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His heart spins. He looks down, there’s nothing but decay where he would be if he were to jump off the roof. A pile of bodies and remains, and around, scattered, still moving, the ones having lost their own heads. Their heads don’t spin anymore, they merely feel anything. It’s insanity, he reminds himself.
“How long does it take, to die I mean?”
“It depends.”
“On what?”
“Many things.”
It’s a feeling slowly growing, taking over everything else. It’s a sensation more than an emotion, ever so slowly filling the veins and the nerves and the muscles, making the skin tingle ever so slightly, bubbling, snaking its way through every centimeter of flesh and pulsing heartbeat. At least it’s something. At least, it’s a sensation he can still describe with his own words, all researched thoroughly, he doesn’t want to forget them. He doesn’t think he’s caught it yet. He doesn’t even know how it spreads. It has affected everyone else, he wonders when he will be next.
“What does it depend on?”
“Well, it depends on the amount of blood per minute you’re losing, but it also depends on your wounds, on your heartrate, even on your mental state. It really all depends, there’s no textbook answer you can copy off of. It’s all a kind of hazard and chance I guess.”
“So, luck.”
“Right, luck.”
“I’ve never had luck before.”
His feet are dangling off into nothingness. When he positions himself perfectly, closes his own perfect eye, he can get the perfect vision of him crushing under the sole of his foot the pile of bodies and remains. There are still the affected ones walking around, wandering with no goal in mind, and Jimin wonders when they’ll starve.
“And from other causes, how long?”
“Like, dehydration, starvation, electrocution, drowning, burning, radiation and all that?”
“Yeah, all that.”
“Then I guess it would also depend on the circumstances. If it’s dehydration, some people die within a week, other within, I don’t know, maybe two? From starvation I know it takes longer than that. Maybe a month if you’re lucky.”
“I don’t have any luck.”
“Right. Then, if you’re not lucky, I would say three weeks. If you’re desperate, maybe two, two and a half. It depends.”
“It all depends.”
“Yeah.”
If he wiggles his toes, he can see himself crushing the people that still move on the edge of the pile. They seem to be fighting for something, but he can’t imagine for what. When senile or mad, there’s nothing you can really fight. Maybe they’re remembering something saddening or infuriating, he wouldn’t know what, he isn’t in their heads. Their thoughtless, directionless, reasonless heads. If he wiggles his toes, he crushes them and ends their suffering, if there’s any suffering to begin with, when you become mad.
“And the rest? What of that?”
“Hum, electrocution is mainly on the spot I would say. Like, tchac, hits you just like that. Maybe it’s faster if you’re in water. Oh, drowning, it depends too. On your lung capacity, on the heights and speed of your jump, on maybe your position underwater, the torrent of the water, the temperature, too. Imagine if you get yourself stuck under, you know, a frozen lake. That would be pretty horrific to live through. I’m sure someone has died that way.”
“Cold and suffocating. That would be just my luck.”
“You’re not that unlucky.”
“I don’t know, maybe.”
He pushes himself a little more towards the edge, imagines himself walking all over the world. A giant, gargantuan monster crushing the people unlucky enough to find themselves aimlessly wandering on his path. He would destroy buildings, ravage entire cities, watch as the lives under his weight would become nothing, a splatter of blood and skin, dust of bones and remains, with no scream to escape through their torn throats. There would be nothing of that, a painless way to go, with no fear to feel right before that, because the mads never look up.
“And burning and radiating?”
“Well, burning would be terrible, I just know. The heat enough to melt your skin and carbonize your flesh but not enough to kill you instantly. Just… Roasted alive, I’m guessing, or boiled like a crab, but I’ve heard that most people die from asphyxiation before burning whole. Except, like, people who died from lava, maybe. Just- Don’t throw yourself in a volcano. I would say it’s pretty instantaneous but still.”
“And radiation?”
“Oh, this one has to be the worst. Just, so slowly feeling your whole self falling apart. I heard it’s just your molecules detaching themselves from one another, so you’re basically like a huge puzzle getting undone. One after the other, the particles that make you alive falling to nothing and you’re just there, still alive, feeling it happening with so much detail. Your skin falling in chunks, your organs slowly failing, your flesh basically rotting, always open wounds and all that. I’ve heard of a guy that’s survived for months after getting radiated, and the doctors kept him alive and all that. In the end he was just bones and organs and still alive, they still didn’t want to let him die.”
“That’s… That’s inhumane.”
“Yeah. They could have let him off. It’s the least they could have done.”
“Do you think they’ve gone mad too?”
“The doctors? Nah, they’ve died quite a while ago I think.”
“I hope they suffered.”
“I hope too. It’s the least they could have done.”
When he imagines death, he imagines it painful, never anything else. He imagines it so painful, in fact, that he imagines himself dying from the shock of death before dying of death itself, whatever that means. He imagines something else, stops himself from wiggling his toes and moving his feet. Instead, he observes the people down on the street. They look like ants yet don’t act like that. Ants have a meaning, a destination in mind, a clear idea of the path they have to take engraved in their heads. The people down there, they have nothing but madness in their whole body. Really, they don’t even have a head to think. Or maybe they do, and it’s all in shambles, inside. A fire roasting their brains, a torrent drowning their thoughts, an electrical shock buzzing all throughout their skulls, a radiation like no other detaching everything from everything. He hopes they at least can’t feel anything.
“What’s death like?”
“Well, it depends. On how you die, I mean. But I’ve heard it’s kind of peaceful. It’s good. I used to think end of the world movies were kind of clichés; how can you be so peaceful when you might die at any moment?”
“It’s all about the scenario and character development.”
“But then again, they mostly have fast deaths in those movies. It’s all in the time it takes and the pain you’re in.
“Maybe I’ll die delirious then.”
“See, if we were in an end of the world movie, the plot twist would be that you’re already delirious. I mean, you’re asking a lot of questions, only delirious people ask a lot of questions, ‘cause they never know what will happen to them. When you become mad, you never know if what you’re facing is real or not, so I guess that would be a pretty painful way to die. A mental torture. You feel yourself becoming mad until you don’t even know that you’ve become mad. And then, then you have a bunch of moments during which you’re awake and aware and these are the worst moments, because you can’t help yourself but to cry. What have you done? What are you thinking? Why are you becoming like that? Why can’t you fight it off? There’s nothing you can do than to become mad and that might be why I think it’s the most painful death you can have. You’re better off throwing yourself off the roof, Jimin.”
Jimin thinks for a while. There’s silence, that’s all there is, and so he can think pretty easily. From where he is, feet dangling off, eyes down casted to the ground below, the moaning from the people can’t be heard, even when they scream, their voices taken with the wind. He sees some of them talking to themselves, well, imagines it, they’re too small to really be seen. All he can really see and describe with ease is the color of their hair, the colors of their clothes, and their age. There’s an old man hunched over, surely yelling his old lungs out, and there’s a young child, no older than five, rocking strangely. It looks like a seizure, but it surely isn't. There wasn’t the word “seizure” in the list of symptoms written on the website back when internet was still working. No, there was only dementia, and everything that comes with it.
“How does it feel, then, jumping off a roof?”
“I heard it’s like a dream but not a good one. When you’re falling, you’re following gravity down to the F and the Gm and the r² and everything else I’ve never understood but read. There’s this idea of force and pull and all that, but you just have to know that basically, you’re weightless and free falling, and some say it’s scary, others say it’s freeing, it all depends on the context of why you’re falling.”
“The context?”
“Well, maybe you’ve been pushed by someone you trusted, or maybe your own nemesis. Maybe it’s an accident and you’ve just slipped. Maybe you’re curious and you’ve wanted to try but didn’t think of the consequences. Maybe you’re suicidal and in this case, you find yourself smiling or regretting. Again, it all depends, but I wouldn’t really say it’s hazard or luck this time.”
“Good, I’ve never had any of that.”
“Luck? Yeah, I know that, Jimin.”
“Sorry, I never know what else to say. I’m kind of confused about the whole thing.”
“Well you could always ask me more questions.”
He doesn’t remember how he’s gotten himself there, on the edge of the roof, but as he keeps on looking down, he thinks it might have been to run away from all those wandering masses of people that have already gone mad. Dementia, he thinks, is a mystery on its own, a study they should have worked on before, sooner at least. But then again, he finds them excuses, doesn’t like to just blame the people around him, doesn’t want to put the blame on anyone, at least. No one knew it would become this bad, and to say that they still don’t know how it all spreads, Jimin thinks of it more as a horror story than a real-life scenario. Maybe he would have preferred them all to become zombies. It doesn’t feel that far-fetched now.
“What is there after death?”
“Why, you planning on it?”
“I mean-”
“I’m joking, I don’t really want you to leave me now, you know. I’m starting to think we could commence a romance story, like, people meeting right when the world crumbles down to nothing and we try to survive together. That would be a good story, right? Hey, don’t look at me like that, it’s just a thought.”
“So, dying?”
“Right, dying. Dying, hum, maybe more the afterlife? Yeah, the afterlife, it really depends on what you believe in. If you’re religious there’s plenty of choice. Paradise, reincarnation, the endless punishment you’ll have to face if you’ve eaten dairy once in your lifetime. There are some cults that say you’ll be sent to another planet, others that you’ll become a god basically, and others that say you’ll find yourself under ground but not buried, it’s more of a kind of society of sorts, right under our feet but just for the few believers they have. There’s always a hefty price for that though. Sexual pleasure, most of your money, your individuality and your free-thinking. In some cases it’s kind of costly to die and join the afterlife. But see it this way: with the apocalypse, you don’t have to pay for funerals and coffin and the whole ceremony that goes with it. You just lay on the ground and feed the birds I guess.”
“And if I don’t believe in anything?”
“Then I guess it’s just nothing. I’ve heard it’s kind of life sleeping but dreamless, and you can never wake up. It’s scary to think about when you really take the time to think. It’s basically dying and waiting, but you don’t feel yourself waiting. You feel nothing. And you’ll miss out on everything else. On the innovation and progress of technology and science, on the conquest of space, on the people that have frozen just their heads waking up -though I don’t really know how they’ll wake up now- and you’ll miss out on the end of the world. Well, I guess you’re witnessing it right now, but I mean, the Earth dying. That’s kind of unfair when you really think about it, she doesn’t have to pay for her coffin and the ceremony thingy, she’s so privileged.”
Jimin laughs, then, as he keeps on looking down. By his right Jeongguk is sulking, cheeks puffed, mouth in a pout. Jimin would find it ridiculous to sulk about that were they not witnessing the world ending right under their dangling feet. He guesses there’s not really any thing to care about when there’s nothing else to do than wait everything out. For a cure to be found, for dementia to take over their minds, for their bodies to die before any of that. He simply hopes the virus isn’t airborne, or they could already be losing their heads right at this moment. That wouldn’t really surprise him. He would still be saddened, but not surprised. He wouldn’t be the best protagonist, surely there’s someone fighting for their life out there, a real hero.
“Would you be happy?”
“If the Earth had to pay for her own funerals?”
“No, stupid. Would you be happy if you were to die right now?”
“Well, I mean, you’re not the worst company I could have had. I could have found myself alone with a grumpy guy or a baby or something like that.”
“A baby would be cute, though.”
“Absolutely not. Can you imagine what dementia on a baby would be like? The little guy has nothing to forget and yet it would still feel like it’s forgetting something. And then it would see what babies are scared of, like monsters straight out of a horror show and it would continuously cry and render me deaf. But the worst is, it wouldn’t be eating, and I don’t want to see a baby die of starvation and dehydration, that would be- That would be worst than anything else. An old person wouldn’t be that bad, they’ve lived a full life, have plenty of memories to forget and others to relive constantly, and maybe they would see themselves as young again. I’ve heard that when dementia hits you, you can become so confused that you see yourself as young again. It’s terrible, yes, mostly for the people around you, but… Maybe it’s freeing in a way. When you’re young you don’t really think about death. You think about your studies or your work or your romantic adventures or the shows you’re gonna watch or the stories you’re gonna read, you don’t really think about death and all the horrors you can live through. So maybe… Maybe, except from the short moments of awareness, they’re not really scared of death.”
Jimin looks down again, away from Jeongguk. Down, past his dangling feet, where the people are. The wandering masses, the pile of bodies and remains. Where the mad are getting madder, where the senile are getting worse, where the babies are surely wailing their lungs out, no mother to hold them in their final cries. When he blinks he sees tears falling, his own, cascading down to the ground. Maybe they’ll evaporate before they fully go down, maybe they’ll fall right on the head of a mad passerby. Maybe then they’ll think back on a better or worse time, back when it was raining, a memory intimately tied to the specific weather or sensation of water. Jimin hopes it brings them at least a short moment of hope and joy, a fond memory, a moment of relief in their fall to disgrace and madness.
“What does it feel like, to have dementia?”
“… I don’t really know.”
“But you’ve heard of so many things before.”
“Well, all I know is that it’s not really dementia. It’s kind of like dementia, but it isn’t really like that. Dementia shouldn’t be contagious and you mostly get it when you become old. It’s a kind of degeneration linked to old age, and it’s kind of a broad term. You have all kinds of dementia, like Alzheimer and Parkinson, those are the more, ah, well-known? Or common. Dementia is kind of an everything-term, a generalization, I think. From- from what I’ve heard anyway.”
“Were we always meant to catch it?”
“No, it’s not a normal phase of aging, you’re not supposed to have it, even less when you’re young. This… What we’re witnessing right now, it’s a virus but it’s so strange compared to what we thought would be a virus, you know. I imagined something gory or bloody like the plague or the flu or, I don’t know, even zombies, that would have at least kept us awake. This, it’s slow-paced and it’s uncurable from the start, we know we’re doomed. Whatever we do, we can’t cure or heal it, so it’s basically… Yeah, the end of the world. You slowly forget and get confused and, I don’t know, everything that goes with it, but with this one it’s kind of worse, because there’s no one to help you, everyone’s become as mad as you are, so you just wander aimlessly until you fall off a cliff or starve or kill someone and then you realize everything you’ve done for a moment, and it’s just a nightmare you’re living through, alive, breathing, and you can never get away from it.”
“I should jump, then, no?”
“I’m here to take care of you if you become mad.”
“I wouldn’t want to impose.”
“You’ve already stolen half of my food, you’ve imposed enough as it is for us to become roommates, you know.”
“I don’t remember eating any of your food, though. I always had mine.”
“Well we’re sharing, so what’s yours is mine. That’s the rule of being apocalypse roommates and more if affinity.”
Jimin smiles, looks down. There’s agitation on the ground, the ants are moving, he thinks, but when he blinks all is the same, and it’s his head that’s making him see things. He goes to take the water bottle by his side but accidentally knocks it down. He watches it roll away from his reach before it rolls completely off the edge, and Jimin watches it fall down to the ground. Just like his tears it falls until it becomes nothing, and maybe of they weren’t so high, he would have heard the impact. He hopes it has fallen on someone’s head, crushed their skull right to the brain, saved them some days of agony and endless wandering.
“Do you miss your family and friends?”
“It depends. Some days I miss them and I wonder where they are, if they’re still alive and well and if they got the virus. Others, I don’t really think about them, it’s all about what I’ll eat and drink, now that we’ve lost a bottle of fresh water-”
“Sorry, I got a bit, hum, woozy.”
“Dizzy, you mean?”
“Yeah that. Dizzy.”
“Hey, think you caught it?”
“I don’t know, maybe. We never really learned how it spreads. How do you think it does? What if it’s airborne?”
“That would be way too overpowered. An uncurable disease you don’t see coming, a terrible way to die, so much so that you don’t even see yourself dying, and an airborne virus on top of that? That would be kind of cheating if you ask me.”
“Then I won’t ask you.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Nothing.”
“Ah, you’re a good person.”
“Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Not if you’re losing it, now. So please, don’t.”
Jimin laughs once again. From where he is, feet dangling, he searches for the water bottle, hoping it hasn’t lost all of its content, they could do with some more water. But he sees nothing, nothing but a pile of bodies and remains and a wandering crowd, scattered all around, until so far away that he can’t see the end of it. The city is big, so big he has forgotten its name, and Jimin sighs. Far away, he knows, there are people screaming. Out of fear, regret, agony, all from a moment of awareness they surely wish they could keep as it slowly but inevitably slips from their fingers. It’s terrific, he thinks, watching yourself decay and fall into disarray, losing awareness of your surroundings, of your whole existence, forgetting everything you’ve lived through, the moments that have made you who you are today, and remembering what isn’t you anymore, what shouldn’t be you. It’s the self, the wonder of the individual, something he has never cared for until now. Jimin doesn’t want to lose himself, doesn’t want to forget who he is, who he knows, what he knows, everything he had to go through in order to still be alive, in order to become who he is, who they all are. He shakes, becomes dizzier by the second. Down there there is a pile of bodies and remains, and Jimin sees himself amongst it all.
“Is there a way for us not to die?”
“… I don’t think so, Jimin. I’m sorry.”
“But you’ve heard of so much, there has to be a way to just… Not die.”
“Don’t cry, now. You know the answer. I know it more than I’ve heard it, there’s nothing but death at the end. It’s really solemn, the end of life. You know when it’s coming, but not really, yet it’s always on time when it’s due. Well, almost, it really depends on accidents too. But mostly, it comes at one point and that’s it. You die. The end. After that it’s what you want to believe in. Personally I can’t imagine anything after death. I’m stuck, guess I’m too scientific. But maybe there’s something after death and I’ll just wake up and immediately, there’s some dude that’s gonna laugh right in my face telling me I was wrong and because I didn’t believe in it, I’ll have to rot in Hell or something like that. That’s kind of unfair too, you know, they can’t force everyone to think the same way and believe in the same things, that’s impossible. As impossible as running away from death I would say. You can’t really cheat your way through it either. There’s no potion, no save file, no nineth life -cats have always been stupid anyway- so you don’t really have a choice. Now… Now, I would say the only choice you have is how you’ll die. You can let yourself become mad, you can choke or stab or shoot or burn or drown or starve yourself, or you can just… Wait it out. With enough luck you’ll die of old age, whatever that means. There’s always some conditions to that.”
“I’ve never had any luck.”
“I know, Jimin. I know.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
Down there, Jimin wonders why it feels new when it feels too familiar to his liking. He frowns a little then he remembers. Jimin wonders if the people down there have forgotten about the virus, too. If they’ve forgotten everything about the reason behind their aimless wandering, about the pile of bodies and remains, with so many lifeless limbs sticking out, with the smell of rotting flesh and excrements having been released once the muscles were dead. Jimin wonders if, if he were to fall off the edge, the pile of bodies and remains would cushion his fall perfectly and steal him from a fast and relieving death. Jimin wonders, wonders and wonders again until he forgets and wonders once more.
“How do you know when you’re starting to forget?”
“You just… Hum, you don’t remember? Or it’s a bit more complicated than that. When you forget, you also forget that you’ve forgotten something, and do you really forget if there was nothing to forget from the very beginning? I don’t know. I guess you just know, it’s kind of a feeling. Like, it’s haunting. An itching in your brain, kinda. I don’t know, I don’t forget things often. Why, do you?”
“I think. I’m starting to forget things I thought I’d already forgotten, and I’m starting to forget things I thought I would never forget. And then, I’m forgetting what I was trying not to forget and I’m forgetting that I was forgetting something. It’s all crumbling, in my head.”
“…”
“What, nothing to add this time? Are you forgetting something too?”
“…”
“Ah, don’t bother. I’m already confused enough as it is. With enough luck I’ll forget how to breathe.”
“You’ve never had any luck.”
“You’re right.”
He wheezes.
“Don’t- Don’t do that. That’s scary.”
Jimin would laugh, if he weren’t so scared himself. When he looks at Jeongguk, the boy seems scared, too. His eyes wide, his eyebrows in a frown, his lips pursed. There’s a mole right under his mouth, so perfectly placed it’s almost beautiful, and Jimin wonders if he’d forgotten about it, or if he’d never taken the time to see it. Jimin smiles a little, his lips wobbling from fear and worry, before looking down. Down there nothing has changed, and Jimin wonders how much time he has left before forgetting that nothing has changed. The world is still the same. With enough luck, he’ll at least remember there’s a strange pandemic waiting for him to fall.
“I might have to jump.”
“Why now? Why not- Why not later, or even never?”
“I’m really starting to forget everything. I think- I think I’ll forget you, too. I don’t want that to happen. You understand, right? You- You do. Not now, not ever.”
“You know nothing’s coming to get you. I could take care of you.”
“And I’ll get paranoid and kill you in a fit of madness and then what? Even if mad I’ll feel guilty enough to kill myself raw. Bad. That’s not something I want.”
“… I understand.”
“You do?”
“I mean, I don’t- I don’t want you to, hum, die. I know it’s inevitable and all that, but I don’t want that to happen.”
“But I might have to. Jump off, I mean.”
“I know.”
Jimin lets his feet dangle, moves his legs. Surely he looks like a child waiting for his desert or the end of class, enthusiastic about trading Pokemon cards and playing marbles and all that. Really, Jimin is terrified, but even more so of forgetting the reason why. He wishes he could come back in time, even if there are blurs in his memories, even if he cannot associate laughs with faces and faces with laughs, even if he cannot remember neither of those at all. He wishes, at least, that he could remember Jeongguk until the very end.
“… Will I remember you in death?”
“… Do you believe in something?”
“I don’t.”
“Then you might not.”
Jimin spots it, the water bottle, the water shining under the light. It’s golden hour, the sky is yellow, the streets are orange, the blood has dried, the pile of bodies and remains will soon freshen up during the night. He tries to remember how the water bottle has fallen down, doesn’t remember, quickly tries to remember Jeongguk’s mole and beautiful eyes instead. When he turns his head around, faces Jeongguk, the is looking up at the sky, far away into the golden light. Jimin despairs as he only sees his side profile.
“Jeongguk, can you look at me?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“… If I do, I might cry.”
“But then I’ll forget you entirely.”
Jimin observes as Jeongguk bites his lips, so much so that the skin gets dented. He observes as the boy sniffles, seems to whimper quietly. The strong and witty boy he knew becomes a wimping child, and Jimin is saddened by the image, yet relieved at the same time. At least, on this Earth, someone will remember him as he was. Jimin hopes Jeongguk never forgets him, even if he himself gets ravaged by the same sickness he cannot escape from.
“You know I won’t laugh, right?”
“I know, I know. I just… I just easily get emotional.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Well now you know, so try not to forget that, okay?”
“I won’t, I promise.”
Jimin observes, waits again and again. The sky gets more golden, the light turns into an angrier orange, and jeongguk’s tears shine like the water bottle. A crystalline liquid colored by the sky, by the last rays of sunlight. When he turns around, finally faces him, Jimin feels his breath cutting. His own lips wobble, his own eyes tear up. His throat gets constricted, he almost chokes.
“You know I can’t forget your face, right?”
“Don’t become sappy now. Not now, you don’t have the right.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You better be.”
Jeongguk’s hand finds his, and Jimin feels relief surging through his whole being. His hand is warm, his eyes are fond despite being filled with an agonizing sadness, so strong it has to escape, in the form of a million tears cascading down his cheeks. Jimin cries, too.
“Will you remember me once I’m dead?”
“You know I will, until my last breath, whatever death I’ll have to go through.”
“… Thank you.”
Jimin blinks his tears away, Jeongguk doesn’t do the same. His flow down freely, fast, always followed by another. It’s a line of silver slicing through his golden cheek. Jimin will remember.
“I won’t forget about you.”
“… I’m glad.”
Jimin looks down. Down there. A pile of bodies and remains, a wandering mass of madness.
“I’ll jump.”
He jumps.