shaking hand. He waits for a moment and then he eats from his palm slowly in the same way a drugged animal would. When there’s nothing left on the backsplash, he stands and stares at the meat of his hand, losing track of time.
Park keeps walking through the restaurant kitchen. Touring the dark aisles, drifting past the remains of workstations still divided loosely by a series of lost functions. Treading over broken fixtures and mountings and split PCB boards. He pauses and turns over anything large enough to cover something useful. He severs any fitted connection to see inside of both ends, he unlatches anything that appears secure, and he finds absolutely nothing for his trouble.
He tries for a moment to think like someone who used to work in this place, a prep cook on the service line maybe. He imagines himself standing in these factory aisles putting together plate after plate on one of those sweltering monsoon nights before everything on the islet went clean to hell. The chatter of voices smoothed over with spiced ginger rum. The strains of music. He tries imagining where he might have hidden something of use, something he wasn’t supposed to have with him while on the floor, but nothing comes to mind. After a while, he moves on.
Park walks the floor—foraging—finding not a damn thing, and after an hour he starts to feel lightheaded. As he moves, he finds himself listing to one side. Reeling. Before long he ’s slumping heavily against anything solid to keep himself upright. His body has gone feverish. At first he holds out hope that the feeling will pass and he stops and waits, locked in his sunken posture, but it doesn’t pass.
He ratchets down to his knees—he does it by his own will, before his weakness can force him down—and when that doesn ’t help he sits all the way back on the kitchen tile. His spine is flat against the wall next to the entrance. He closes his eyes for a moment, but then everything starts to pinwheel around and around in the dark, so he opens them. He wipes his hand absentmindedly on his pant leg.
For a while he stays on the floor among the surroun ding ruin—becoming part of it, his rightful place. Joining in. The grey dust layer around him. Human hair and tissue and bone—once vibrant and fluid, porous—reduced to a blanket of fine, arid powder. The stark, quiet presence of hundreds of desiccated insect husks with their dull, black eyes hollowed out.
On the floor near him there is an emptied bag made of heavy paper, and according to the label, it once carried fifty pounds of raw, granulated white sugar, 100% Brazilian cane. All of that precious sweetness is gone now. Every last grain of it is long gone, and the truth is that most of it was probably taken by some combination of vermin, the inheritors of the good earth, whether insect or rodent, but Park allows himself to imagine that the remainder was gathered by some fortunate survivor. Cupped in her withered palms and sifted into a container and swirled, dust and all, into any available liquid and swallowed down. Almost unbearable, the taste of something so gentle, out here. Maybe the last confection anyone will ever experience in this short life.
Park is drifting off, head against the wall. He coughs once, lightly. He wipes his mouth and then he remembers the mask; he pulls it up over his face and smoothes it down, shaping it. The fabric doesn’t help much with the air but it helps some. He crosses his arms and realizes that he doesn’t have the belt wrapping his hand anymore, but he doesn’t look for it.
Soon his mind drifts to the obligation, the commitment, and even though he doesn ’t want to think about it, about anything, he pictures the suite upstairs and the brown zippered pouch and the rows of medicine bottles, brownish-orange with child-resistant white caps. So damn many of them. He yawns and scratches
Park keeps walking through the restaurant kitchen. Touring the dark aisles, drifting past the remains of workstations still divided loosely by a series of lost functions. Treading over broken fixtures and mountings and split PCB boards. He pauses and turns over anything large enough to cover something useful. He severs any fitted connection to see inside of both ends, he unlatches anything that appears secure, and he finds absolutely nothing for his trouble.
He tries for a moment to think like someone who used to work in this place, a prep cook on the service line maybe. He imagines himself standing in these factory aisles putting together plate after plate on one of those sweltering monsoon nights before everything on the islet went clean to hell. The chatter of voices smoothed over with spiced ginger rum. The strains of music. He tries imagining where he might have hidden something of use, something he wasn’t supposed to have with him while on the floor, but nothing comes to mind. After a while, he moves on.
Park walks the floor—foraging—finding not a damn thing, and after an hour he starts to feel lightheaded. As he moves, he finds himself listing to one side. Reeling. Before long he ’s slumping heavily against anything solid to keep himself upright. His body has gone feverish. At first he holds out hope that the feeling will pass and he stops and waits, locked in his sunken posture, but it doesn’t pass.
He ratchets down to his knees—he does it by his own will, before his weakness can force him down—and when that doesn ’t help he sits all the way back on the kitchen tile. His spine is flat against the wall next to the entrance. He closes his eyes for a moment, but then everything starts to pinwheel around and around in the dark, so he opens them. He wipes his hand absentmindedly on his pant leg.
For a while he stays on the floor among the surroun ding ruin—becoming part of it, his rightful place. Joining in. The grey dust layer around him. Human hair and tissue and bone—once vibrant and fluid, porous—reduced to a blanket of fine, arid powder. The stark, quiet presence of hundreds of desiccated insect husks with their dull, black eyes hollowed out.
On the floor near him there is an emptied bag made of heavy paper, and according to the label, it once carried fifty pounds of raw, granulated white sugar, 100% Brazilian cane. All of that precious sweetness is gone now. Every last grain of it is long gone, and the truth is that most of it was probably taken by some combination of vermin, the inheritors of the good earth, whether insect or rodent, but Park allows himself to imagine that the remainder was gathered by some fortunate survivor. Cupped in her withered palms and sifted into a container and swirled, dust and all, into any available liquid and swallowed down. Almost unbearable, the taste of something so gentle, out here. Maybe the last confection anyone will ever experience in this short life.
Park is drifting off, head against the wall. He coughs once, lightly. He wipes his mouth and then he remembers the mask; he pulls it up over his face and smoothes it down, shaping it. The fabric doesn’t help much with the air but it helps some. He crosses his arms and realizes that he doesn’t have the belt wrapping his hand anymore, but he doesn’t look for it.
Soon his mind drifts to the obligation, the commitment, and even though he doesn ’t want to think about it, about anything, he pictures the suite upstairs and the brown zippered pouch and the rows of medicine bottles, brownish-orange with child-resistant white caps. So damn many of them. He yawns and scratches
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