Episode Seven
394 Words
Day 24,090.
Juno was 66. The bookstore didn’t have books anymore. Just walls.
Every inch, floor to ceiling, covered in names. Paint pen, Sharpie, pencil, charcoal, carved with keys. _Deal with it_ in 40 languages. The poetry shelf collapsed under the weight of it all in 2049. Nobody fixed it. They just wrote on the rubble.
At 6:08am, the door opened. It always did.
A woman came in. Old. Maybe 80. Carrying a thermos and a kid’s booster seat.
Juno didn’t ask if she was drinking alone. At 6:12am, nobody was. The place sat 30 now. Floor cushions. Milk crates. Whatever people dragged in.
The old woman set the booster seat in the center. Right where the ghost chair used to be.
“Day 24,090,” she said, loud enough that the room quieted. “I’m Kay. I was here when I was 16 and scared of tomorrow.”
Half the room nodded. They’d read the wall.
“Tomorrow came,” Kay said. “It was hard. Then it came again. Also hard.” She laughed. “You all know.”
She pulled a dented, coffee-stained thermos from her bag. Juno knew it. Her dad’s. She’d lost it 10 years ago.
“Found this at my wife’s funeral,” Kay said. “She kept it. Said a girl with angry eyes gave her coffee at 6:12am once, and it kept her alive long enough to meet me. Said to bring it back when it was my turn.”
Kay poured one coffee. No sugar. Set it on the booster seat.
“For the ghost,” she said.
The room echoed: “To the ghost.”
Juno took the paint pen. Her hands shook now. She handed it to the kid next to her. New. Maybe 14. Awake too early for reasons he didn’t have words for yet.
“Your line,” Juno told him.
He took the pen. Looked at 24,090 days of _Deal with it_. At the booster seat. At Kay. At the thermos.
And wrote, small, under everything else:
_Day 24,090. I’m next. Deal with it._
At 6:12am, 30 paper cups clinked.
“To the boss,” someone said.
“To 6:12am,” they all said.
“To not drinking alone,” Kay finished.
Outside, Kampala woke up.
Inside, the walls ran out of space. So they started on the ceiling.
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- Writer
