u/coldvales

I leaned forward toward Nova and felt my t-shirt peel away from the backrest.

"How much longer?"

"We're almost there."

Chloe was still sleeping in the passenger seat. I couldn't even try. The sun was slowly cooking us through the windows. I inhaled and exhaled heavily but my nostrils were so dry it hurt. I pasted myself back against the faux leather. Nova smiled at me in the rear-view mirror.

"Thanks for coming honey. It really helps, you know."

I shrugged, which triggered a sunburn I'd picked up on my left shoulder.

"As long as I can escape this fucking hellhole…"

Massive heatwaves had been suffocating half the world for a few weeks now. Nova had just started seeing Chloe so she begged me to tag along for the weekend (her parents had a house deep in the countryside and they were currently off on a cruise in the Baltic Sea, wherever that is). I didn’t hesitate when she asked. Third-wheeling was worth it just to leave the city, even for a couple of days.

By now my enthusiasm had begun to falter. Nova’s car was brand new but the AC was not really up to the task; and since Chloe was snoozing, we couldn’t roll the windows down too much. Outside, the asphalt was shimmering and sweating through the vineyards.

Fifteen minutes later, as Nova was still halfway through parking under the shaded driveway of her parents' house, I leapt out of the car. Chloe woke up dazed with a seatbelt mark on her cheek. Nova snorted, opened the door to her and said with exaggerated flair:

"Madam has arrived."

It was a beautiful European-inspired farmhouse with thick stone walls. No watering place nearby but many trees and vineyards. I stepped inside and let out a sigh of relief. I took off my sandals to absorb the freshness of the tiles, then tossed my backpack onto the couch in the living room. Chloe walked in, still stretching.

"I'd kill for a freezing cold shower."

Nova quickly closed the door behind us. She kissed me on the cheek and told me to make myself at home. The lovebirds headed upstairs to "cool off". I drank long gulps straight from the faucet before slumping onto the couch.

Since the signal was too weak to scroll or stream anything (and I couldn't be bothered to look for the wifi password), I decided to just enjoy the silence and the darkness of the stone walls.

The online world was no longer interesting anyway, the magic had been gone for a long time. Nothing organic left, only stupid automatic iterations. Humanity kept slipping into universal madness, and obviously the heatwaves weren't helping. It was just a matter of where and when. Any moment, any place, maybe now, maybe here. Nova and Chloe and the others didn’t want to talk about it but deep down everyone knew. Anyhow, sleeping was a good way not to dwell.

Unfortunately I woke with a start barely eight minutes later. Someone had just knocked on the front door. At first I thought I was dreaming but the knock came again so I got up and cracked open the door.

First a thick blow of heat, then a shadow. Once my eyes adjusted to the blinding white light outside, the first thing I saw was a jet black work jacket with a red trademark embroidered on the chest around the heart: EDEN EXPRESS ®

A tall, scrawny man with a wide grin stood there. He was wearing tiny round sunglasses, in which my reflection appeared doubled, and his scruffy beard was as pointy as most of his teeth. The sun was haloing his bald head. What stood out the most was his outfit: who could wear so many layers in this furnace? He stepped forward, offering his hand to shake.

"Hi there, doing well? I’ve been sent by the town hall to distribute inflatable swimming pools to all citizens who don’t have one. Where should I drop it? Here okay?"

Confused, I admitted I wasn’t the owner of the house but he waved it off.

"Not a problem, sir! You don’t have a pool and I have one for you, that’s all that matters. Capiche? Anyway, I can't be late, I’ll be right back…"

He pulled a medium-sized box from his van and put it at my feet, along with a half-torn delivery slip. The guy seemed thrilled.

"Here’s the beast!"

He insisted that I should set it up right away.

"It's an easy pop-up model but much bigger than it looks on the box: 13 feet wide and 5 feet deep. Just throw it out and it will unfold and inflate by itself. Then connect the included hose to any faucet, et voilà!"

Right. I could only nod as the man was shaking my hand again. Just before getting back into his van, he beamed even wider.

"Trust me, you’ll never want to leave it!"

Nova and Chloe couldn’t believe their eyes when they saw me standing in the pool. I'd set it up under a big chestnut tree, the hose still running in my hand, water up to my belly. Nova slid open the glass door and rushed outside.

"Where the fuck did you find that?"

"Some weird guy dropped it off and…"

Chloe didn’t let me finish; she had already stripped and jumped over the inflatable rim. Nova brought out a few beers and sodas. Once the pool was full, the three of us floated silently for a while.

Suddenly Chloe got up, splashing us.

"Shit, I left my phone in the car! it's so hot it’s gonna explode!"

By the time she’d climbed the wobbly ladder, she was nearly dry again. She ran to the glass door and disappeared into the shadow of the house.

Above the pool, the chestnut tree didn’t stir a leaf. No bugs in sight, no birds singing. Still life.

I kept thinking about the weirdo who’d delivered the pool, about his smile. Who could enjoy working in that weather? Lifting boxes all day in that outfit... surely someone passionate, but passionate about what exactly? inflatable swimming pools? making deliveries? waking people up from their naps?

By the way, how had he shown up just after we arrived? If he’d come twenty minutes earlier, no one would’ve answered. And they were no neighbors for miles.

With Chloe gone, I turned to Nova.

"It’s nice of the city council to hand out free pools…"

"Huh?"

"The guy said he was sent by the town hall."

"What are you talking about? the town hall? on a Saturday?"

But then Chloe came back. Something had happened.

She’d received an automatic text from the government. MAXIMUM ALERT*.* That’s all. No signal to get more info, even with wifi.

"It’s probably just about the heatwaves" Nova said.

Chloe made a face and slipped back into the pool.

"By the way, a bald freak showed up in his van when I went to get my phone…"

His face popped up into my mind and I aspirated a bit of water.

"He told me to hurry back to the pool, that 'it was about to happen'. Fucking psycho. I usually have comebacks but this time I just froze. Thank god he just laughed and left…"

"What’s about to happen?" I asked.

"How the fuck should I know! That creep didn’t say anything else. And that’s when I got the alert…"

Despite getting worried, Nova tried to play it off. She exaggerated her outrage and launched into a rant against men knowing it would amuse Chloe.

"Can’t even be left in peace out here! Always a man, huh? They can all just go to hell!"

I didn’t respond to the indirect jab. I was staring at the living room, paralyzed by fear as the delivery man was standing behind the glass door. His snake-like smile seemed twice as wide now, and his teeth sharper. He removed his sunglasses, revealing small, gloss white eyes through which I had a vision: I was alone in the pool under the chestnut tree, but in the middle of a vast, dry, dusty, empty desert. The sky was grey, the distant sun orange.

When I snapped out of it, his devilish shape was gone. Nova finally noticed I had been silent.

"Hey, you okay honey?"

"I… uh… I think the heat’s messing with me."

I slid underwater and emptied my lungs to lie on the floor. A low rumble seemed to come from the ground but it was peaceful enough. On the surface, the sunlight rippled in chaotic patterns. Nova and Chloe’s shadows flickered in and out of the chestnut tree’s.

Suddenly, the rumble stopped and all the shadows vanished. I tried to rise but something held me down: the delivery man was lying next to me fully clothed and smiling from temple to temple. It had become a beast with multiple rows of razor-sharp teeth, and its eyes were now completely blood-red. Its voice traveled through the water like it was air:

"It has begun."

I tried to scream but I was out of air. I was trapped a thousand meters down in some crevice of the Earth’s crust. I fought with all my poor strength until the creature finally let go of me, morphed into a shark and vanished in the cold, murky abyss. I shot off to the surface in a gasp. Nova and Chloe were calmly floating, sunbathing as if nothing had happened.

A little later, as I was still reeling, Chloe’s phone rang. She struggled to reach it over the inflatable rim.

"Hurry, while there’s still signal!"

Chloe climbed the ladder but it was too late. 11 missed calls, 6 voicemails, 142 notifications. She tried to call her mom back. No luck.

"What the hell is goin—"

She froze. Her muscles locked, breath caught, eyes fixed on the horizon beyond the adjacent vineyard. Her pupils were trembling, unable to focus. I could see a glow in her irises.

Nova splashed water at her.

"What is it? Stop fucking with us!"

She did not react, so Nova also climbed out of the pool. But as soon as her feet touched the grass and her eyes the horizon, it was her turn to freeze in fear. Then she bolted.

Ten very long seconds later, she dove back into the pool. She plugged her ears, shut her eyes, and kept mumbling:

"Everywhere… nowhere… everywhere… nowhere…"

I was having a panic attack but couldn’t bring myself to leave the pool. Why couldn’t I see anything from here? Everything looked normal: the sun, the house, the tree’s shade…

I looked up at the tree and saw its awful smile again. The beast was hanging upside-down, its boneless limbs curled around a low branch. Its tiny sunglasses were back on and slowly turning to face the vineyard; when they locked onto the horizon, the lenses lit up and reflected what had paralyzed Nova and Chloe: a nuclear mushroom cloud, rising in a light so intense it even dimmed the sun.

The creature shed a joyful tear that fell into the pool without a ripple.

"I never get tired of this…"

Out of nowhere, I shouted:

"Who are you ?!"

The thing clicked its tongue. I pointed to Nova, who was still traumatized.

"Can we help her?"

"Sure. You can drown her or toss her out of the pool."

That chilled me to the bone. Not because of the tone, but because it felt true. I knew I'd eventually have to get rid of Nova. I knew that the world outside the pool was now nothing but desert and dust, and I had to claim this plastic oasis to survive.

I knew it because the beast was now standing behind me, whispering the unspeakable.

Thousands of nuclear warheads were currently vaporizing the planet.

Who fired first? For what reason? It didn’t matter. Humanity had finally chosen to annihilate its home rather than fix it. Now flesh was burning, organs were bursting; and even though the lucky ones were incinerated instantly, the end was the same for all.

"Matter cannot become self-conscious without seeking its own destruction. It's just too much."

The creature had witnessed enough civilizations die to know this truth, and our universe was no exception. Human consciousness was just another glitch, a brief malfunction, a paradox dreaming. How did we come to believe we could separate ourselves from what cannot be separated?

As for me, I would spend billions of years alone, clad in my swim trunks and crouched in this cheap synthetic haven, until the sun turned into a red giant and eventually swallowed the Earth.

"Don't overthink too much", snapped the delivery man, back in its normal form. "You're not special, I always pick randomly. I just needed a little souvenir from this place."

And with that, vanished.