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Aaron doesn’t exactly believe in God.
He believes that there could be something out there larger than their tiny planet. In all the vastness of space, it’s almost laughable to think that there isn’t something cosmic influencing them. The moon influences waves, and aren’t people mostly water? It’s why he mostly believes in star signs.
But he’s not sold on a tangible God. Certainly not one you can pray to, and not one that dictates the day-to-day. Not a divine plan either.
And maybe that’s why this is so hard for him.
“You’re still up?” Sophie murmurs from beside him, twisting in their sheets to roll towards Aaron.
Aaron blinks at the foot of the bed. His hand falls flat against the mattress, finger no longer tapping out a rhythmless beat. “Sorry,” he says, leaning over to press a kiss to her forehead. She tastes like coconut, like warm tropics and summer days. “Sorry, I’m keeping you up.”
“No, it’s fine,” Sophie says. Her eyes still shut, she reaches for Aaron’s hand. He grips it under the covers.
Her soft breathing fills his ears, the rhythm of a gentle tide lapping at a sandy shore. Aaron tries to focus on it.
Moments later, he feels a splash against his thin shirt. He turns his face back towards the dark of the rest of the room, though his eyes have adjusted enough to see anyway. There’s the shadow of his bedside table, the small blinking light from his phone charger. A pile of clothes he’d been meaning to put away. Four solid walls, penning them in.
It’s not enough.
Sophie’s fingers clench around his palm, and Aaron realises he’s squeezing her hand. He refrains from another spoken apology and pushes himself into the bed, raising the covers above him.
His breathing sounds too loud in his ears. Too forceful, too. Each exhale parachutes the sheet covering his head, before it glides back down to the mountain range of his face.
But it’s better. So it has to do.
~
He’s not sure when it started. He knows he was young.
He remembers being nine, or maybe ten, and standing outside a shadowed doorway. He thinks the night was dark, but he can’t say with certainty whether that was because it was a new moon or if he was just a scared kid, colouring the light out of his memories. Their apartment was silent.
That was the main thing.
The silence stretched all around him. Even if he strained very hard, there were no cricketsongs, no owlish exclamations. Even their apartment block was devoid of sound. No one was getting home late, or getting ready for a night shift. There was just… nothing.
And Aaron had convinced himself that his mom was in her room, not breathing. He stood outside her door, holding his breath as long as he could to block that out, too, trying desperately to hear a sign of life. His sock-covered feet pressed against cold concrete, rooting him to the spot.
His hand was frozen to the door handle.
Looking back on it, Aaron knows the logical thing would’ve been to check. He could’ve just peeked in, and seen that she was fine, and gone back to bed. And even if she wasn’t fine, Aaron could’ve done something about it had he just gone inside.
All easier said than done.
Leering over him, its talons curled around Aaron’s shoulders, was something dark and horrible that he didn’t have a name for. Somehow, it had taken seed within Aaron, gnawing away at his insides to carve a hollow space for itself, somewhere beneath Aaron’s ribs and above his stomach.
Caged in as it were, it was like the universe confined within its exo-skeleton: ever expanding into an unknown space, and confusingly infinite.
Whatever this– this fear, this anxiety, this irrationality, whatever you call it– whatever it was, it refused to let Aaron move.
Because if his mom was dead, that meant she was gone. Forever.
Images played on loop in Aaron’s head. Finding her, motionless. Calling for help. Knowing that there was nothing anyone could do. Burying her. Her body decomposing in a box, until her warm flesh that had once embraced him gave way to cold bones. Knowing that even those would disintegrate over time.
Over endless fucking time.
Aaron dropped to the floor, one hand pressed flat against his chest. The other splayed over his face, hiding his vision, but it wasn’t enough. It didn’t matter.
His hand would rot, too. It would fall away and become nothing, like the rest of his body. Like everyone on this earth. All of them, all his family and his friends and everybody he saw on the street and everybody he hadn't even met yet – all of them were forthcoming dust. And, if time and the universe and all the rest of it were truly infinite, then even that didn't matter. Nothing mattered in the face of infinity.
And the worst part was, nothing Aaron could do or say would change the outcome. They were all already dead.
~
“A Boogie!” Denny reaches for him. Their hands slap together, and Denny uses the contact to pull Aaron close. His arms lock Aaron into place. “Happy birthday, love you.”
“Aw, I love you, too.” Aaron surrenders into the tight squeeze. The sensation grounds him – Denny's crisp cologne cutting through the air, the softness of Denny's cotton shirt paired with the strength of his forearms.
Aaron uses the opportunity to glance around the studio over Denny's shoulder. It's how it normally is. Wires criss-crossing the floor, taped into place with bright yellow X’s lest someone trip (again). There's a chill to the studio and the faint rattle of air-conditioning, blowing out all the heat from outside. Which is unusual. It takes a bit for the A/C to kick on in earnest.
And there are the white walls around them, penning them inside. The ceiling lights are their usual intensity, obscuring an upper limit by making it too painful to observe.
And then Denny decouples them. He makes a show of it, as if he's brushing Aaron off rather than ending an interaction he started. “Alright, alright! Birthday boy in the house! Kevin, hit it!”
They're plunged into darkness.
~
There was a rattle in that room, too.
He remembers the walls. They had tried to make it homey, but the piecemeal decor couldn't hide its true nature.
White walls stretched around them, inside this room and in that seemingly endless corridor outside. Identical doors had peppered every twenty or so feet out there. He and his mom kept taking turns. Maybe they meant the sudden 90-degree twists to break up the illusion of infinity. Or to somehow hide the depressing fact that, here, others were dying too.
She held his birthday cake the whole way. She wouldn't let him carry that, nor the bags she hung from every inch of her wiry forearms. Something about it being his special day.
At the time, Aaron attributed it to guilt. He hadn't wanted to come here – today of all days, too.
His birthday always left him a little antsy. He'd plan around it if he could, and make sure he was surrounded by people. That seemed to be the key to it; to be with someone. Having an observer made reality more concrete; more confined.
“Oh, look at you!” His aunt gushed, wrapping him in a suffocating embrace. When she released Aaron, the plume of her perfume followed, circling around the square room and settling defiantly on his grandpa's breathing tube.
His mom claimed the seat next to his bed. She gripped his hand hard.
“Hey, Dad. We brought the party to you – didn't want you to miss it!”
He rasped, eyes shut. A pained exhalation more than a word. His mom teared up, and held on tighter.
“He knows you're here,” his aunt said to him.
Aaron disagreed. More likely, Grandpa was just getting some rest in his final moments, but he knew better than to say so.
~
The hair on the back of Aaron's neck pricks up. He spins in place, hearing Denny scampering away from him.
“Denny?” Nothing. No response. “...KL?”
Aaron starts forward, arms held in front of him. He trips over his own shoelace and stops, squinting into the gloom. The change in light was too sudden – he can't make out anything.
It's so quiet. They're obviously doing a bit of some sort, but where are they? Why can't Aaron hear them?
He stumbles three more steps forwards.
“Guys,” he says to the quiet. His voice shakes. “Can we– can you– …I really don't like this, and I'd prefer if we didn't do this right now?”
His words seem to echo around the empty space. Which is ridiculous. The studio is too large for something as tiny as his shaking voice to pick up and bounce back. But he'd read somewhere that you can't reason away anxiety. Fear shuts down the rational part of your brain, or something. Forces you to act on your animal brain.
But what predator was too big to name? Too big to see, even? Where did this impulse, this phobia, where did it even originate? If fear is a survival instinct, then why is there no tangible threat?
“Please,” Aaron whispers. He's not sure if it actually vocalises, or if he's imagining his voice now. The thought scares him so much that he trips over his feet again.
He sprawls onto the floor. The concrete scrapes his palms. With trembling hands, he pushes himself into a crouch. He still can't see. He hears more noises now, breaking through the silence, but that's worse. Without his sight, he can't verify that it's real. And, even with it…
Aaron shakes his head. He relishes in the spin once the motion ceases.
In the dark, he's just a speck floating through the ever-expanding universe.
Inconsequential against infinity.
~
Each inhale shook the room. It was wet, unsteady. It sounded like it took Grandpa a great effort.
Aaron looked it up afterwards. Death rattle. It signifies that death is imminent. It happens when a person no longer has the ability to clear their airway. It gets all bogged with mucus and saliva. Food, possibly, though most people by this point lack any appetite or the ability to swallow. So death via food getting caught in the lungs is less likely, unless the person dying was fed some soft sponge cake.
“Happy birthday to you…”
His mom had one hand on his grandpa, and one on Aaron's arm.
Grandpa had actually stirred to consciousness, if you could call it that. He seemed very confused, which the nurses warned was normal. He didn't seem to remember Mom, nor his aunt.
Definitely not Aaron, though he looked straight at him and said, “God.”
His mom had wiped away a tear. “That's right, Dad. He's so big now, it's crazy.”
He didn't acknowledge her. His eyes were clouded as he stared at Aaron. Almost accusing.
Before he’d gotten this bad, he sought out Aaron. He sent these bizarre messages over Facebook, about ‘knowing they were special’ and that they ‘shared a higher purpose’. Aaron never told his mom, and never replied, and they steadily devolved in legibility. But the core theme remained: his Grandpa believed they were the same spirit, in two different bodies, and Aaron was somehow his saviour.
(His mom would've loved that. But Aaron feared it more than anything.)
They turned the lights off, so the flickering candles lit a small glow around his aunt's face as she held the cake in front of Aaron, over his dying grandfather.
Earlier, she had pulled him into the corridor, reaching up to whisper in his ear:
“Make it count.”
Another long rattle whistled through the room. Aaron hid his wince.
“Make a wish, baby,” his mom said. She wasn't looking at him, though.
His aunt smiled, then tilted her head towards Grandpa, as if to say, You know what to do.
Aaron grimaced in return. He looked at Grandpa, and all his wires and tubes. He seemed afraid, and it couldn't have been comfortable. Nobody would want to live like that.
Aaron inhaled.
Let it be quick. Let it be painless.
He paused, mouth full of air. If he was being selfish, why not go all out?
And get me a PS5.
The candles exsanguinated.
~
Some infinities were smaller than others. Hadn't Aaron read that somewhere?
Logically, Aaron is in a confined space. If he makes it to the edge of that space, he can break out of this secluded infinity into the open expanse of the rest of the universe. But he doesn't move, because he also knows that, more than likely, his friends are here somewhere.
Aaron is just not sure if he's supposed to stay put or to find them. He's also not sure if he can trust himself to do either.
Maybe this is fun for them, though. The knowledge that Aaron is blindly stumbling around. He can see how that'd seem funny.
Oh, God. What if they're filming this?
Aaron tucks his chin to his chest and forces himself to inhale. It sounds wet. The term ‘aspiration pneumonia’ pops into his head. He'd read it on Grandpa’s death certificate. Maybe Aaron's dying.
Or, maybe it has finally caught up to him. Just because Grandpa got it in his twenties doesn't mean Aaron is in the clear just because he's 30. Or, well, 31 now.
He could be imagining all of it. Maybe this is some delirium and he's got a tube in his nose helping him breathe.
Aaron pushes himself to unsteady feet. He orients himself against the gloom. It feels like hours have gone by, but it must only be a minute or so, or else the guys would've gotten bored.
He doesn't trust his voice – doesn't trust himself to call out for them, and to not say something else entirely. Doesn't know if that's even something schizophrenia makes you do. Do you know what you're saying? How lucid are you, when it sets in? Did Grandpa feel like this?
But he needs to go forward.
It's like learning to walk. He inches his way nearer to the break room, using memory as a guide. His eyes adjust just enough to give more fodder for his anxiety. Is that a camera stand in front of him, or a person? Or is nothing there at all?
Eventually his hand hits the rough studio wall. He traces it along. There's the ridge of the doorframe, bumpy with tacky landlord paint. Then the ridge falls off into the tiny crevice between frame and door, and he walks his fingers along that until he grips the cold metal handle.
Turn it.
The silver warms under his palms. That, or he adjusts to the sting.
A rush of A/C presses against his back.
But what if–
Aaron squeezes his eyes shut. His eyelids come open wet. He blinks rapidly, his quick breathing filling the space around him.
GET OVER IT ALREADY!
~
When it happened, his jaw relaxed. It was Grandpa's first movement in a while, and everyone shifted towards the bed. His eyes fluttered in an odd way, resting half-closed so they bared a hint of pink and yellowish-white.
“Dad?”
Aaron wanted to leave. He should've wished to leave.
“We need a nurse,” his aunt said.
The door opened and closed. Aaron sent a command to his legs, and managed three steps. Somehow, his hand found his mom's shoulder without an order.
She was fixed on his face, both arms reached over his cold chest to cradle it.
Already, he was morphing. His skin took on a grayish hue, so out of the realm of a warm-blooded body that Aaron's head jerked back. He knew he was staring – didn't think he could stop.
And then his grandpa's chest rose.
“He's still breathing.”
Aaron's mom turned her head to look at him. Her eyes were filled with tears, and she gave him a pitiful smile.
“Oh, baby, it's alright.”
Her tone was soothing but ill-placed. Aaron had seen it. He wasn't making this up. He'd seen it happen!
“No, look for it, watch.”
(Aaron still doesn't know why he insisted. It wasn't shock. It wasn't grief.)
“Honey, it's okay.”
And then it happened again.
(He does know. He insisted because the alternative was that she hadn't seen it, because it hadn't happened. Because Aaron had imagined it.)
“Mom, I'm serious. Watch!”
And then her pity turned into something else. Something deeper. Concern, possibly. No, not quite that. Her muscles tensed beneath his palm as her head jerked slightly back.
Afraid was more accurate.
(Aaron still isn't good with saying what he means. Though, “imagined” is a nicer word than “hallucinated”.)
~
He doesn't believe in God because Heaven sounds like a nightmare. How can you live infinitely? He can grasp ten years, a century, maybe possibly a millennium. But to live forever?
To be conscious of infinity is to be tortured. Death, as in the infinite cessation of your thought and existence, is at least an oblivion – though that, too, paralyses him.
His mind catches on it, as if he’s been tied to the front of a train that’s headed for a brick wall. He can’t get off the tracks, he can’t stop. At most, he can shut his eyes so that he doesn’t see the impact coming.
The handle moves under his palm.
The door creaks open. Behind it cowers further darkness. Maybe that, too, is infinite.
A flash of brilliant white light blinds him. His senses flood with input; his ears ring.
Animal instinct drives him to cover his eyes with his useless, shaky hand. His neck twists away from the source, his throat opening wide to let out a scream.
The explosion of noise begins to untangle itself into discrete voices, though they overlap:
“Woah, relax, relax!”
“Argh! Aaron.”
“What the hell's the matter with you, man?”
“Jesus– A Boogie, damn!”
Aaron squats down low, back turned to them, keeping his hand splayed over his face. Through the gaps in his fingers, he hiccups at the white flooring. Up close, it's not all white. There are countless scuff marks from where they've moved equipment in and out of the studio. Some brown stains, too, from where they've failed to mop up a coffee spill properly on account of the rough texture of the concrete, or perhaps they didn't care enough to do a good job.
It makes Aaron feel just enough better to discreetly scrub his face into the hem of his shirt.
Man up.
“Aaron…” Kevin's voice floats towards him, edged with uncertainty.
“Sorry, sorry,” he says. He does a remarkable job at keeping his voice steady. He's had a lot of practice. “You guys just startled me, that's all.”
Aaron rises to his feet and offers them a wide grin, conjuring up a giggle. His eyes dart from one face to the other, drinking in their details and warm toned skin, flush with excitement and pounding blood.
“We scared you?!” Denny cries, incredulous, as if he's not holding a party popper, its multicoloured streamers haemorrhaged on the floor by his feet. “You damn near gave us a heart attack with that scream.”
“Yeah, Aaron,” Herm adds. He pats Zane's shoulder. “And Zane's heart can't take anymore stress. His arteries are clogged enough as it is.”
Zane shoves Herm's hand away from him. “Hey! You're getting up there, man, you’d better watch what you say else karma's gonna get you.”
So Aaron's not the only one who believes in karma – of reaping what terrible, selfish seeds you've sown.
“Uh, Happy Birthday?” Kevin lifts up the plate he cradles in his hands, somewhat awkwardly. He's frowning at Aaron, which is too much attention for his delicate emotionally-compromised and possibly-delusional-as-in-schizophrenic-not-as-in-silly-fun-young-people-slang self. “Hey, are you–”
“What, you skimped out on candles?” Aaron cracks, striding up to examine the cake. It's a mud cake with what looks to be white chocolate writing, reading: Happy 31st Forehead Man!
“We didn't put candles yet because we wanted to surprise you!” Kevin snaps back. “Seeing us around a lit flame would've given us away!”
“More like the others were worried you'd see the fire and flee to warn your tribe.”
“I’ll put candles on it then, damn! Zane, go get–”
Aaron's hand shoots out to grab Kevin's wrist. They all turn to look at him.
Aaron looks from Zane's half-turned back, to Kevin's face, then to the white walls around them. He forces his hand to disengage. “No, no need for candles.”
“...Alright, man, jeez.”
They filter back out to set, Kevin flicking the lights on as he goes. He’s hovering by Aaron for some reason, not looking at him in the very obvious way that people do when they are, in fact, staring at someone.
But whatever Kevin is thinking is lost to Aaron. His friend sets the cake down on the table setup for KL2, and they gather around it.
Denny takes the lead now. He holds up a can of Celsius as a toast. A blue bow is wrapped around its glistening metal exterior.
“One score and eleven years ago, a deadbeat father brought forth–”
“Hey!” Aaron shoves Denny.
“What? It's true! It's true!”
“Herm, you do the speech.”
Herm's eyebrows climb to his cap.
“Fuck off, Herm has a speech impediment!”
“And you have a height impediment.”
Denny crosses his arms and turns to Herm. “Watch this be some bullshit.”
Herm straightens up to his full height and grabs the Celsius can from Denny. He clears his throat. Nods at Aaron.
…
“Is that it?” Zane asks.
Aaron snatches the can. “KL, take it away!”
“Oh, uh,” Kevin holds the Celsius up. “Aaron, you're a good friend, and I'm glad that I was able to look past that… truly giant forehead to see that.”
“KL!”
Denny and Zane burst out laughing, almost doubled over.
“You know what, Kevin, I couldn't have said it better myself,” Denny says.
“Yeah,” Zane adds. “You are a good friend, despite the forehead, the tickling, the rodent-face–”
“The clothes you wear,” Herm says.
Aaron lunges for the cake, arm raised for a strike. They all fall for the fake-out, arms shooting out to grab him, mouths open in mixed exclamations.
“It’s my cake! None of you are getting any of it!” But he's laughing as he says it, so his faux-grumpiness is lost to tone.
As they sit around the table, Kevin produces a long serrated knife from somewhere.
(Herm: “Do we even want to ask?”)
He holds it handle-side out to Aaron. “Birthday boy.”
Aaron's gaze jumps around. The blade catches the harsh lighting and white backdrops around them. Kevin's face shines with the glare of the metal. The walls are too far away to make out imperfections, and the lighting is arranged so artfully as to avoid casting obvious shadows onto them. From where Aaron's sitting, he can't make out the junction where the walls meet the floor, and his depth perception does something terrifying.
For a moment, he's not sure if the walls are really far away, or really close, or even there at all.
Something taps his shoe. Aaron jolts back into himself.
The others are frowning. Herm, across from him, straightens in his chair when Aaron makes eye contact. The shoe touching Aaron's retreats with him.
“Uh, let Zane cut it.”
Zane makes a bemused face. “Why do I feel like there's a fat joke in there somewhere?”
“Relax,” Denny says, “he didn't say you were cut. That would just be untrue.”
Herm leans over to Kevin. “He probably wants Zane to cut it so we all get huge slices.”
Aaron must be acting weirder than he thinks, because Zane does exactly that. He dishes them all a piece, giving Aaron the thickest slice.
Aaron feels weirdly emotional about it, so he stuffs a spoonful into his mouth and hunkers down over his plate, not paying too much attention lest he lose whatever failing grip he has left on his sanity.
(“Hey!” Denny admonishes. “We don't need Aaron on more sugar.”
“Yes, we do,” Zane replies.)
He makes sure to chew and swallow. It doesn't get lodged in his throat.
When they're all finished, Kevin stands up, pats the top of Aaron's head, whisks the plates away and puts the cake in the fridge.
The five of them spend another half hour hanging out. Whenever Aaron catches sight of the walls, he forces himself to look only at his friends. They're real and tangible and finite.
The crew begin to filter in and they start up their usual antics. Aaron knows he's being quieter than normal, but the others compensate for it by asking him questions to prod conversation and jokes out of him. And it helps that they all seem to be more touchy today for some reason. Maybe because it's his birthday, and they're all a little sentimental, but when his attention drifts and the anxiety starts to climb, it's interrupted by a hand on his shoulder or someone's shoe on his foot.
(He says he doesn't know the reason. That, too, is another lie. When they come in for the next shoot, Kevin has hung up a sign on the white backdrop, just reading The Kevin Langue Show, in black, bold text. It's enough to break up the illusion of endlessness.
“Is this better?” he asks Aaron, taking him aside to speak privately.
Aaron gets that horrible emotional feeling again. All he can say is, “Thank you,” but from the way Kevin beams, you'd think Aaron has given him infinity.)