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The walls rotated in spirals, closing in as Emma bolted down corridors. Her leg throbbed with every rapid step, and blotches of deep red started to seep through the bandages.
“Happiness is guaranteed!”
For a moment, her eyes lit up—framed amongst the too-pristine hospital environment were wide, double glass doors. Instinctively, she slowed out of relief or exhaustion.
“If you just give us one last show-stoppin’ number!”
She glanced back, picking up the pace—
“With Emma front and center! A kickline is inevitable!”
—and screamed.
Paul stood before her, all smiles and kicking along with the ensemble behind her like some kind of horrifying death trap. Emma didn’t know which was more deafening: the chorus or her own heartbeat. The infected circled around her, a twisted merry-go-round bobbing to the rhythm of their own song. Despite faces blurring, she could still see Paul’s with every pass. Her stomach dropped.
Emma jolted, instincts shifting her weight onto her bad leg. Nora and Nurse Cassatt had crept up to her from the right. Pain sparked up and down like electricity. She fell. With heavy breaths, she reached for the door handle.
“The Apotheosis is upon us!”
Neon blue-eyed thralls lunged at her, each of their faces shining with a split-second clarity. Ted, who was actually kind of funny if he wasn’t being a gross prick. Paul’s boss that she knew nothing about but probably didn’t deserve this. The nurse who’d been treating her for what felt like forever ago. Nora, who worked hard despite the competition and her ridiculous business choices. Bill, the poor guy. The kooky, reclusive biology professor she’d grown to love, almost like an uncle. And Paul.
Musical-hating, black coffee-drinking, endearing Paul. Emma had never felt a connection like that before. And thanks to this stupid apocalypse, she never will.
Emma didn’t even register her own scream.
“Emma!”
She shot upright, the person in front of her coming into focus. Paul. The tears were warm against her face. He looked at her with concern in his blue eyes—not the corrupted shade of blue, but Paul’s blue. A frown tugged at the corner of his lips. Emma sighed.
“Was it the… you know, again?” he asked gently. She could only nod.
Emma leaned into Paul’s arms, melting into the warmth of his body. He made soft, circular motions along her back—a bit of a nervous comfort tic, she’d realized, but she appreciated it all the same.
We’re out of Hatchetfield, she muttered in her head like a mantra, we’re in Colorado and we’re safe.
We’re safe.
They had their first proper non-apocalyptic coffee date at a quaint coffee shop a few blocks away from their home.
Emma waited in line, scrolling absentmindedly through some random page on biology memes. A little ways away was Paul, who’d claimed them a cozy little table by the window. A wistful smile made its way to her face before she could realize it.
“Hi, welcome to the Two Windmills Café! What can I get you?”
She perked up at the barista and rattled off their order—Paul's usual drink of a medium black coffee, her own coffee order of choice, and a few pastries from the display.
“And your name, please?” the barista smiled a customer service smile.
“Kelly,” she said. It still felt foreign on her tongue, but Emma was getting used to it. She slipped a few bucks into the tip jar.
After getting their order, she and Paul chatted about anything and everything that wasn't related to Hatchetfield or the apocalypse. (They’d made a half-joking bet out of it: whoever mentioned something first would have to do the other’s laundry for a week.)
Emma thought the second Home Alone movie was better than the first, Paul disagreed. Emma liked classic literature. Paul did, too, but had forgotten the storylines to most of them. Emma once hijacked Jane’s car and got grounded for it. Paul once got stranded in a swimming pool for half an hour with nothing but a pool noodle to keep him afloat.
Paul downed the last of his black coffee. “Damn, I missed good coffee.”
“Beanies coffee was crap,” Emma assented. “They actually have decent pastries here, too.”
Emma’s eyes widened, a curse escaping her as she realized her mistake.
“I win,” Paul said smugly.
She laughed. “Whatever you say, dork.”
Emma moved around the kitchen almost rhythmically, preparing microwave popcorn and bringing out two cans of soda (Diet Coke for Paul and Sprite for herself), plus a pack of self-indulgent chips she'd been saving all week. A podcast played over the silence, telling some story about werewolves and mining town politics.
Movie night was a routine weekly tradition she’d established with Paul during the first few weeks of their life in Colorado, and it was her turn to pick the movie.
Usually, whoever wasn’t setting up the movie would get the snacks, but Ben Bridges’ terrifying new boss insisted he work overtime today. She didn’t mind, anyway. And maybe movie snacks served as a distraction from something small that had been bugging her all week.
After arriving back and settling in, Paul clearly took notice.
He blinked. “Is there something else you wanna watch?”
“Huh?”
“You have that look,” he said, “the I’ve been thinking about something but Paul will probably hate it look.”
“Oh. It's nothing, just—” Emma sighed. There was no use getting around this, huh? “Netflix just added The Case of the Gilded Lily to their catalogue.”
“Oh, the noir short film, yeah? The one about a blackmail investigation?” Paul piped up. “I’ve never watched it but I heard it’s really good.”
“A classic,” she assented wistfully, “I used to watch it a lot when I was a kid. It was one of my favourites.”
“Okay, let's watch that, then,’ he decided happily. After a moment, Paul's face fell. “What’s wrong?”
She glanced down, almost sheepish. “There… might be some singing involved.”
“Oh.”
Since they’d arrived in Colorado some months ago, Emma and Paul had barely listened to anything more than maybe thirty seconds total of music. Music and musicals were different, but the Apotheosis had been too recent a wound for them not to visualize anything but guns, blue and choreography.
Melophobia didn’t quite fit the bill since it implied irrationality, but that’s what they’d been calling it. A melophobia nobody but them could understand.
“Yeah,” she winced.
Paul stood for a moment in thought, rubbing her shoulder absentmindedly. She hadn’t even realized how tense it was. "Well… is it like a full-blown musical?”
Emma scrunched her nose. She shuddered at the thought. “Geez, ‘course not. There’s just one song, plus some of those sung voiceover scene transitions.”
“Do you think you'll be okay with watching it?" he asked after a thoughtful hum.
"I think I can handle it," she said. "Can you?"
He nodded slowly, clicking its poster and pressing play. “Besides, you know this movie and which parts the singing comes in. We can always skip or mute it, right? Or just stop altogether.”
Emma smiled, leaning into him. “I’m here for you if it gets too much.”
“Me too,” Paul murmured quietly.
She could see it all so vividly, and that might be the cruelest thing of all.
Emma thought she’d found solace in Paul’s arms that moment. That they’d made it out of their perpetually awful dumpster fire of a town. Funny how one note can turn everything into ash and dust.
Paul yanked her up, still smiling as if nothing were wrong. She could do nothing but sob as her jaw snapped from its joints with a resounding crack! Her throat burned with blue slime and fear.
And, with her last breath and all the could-have-been futures fading away, she let the Apotheosis rip through her.