unnamed story (Part 19)

It had taken a couple of days but eventually there were certain realities that hit home almost simultaneously. The survivors, which sounds much more dramatic than they felt, all awoke with almost identical thoughts; the ones they’d loved were gone.

Fathers and mothers. Sisters and brothers. Life-long friends. They were all gone.

When they finally assembled they were quiet. Gone was the talk of electricity and repopulating the planet. They took turns crying to themselves. Running through everyone that was ever important to them and mourning them.

Each tear was a domino that seemed to set off the next person.

Each person with a different set of dominos. Clay’s started small and then every domino knocked over a larger one in front of it. Soon enormous dominos were falling.

Patti had a series of dominos that were set up to do tricks, except some of the dominos never connected with others and landed without hitting the next. An arial view would reveal that half of the trails ended abruptly.

Denise’s dominos fell gracefully and formed circles and patterns.

Samantha’s mixed metaphors. She let the cards fall where they may except instead of cards they were dominos.

Tina accepted that’s the way the cookie crumbled except her cookies were dominos.

Donna kicked the bucket, if buckets were dominos.

Cindi felt it was time to spill the beans. I think you understand what her beans are.

Dominos were falling all morning and early afternoon and the complete lack of their clicking and clacking, being the metaphors they were, was driving people nuts. They were falling in frontal lobes so not only did they lead to selfishly missing individuals but to empathetic feelings seeing others missing people and nothing stirs things up like empathy.

This domino effect has nothing to do with the game. In the game they are only placed next to each other when their numbers align but this wasn’t a game. They were all connected and it was only coincidence that every one that fell ended up next to a domino of the same number. The ‘they’ in the last sentence meaning the people whose dominos were falling and the ‘every one that fell’ meant the survivors and people they were missing and the metaphorical dominos.

If you can figure that out in one pass you’re not paying much attention. I won’t hold it against you.

As long as I’m losing you I might as well add that the tiles were named dominos due to a resemblance to a kind of carnival costume worn during the Venetian Carnival consisting of a black-hooded robe and a white mask. Put two of the together and they look strikingly like the masks that adorn every high school theater department; comedy and tragedy. Thalia and Melpomene, for those of you looking to be mused.

The day was definitely being monopolized by Mel. Ironic in a story that aspired to be Thalia-heavy.

So they huddled and grieved and retreated to be alone and grieved and played music that tortured them and helped them grieve.

If you think the domino thing was hard to get through then you’ll thank me for summing up the day as briefly as I have.

In fact the only thing that happened that could be accused of moving the story forward was this; at some point Samantha and Jennifer decided to take a drive to the mall. Donna asked to join them and they seemed only too happy to add a third wheel so off they went.

Moments after they left Clay retreated upstairs.

Moments after that Cindi got a text.

Click. Clack.