell the difference."

It was his favourite line.

She smiled at the memory of his love. Suddenly, tears erupted in a waterfall of self-pity. She so missed him! It'd been... how long?

She thought about that through her sniffles. It had eight been months since she'd found her dream job after graduation, across the continent from her family.

It was a great job, really. Well, it had been, before... OK, it paid well, even if the owner had Hands and HR no spine. It paid well, that was the thing. Enough for this rented condo, which she had to admit was nicer than anything she'd ever lived in, even if it was across the continent from her parents and sisters.

She hadn't seen her family-- really seen them -- since they'd dropped her off at the airport. They'd talked several times about a visit, but she'd postponed it again and again -- because overtime, right? To be sure, there'd been FaceTime and Zoom, but even those had ended when the power went off a week ago.

Towards the end, she'd tried to keep the worry and fright from her face when she talked to them. So had they. All of them had failed.

She got up, strode into the bathroom and, using but one square of toilet paper, carefully blew her nose. She ran some cold water -- at least that was still running! -- and splashed it on her face.

Outside came the distant wail of a siren, itself increasingly rare in the past few days. Pru wondered if that was due to less calls for help -- unlikely -- or perhaps police and fire trucks no longer had to worry about traffic now that everybody else was quarantined. Maybe there weren't even police cars and ambulances anymore?

There were soldiers, she knew that, onesent by the government to enforce the round-the-clock iron curfew. The armed figures in the streets were a last desperate attempt to stem the progress of yet another epidemic even now peeling the world.

Four days ago, she'd watched from her seventh-floor balcony as a burst of machine gun fire from a patrol vehicle had without apparent warning executed an elderly couple on the sidewalk. Appalled, she'd ducked low on her balcony as echoes of the gunfire died away, fearing that the soldiers would check for witnesses. Then it occurred to her that the everybody knew, that the shoot-on-sight curfew had been published on every news site she'd seen, announced on posters everywhere.

Below her on the street, the patrol had made no apparent attempt to identify the couple. The soldiers hadn't even gotten out of their vehicle; they'd just driven slowly off, leaving the bodies where they lay. An hour later, a city sanitation department garbage truck had arrived. Two men in biosuits had seized the corpses by their hands and feet and, after swinging them back and forth to build up momentum, heaved them into the hopper, That done, they'd sprayed something -- disinfectant, probably -- onto themselves and onto the ground where the old couple had fallen before getting back into the truck and driving off, leaving only a large dark spot on the sidewalk to mark the end of two more people.

Now nobody went out in the daytime. No matter how hungry you were, your only hope was that the official announcements about upcoming food deliveries would come true. They hadn't so far, but when the option was a summary public execution, most people had become very cautious indeed.

It was in one sense easier at night, but, even so, where would you go? The few shops she could see from her balcony were all either shuttered or else gutted by desperate looters before the soldiers arrived.

Pru put her shoulders back. Bravery. That was the thing. You didn't have to be a soldier or firefighter to be brave. And things could have been much worse. she knew. After the first of the global pandemics years before, she'd quietly built up a stock of supplies - long-lasting food, liquor, drugs, soap, sanitary needs. Most people had done that of course, although nobody would ever openly discuss it or admit to it.

The reports of the new disease had begun a month before. Unlike earlier epidemics, this one gave society no time to react; it seemed to have begun nowhere and everywhere all at once. Her laptop screen was suddenly filled with nothing but red circles scattered across world maps, accusatory acne on a planet yet again found unprepared.

Everybody had thought the governments would've learned, would've been ready, but nothing seemed to work as it should have. Public and private gatherings were banned, most businesses closed, travel forbidden. It had worked before, but not now and nobody knew why.

As country after country, city after city shut their doors, most people withdrew into the familiar routine of self-isolation. Some of course, the very foolish, the insane and the openly foredoomed, entered a frantic round of unrestricted hedonism -- let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!

It was far more than mere eating and drinking, of course. Pru had watched with wide eyes some of the scenes on increasingly candid news sites. Usually, the police arrived to break up such orgiastic gatherings, but it was generally a case of too little, too late.

She herself had never been formally laid off or sent home from her job. One afternoon, she had simply realized that she was the only person left in her office, that the entire floor was deserted. Puzzled, she'd tried to telephone her supervisor and then her  supervisor. There had been no answers and she eventually had just tidied her desk and gone home. Having no keys, she'd left it all unlocked. Once outside the building, she'd stopped and watched as the big glass door slowly closed on her past, then turned and stepped off into her future.

A week later, she'd woke up to find the news sites she normally visited airing only music interspersed with official bulletins. Some alternative sites, blogs mainly, had still showed life around the world, until, one by one, streaming services and platforms had themselves simply gone dark.

She had taken to going for long walks in the daytime, always making sure to stay well away from others. It was on the last of these that she had seen a printed notice stapled to a pole, one announcing a full 24/7 curfew. Martial law was proclaimed as of midnight that day, a military governor appointed for her city and lethal force mandated for anyone found outside for any reason.

It took about six lines of print.

She had walked home very quickly after she'd read that. There had been a duplicate pasted to the front door of her apartment building. Shaking, she had avoided the elevator, walking the seven flights of stairs to her floor. Once inside her apartment, she'd stripped down, put her clothes in the washing machine and took a long, long shower. She hadn't been out of the apartment in almost two weeks now.

At first, she had occupied herself with social media, but those too had soon died. She had had a Kindle reader and, for some reason, movies and documentaries remained on the Net until the very end.

She'd been lying in bed, reading something inconsequential, when she realized how silent it was outside. Putting the reader down, she'd stopped in the bathroom to get a sip of water. When the light wouldn't go on, she'd flipped the switch up and down, faster and faster. She'd pulled open the refrigerator door, saw only darkness before closing it quickly to keep the cold in.

From the balcony, the city was had been dead quiet. No lights were to be seen. To her ears then had come a growing roar, voices rising in frustration and anger and -- above all -- fear. It had lasted a long time before gradually fading. Since then, the silence had been broken only by sirens, dogs barking - and gunshots.

Pru went outside, move a chair so that she could sit in the sun.

Her unconventional building and its duplicate across the way had been experiments, the rental agent had said. Perhaps, she thought, that's why people had shied away from it, making the rent affordable even for someone just entering the job market. The long-term lease even included furnishings. Perfect.

The balconies were all quite large but of curiously irregular shape. The condo board's literature claimed these were to provide and promote individuality. The ceiling or roof above each one angled up from normal ceiling level at the door to almost two stories at their edge, giving the tower an appearance like a column of monstrous ears. The clever design provided not only the impression of endless space, but good privacy as well. Unlike typical apartment balconies separated at best by a short privacy screen, here there was no way to see into another's space without actually climbing out over the iron railing and clambering around a wall.

She had of course ridden the elevator with other residents before everything started to fall apart, but nobody had ever spoken to her. She actually knew nobody in the building, not so much as their names.

It was, she smiled wryly, a good metaphor for her entire time in the city. She'd made a few casual friends but had always been too shy to fit in. She was attractive, she knew that, but she'd never even been asked out on a date. Bad aura?  she wondered sometimes. No, that was just silly, wasn't it?

Yet the stark reality was that she was completely alone in this world. She had no way of knowing if her family out east was even alive. She felt tears rising again at that thought and pushed them down. Focus on the Now,  she told herself sternly.

Boredom had rapidly become a major issue for her, as with everyone else. Like many of her generation, she owned few actual books, depending on her now-dead reader and laptop. She'd had a cheap book of sudoku puzzles, but the easy ones were too easy and the rest impossible. Her only amusement now was sitting on the balcony and watching the world outside.

She had a pair of binoculars and a tripod, leftovers from an abortive birdwatching course. Depending on the weather, she would sit in sun or in shade, watching for hours as the city slowly died.

Fewer dogs were barking these days and almost no babies crying. Two days ago, there had been a major pillar of black smoke to the north, but it eventually blew away. She had no idea what it meant.

Most of the apartments on the sister building had still been vacant when everything came down and most of those had their windows perpetually closed off with blinds.

There were a few exceptions. Most were just normal people, ones no doubt going squirrelly at the same slow rate as Prudence.

She recognized most of them. The weather being hot and air conditioning useless without power, you had a choice between privacy and comfort. Most tended to leave their blinds open most of the time. So did Pru, eventually coming to accept her lack of privacy in the same way she had accepted the lack of space on the subway. At least her bathroom door didn't face the balcony.

There were two little old ladies opposite, a floor below Pru, ones who never appeared in a housecoat or anything the least bit casual. They were always dressed to the nines, even when they appeared with a morning pot of tea to catch the sunrise. She'd waved at them once or twice but they had either not seen her or had decided to ignore her.

A black couple a floor up had impressed Prudence immensely with their clear love for their two small boys. She hadn't seen them for a couple of days and was wondering if she should be worried on their behalf.

A tall young man, perhaps a couple of years older than she, lived directly opposite. His apartment had hockey and baseball posters on the walls. She thought she could almost recognize some of the men depicted, but wasn't sure.

Another couple, Asian, lived a few apartments over and down. They had seemed to quarrel almost constantly since the quarantine had been imposed. Sometimes Pru could hear their harsh tones, even if the words themselves had not carried. On thinking now, Pru realized that she hadn't seen the woman for a day or two, that their apartment had been more-or-less silent. She wondered what that meant, too.

Her eye was caught by movement in the distance, an armoured vehicle passing through an intersection blocks away, beetle-like, its hatches closed. She forced herself not to pull back into the shadows.

Looking around the neighbourhood, she noticed the untended grass was getting longer while the untended flowerbeds were dying for lack of care. There's another metaphor in there somewhere,  she thought to herself.

A stray cat slunk through the bushes by the other apartment building. She watched it as long as it remained in view. Other than the patrols, the people periodically visible opposite and far-off birds, it was the only living creature she'd seen in days.

Eventually, she laid down her binoculars on the table beside her and went back in, frustrated beyond belief at her enforced inactivity.

Inside, she remade an already-perfect bed, then scrubbed the toilet, bathtub and bathroom sink. Again.

Looking for something, anything else to do, she opened her bedroom closet and began to poke inside. She'd already rearranged all her clothes twice, once by season and another by colour.

Leaving the closet door open behind her, she paced back and forth in the apartment. It took her 11 paces to reach the kitchen, eight to go from there to the balcony, six back to the bedroom. She'd once thought of jogging inside to stay in shape -- fifty times around the apartment would be half a mile, more or less -- but when she tried it, the constant turning had made her dizzy and she'd given it up for a bad job.

Eventually, her wanderings led her back to her closet. She stood in front of it, staring. Moving suddenly, she emptied it onto the bed, then replaced her clothes by length, shortest on the left, longest on the right. It took an hour.

Finished, she stepped back and examined her results.

Her eyes were drawn to the midnight-black dress hanging at the very far right. She half-lifted it with one hand, let the soft fabric slither over and between her fingers.

It was her 'lost opportunities' dress, or at least that's what she thought of it as. Purchased in anticipation of her graduation ball, the one it turned out she was never invited to after all, it had been surprisingly cheap and, in the end, the most elegant garment she owned.

She lifted its hanger off the clothes rod and unfastened the spring-clamps holding the dress in place. Stepping to the wall mirror, she smiled as she held it up against her body. On an impulse, she shrugged out of her skirt and t-shirt and pulled it over her head. Tugging at the fabric, she wiggled into it, beginning with the one wrist-length sleeve. Her hands smoothed the fabric down over her hips as she twirled in front of the mirror. The dress hugged her figure like a second skin.

Perhaps somewhat dated now...? No, this would never be out of fashion.

Her right arm and shoulder were bare, their left-hand counterparts covered. A slit in the floor-length skirt showed her left leg to her hip. There was a built-in bra - not,   she thought to herself, that she really needed it, but still...

She twirled again in front of the mirror. The skirt opened just a little, up to her knee. Posing, she took a half step with her left leg, left it there, admired the firm thigh now highlighted.

Did she still have the shoes? Pulling the skirt up over her knees to avoid creasing it, she knelt in the closet, pawed through a pile of shoe boxes.

There! She backed out of the closet and stood up, holding the box almost in triumph.

She'd never worn these either, nor even looked at them since that dismal not-ball night. The smell of new shoe-leather filled her nostrils as she opened the box. A flood of memories came with it, most of which she pushed aside. This wasn't the time.

She hadn't worn heels in... well, a very long time. And never ones like these. Simple black leather pumps with high slender heels, they screamed elegance and had cost her three times what the dress had.

Pru put them on the floor, sat on the edge of the bed and slithered her feet into them before standing up.

Yes, a touch wobbly at first, but she still beamed when she saw herself in the mirror. Such a damned shame...   Her heart sagged at the very real possibility that she might die in this apartment, nobody else having ever having seen this.

She turned, admired her bottom in the mirror for a moment before strutting out into the hallway. 20 paces took her to just inside the balcony. Still in the interior shadows, she paused, leaned against the wall.

The sun cast deep shadows on the balconies of the building opposite, even with their high ceilings. Curiously, most people were inside.

One balcony was occupied. The boy directly opposite sat just inside his door. Smoke from a cigarette or something drifted out through the door to be caught and chased away by the light breeze. Barefooted, the boy's soles rested in the noontime sunshine as if he were trying to tan only them.

An idea crystalized in Prudence's mind.

She whirled on her heels, almost tripped at the sudden movement. In frustration, she shucked them off her feet and almost sprinted inside, back to her bedroom. Peeling herself out of her dress, she hurriedly pulled on her skirt and t-shirt before hunting for a large sketch-pad bestowed on her by an overly-optimistic artistic aunt. Seizing a large Sharpie from a kitchen drawer, she paused for a moment in thought. What apartment? After a moment, she scrawled a note in letters as large as would fit on the paper:

She underlined 'formal' three times.

The boy's feet were still in the sun when she emerged. She waved across the way, the pad held against the wind under one foot.

And again, her arms wild, her hair a halo in the wind.

What if he didn't see her?

In her excitement, she almost jumped up and down to get his attention.

Suddenly, the feet were pulled inside. Her heart pounding as she waited.

He emerged, curiosity on his face, wearing only a faded pair of grey gym shorts.

Beaming, she held up the pad for him to read.

He bent his head over to one shoulder, then straightened up, grinned and whirled his hand in a circle.

She looked at the pad. Of course, the writing was upside-down. Blushing at herself, laughing at her mistake, she spun the pad around and held it up over her head.

The boy too laughed for a few seconds before his face went almost solemn.

Pru sagged. Was he going to say No?  She'd never considered the possibility of him refusing.

Opposite, the boy smiled, raised one hand with his thumb up at the sky. Yes, then.

He raised one finger - wait  - before going back into his apartment. He remerged a moment later with a pad of paper and a pen. He scribbled something on it before holding it up for her inspection.

The pad was smaller than hers and the pen finer; his message was unintelligible. Frustrated, her eyes fell on her binoculars. Raising them to her eyes, she read:

The boy, seeing her lower the glasses, bowed from the waist. The incongruity of a half-naked boy bowing to her in the middle of an epidemic had her burst out laughing. He joined her.