Althoff 33

Sore Winner

By Sylvie Althoff

You play a little game in your head, sometimes.

You do it when you’re bored in a public place, somewhere that you share with a handful of strangers. A shuttle between airport terminals, the waiting room at urgent care, a commuter train platform.

First you observe the other occupants of the space. You size them up, listen to their conversations, take their measure by their voices, their haircuts, their accessories. You clock who’s got more money than anyone really needs, who’s got a shitty family, who’s struggling with undiagnosed mental illness, who’s racist. If any parties are together, you dissect the dynamics of their relationship. You try to guess who’s correctly judged you to be a miserable leftist queer. It doesn’t speak well of you, how easily these judgments come to you, even if the practice is born out of self-preservation.

If you’re still waiting after all that observation, something terrible happens.

It’s always a disaster of one sort or another—a terrorist attack, ecological catastrophe, industrial accident. You’re unconcerned with the larger circumstances of the terrible thing. You and the strangers are shut away from the rest of the world, afraid for your lives, left by yourselves to survive and maintain a veneer of civilization.

Sometimes the space where you’re confined is hurtled onto a remote island or rain-slick mountaintop; sometimes your party walks out of your shared space to find the rest of humanity vanished, raptured or destroyed; sometimes you’re imprisoned there in that wretched little atrium or elevator, waiting for your air to run out. You and your handful of fellow citizens are the last humans on earth, and you have to figure out how to survive until you’re rescued. Or, if you’re in a particular kind of mood, it’s on you to preserve this last shred of the human species, or to partner off with someone to try to repopulate the planet and rebuild society…or to self-annihilate and crush the last flicker of this miserable candle.

It's not much of a game, except that there are always winners and losers.

Today you’re a winner.

Today you’re in the waiting room of the utilities department at City Hall, way up on the fourth floor, around the corner and out of sight from the rest of the ‘70s-ugly municipal building. The room is a low-ceilinged space the size of a double-wide trailer. There are three stained, near-gray chairs—not enough for you and the five people already waiting. There are no magazines, no potted plants, no murals. Only stained acoustic tile and illegible printouts of civic notices tacked to the drywall. The exits are the hall back to the elevator, an exterior window with a security grate over it, a locked metal door leading into the chambers of bureaucracy, and a window next to the door with a shade pulled down. Taped to that window is a handwritten note saying BACK SOON PLEASE EXCUSE OUR SHORTHANDED-NESS.

You double-check the address on the letter you got from the water department. You stuff the envelope in your coat pocket, lean in the corner, and pretend to look at your phone. Really, though, you’ve started playing the game.

You note each person glance at you, try to figure out what you are. One chair is occupied by a tall white guy with a polo shirt and a receding hairline. In a wheelchair next to him is an old woman in a threadbare stomach-lining-pink pussy hat—she’s trying to make conversation about the weather with a white woman about your age with dyed red hair and a lip ring. Lip Ring is leaning against the opposite wall and putting on a big show of examining her nails, but Pussy Hat isn’t giving up, especially since Polo Shirt isn’t paying her any attention, taken up as he is by tapping at his phone with increasing agitation. Sitting along the opposite wall are a sleeping middle-aged Black man in a Burger King uniform, a streamer of drool trickling down to his shoulder, and a skinny white guy with bad teeth and dark circles around his eyes.

Bad Teeth meets your gaze, and you see something familiar you don’t like. You spot a jagged sun wheel on a patch on his jacket. You look away.

The room tenses at the sound of footsteps in the hall, sighs as they recede out of hearing. If anyone’s behind the window, they aren’t saying anything.

“Finally getting cooler out there, isn’t it?” Pussy Hat asks you sweetly.

You keep your answer to one syllable, but it’s enough for your voice to out you—Lip Ring flashes you a sympathetic smile, Pussy Hat whispers something to Polo Shirt, Bad Teeth grinds his teeth.

The terrible thing begins with the overhead lights flickering. You meet the gaze of Lip Ring, Pussy Hat, Polo Shirt, and then the lights go out entirely.

“Hey!” Pussy Hat protests.

Then the floor pitches and bits of grit fly through the darkened room as if something massive has crashed into the side of the building. You fall to the ground and cover your head, and there’s confused shouting and blasts of heat and more shaking.

“Hold on, hold on, be quiet for one second!” Lip Ring yells, and the screaming continues.

“Hey!” Polo Shirt snaps. The room is silent, then fills with a pained groan.

You squint at the brilliant white light that sweeps slowly around the room, followed by a second that jumps around like a squirrel. Lip Ring, eyes wide, and Bad Teeth, pupils big as nickels.

“What’s going on? What’s that sound?”

“Oh my god, oh my god.”

“Goddamn, my leg…”

You assess the situation: the electricity is out, part of the ceiling has collapsed, and the exterior window is blocked, leaving the room midnight-black. Nobody has cell phone service, nobody answers calls for help or Polo Shirt’s banging on the door to the utilities department. Sounds are echoing from somewhere in the walls, but not human sounds—clicking, tapping, metal clashing against metal or grinding on stone. There’s an unfamiliar taste in the air. Your lungs hurt, your teeth itch.

Pussy Hat is in shock, muttering to herself; Bad Teeth is raving about NATO and George Soros; a chunk of ceiling is lying on Burger King’s leg across the ruins of his chair, pinning him against the floor with a smear of wet creeping up his pant leg. Polo Shirt is gaining headway in getting the room to listen to his instructions about what they should do, but when Lip Ring is reluctant to start screaming for the police, he paces the floor and derides the uselessness of Millennials.

“What about you?” The room follows his shaking finger, extended inches from your nose. “I suppose you just wanna sit here and cry while we all suffocate? Or do we need to go around and say our pronouns first?”

You don’t answer; Bad Teeth flashes you a hungry smile. You keep your back to the wall.

“Come on, this isn’t the time for that,” Lip Ring says in a shaky voice. “We need to figure out what’s going on, not fight among ourselves.”

Polo Shirt sneers. Then, before you can cover your eyes, a brilliant bolt of purple crackles along the metal perimeter of the window and arcs across the room into Pussy Hat. There’s a crackling sound as the electricity snakes across her chair, her clothes, her teeth. Polo Shirt moves to help her, but despite his rudeness, you grab his collar to keep him from making contact. You’re a good person. Everyone screams.

The crackling stops, leaving behind a slow hiss and the sound of crying. You pick Lip Ring’s phone off the ground, the flashlight still lit. Pussy Hat is breathing shallowly, eyes closed, unresponsive. Burger King is conscious but fading. Lip Ring is curled in a ball and sobbing. Polo Shirt’s eyes are bugging out, his mouth moving. You don’t know where Bad Teeth went. That grinding sound from behind the window is getting louder.

Darkness builds like spiderwebs at the edges of your vision—you take slow, deep breaths.

“We have to get out of this building,” you say. “Does anyone know where the stairs are?”

No one moves, so you head down the blackened hallway toward the elevator. It’s hard going, scrambling over broken concrete, especially with one hand clutching the phone flashlight.

Somebody dashes through an open doorway. You call out, but they don’t answer. Past that, the hall is blocked by shattered drywall and plastic. You focus on getting the elevator doors open, grunting as you put your shoulders into the task. You succeed only to find a dark, empty shaft, a six-foot-square well that the flashlight can barely penetrate. The elevator is stuck on the floor above you. You look for a ladder or something on the walls of the shaft.

The ground shakes with a distant rumbling and you nearly take a header into the emptiness, your worn-frictionless Chucks scrambling for traction. Dust rains from the ceiling.

“Come on,” you tell the other survivors, returning to the waiting room. “I think the stairs are blocked, but we can climb down the elevator shaft.”

“What about him?” Lip Ring asks, gesturing to the unconscious form of Burger King.

“My mother can’t climb anything.” Polo Shirt is starting to hyperventilate. Pussy Hat’s skin is turning gray.

“We’ll have to come back for them,” you say. “Maybe we can find someone who can help, or we can find another way back up here to get them.”

Polo Shirt looks panicked, protests that this is a stupid idea, that surely someone will be along to help. Lip Ring says she can stay with Pussy Hat and Burger King while you and he make for the exit.

“What makes you think it’s gonna be any safer out there?” Polo Shirt asks. You shrug.

The scraping sound hits the interior window, inches from your head. Everyone falls to the floor. You watch a hinged claw clank against the glass, a foot-long flange seeking an opening or latch.

“What the fuck is that thing?” Polo Shirt squeaks. Nobody answers him. Finally, the metal claw dips out of sight, but the clanking still surrounds the walls and ceiling.

Grunting, you shed your denim jacket and gesture for Lip Ring to hand over hers. They knot together easily, and Polo Shirt grumbles but adds his Chiefs jacket to the chain. It grows quickly with whispered, frantic additions of scarves and more layers—probably not long enough, but better than jumping. You crouch-walk down the hallway, Polo Shirt close behind you.

You’ve left three people behind, but you’re going to come back for them. You’re still a good person.

“I go down first,” Polo Shirt sneers. You don’t have much trouble agreeing to that.

Neither of you is pleased with the tension in the jacket-rope. But the elevator door is narrow enough that you can wedge yourself against either side as Polo Shirt takes one sleeve in hand and slowly descends the elevator into the darkness, walking shakily down the grimy concrete walls. He’s no athlete, and his face turns pink with strain before he makes it out of sight. When your arms feel ready to pop out of their sockets, the rope slackens.

“Made it!” Polo Shirt calls up, puffing for air. “Doors are stuck down here. Come down and help me.”

You look around for somewhere to tie the rope, assuming you’ve got the upper body strength to make the climb—not a likely prospect even before you had all your testosterone siphoned out. You don’t find anything stable, but you do see the wild eyes and spittle-flecked mouth of Bad Teeth running right at you.

There’s a flash and a searing pain in your shoulder. You fall to the ground, muscle tissue dancing around an object sticking out of your flesh. Something rushes over your head. Someone yelps, someone screams. The rope shifts in your hands and you grab tighter without thinking.

You’re on your belly on the floor at the top of the elevator shaft. Bad Teeth is clinging to the rope and looking up at you. The butt of a knife sprouts from your shoulder, blood staining the armpit of your favorite T-shirt. Something flutters down into the darkness—everything but the top two denim jackets came undone, leaving three stories of emptiness under Bad Teeth.

Bad Teeth snarls up at you from the yawning void of the elevator shaft. “Pull me up!” he hisses, appending his demand with a rainbow of slurs impugning your gender, sexuality, race, and physical attractiveness. Something falls out of his pocket and takes a long while to rattle to a landing. His eyes flash purple with fear, more unearthly lightning crackling just over your shoulder. “Come on! Help me!”

You can do it. Your arm hurts, especially where he stabbed it. But you can pull him up if you choose to do so, you can save him.

Do you?

Usually the game is over by now—you don’t often get this far into things before your name is called at the counter or your bus arrives at your destination. When that happens, you make one last snap decision, determining whether you win or lose. These days, with everything getting worse, especially for people like you? It’s harder and harder to imagine winning.

You think you win this time, though. You think you let Bad Teeth fall. You think you turn on your flashlight so you can watch him end his life exploded, unloved, a bloody mess at the bottom of an elevator shaft. Or watch metallic tendrils whip out of the vents to grab his limbs and pull him apart.

Bad Teeth glares at you in the fluorescent light of the City Hall waiting room. Lip Ring is taking a photo of a flyer for first-aid classes at the community center. Pussy Hat is chatting with Burger King, commiserating about punishing service industry shifts.

You played the game well this time; you survived and helped some people in the process. You’re a good person, the kind of person the world needs. You can survive alien invasions or world-ending calamities while remaining true to your ideals, you can.

Bad Teeth mouths something at you. You can’t make it out.

You don’t feel like a winner.

Sylvie Althoff (she/her) is a queer transgender woman who works as a writer, editor, elementary teacher, and jazz banjoist. Her writing has appeared on recommended reading lists by Locus and Reactor, and has been published in venues including Escape Pod, Small Wonders, Tales of the United States Space Force, Saros, Inner Worlds, Lesbians in Space, manywor(l)ds, Baubles from Bones, and the Trevor Project benefit anthology Punch a Nazi. She lives in Lawrence, Kansas with her wife and pets. She may be found at sylviealthoff.com or on Bluesky @sylvie-althoff.