Saturday, 21:01 a.m. — Leah Shapiro parked in front of her house but she didn't find the will to go in. What was there for her but the echo of a daily routine that would see no more days? So instead she drove out to the scrublands. It was chilly but that felt good to her. It felt like she had been uncomfortably warm for a long while, and this was the first time that the temperature had been right. The chaparral bit at her ankles. She didn't have the right shoes for this kind of walk, but there she was, walking. The night was completely clear. The moon was a careful situation. As she walked, Leah tried her best to sort through her feelings. It was obvious to her which feelings she should have in this moment: mourning, a wild grief, a sadness that would never be cured by however many decades of slow forgetting she had left. This was what others had assumed she was feeling, and so those were the emotions they managed.
"This must be quite difficult," the doctor had said professionally. "I'm so sorry for your loss. I'm sure you loved her very much," the woman at the funeral home had said empathetically. "Oh my god, you poor thing, you must be bereft!" said Laura at the Moonlite All-Night Diner with a deep sincerity. And then she had taken Leah's order of as many french fries as can fit on a plate. Laura had brought two plates.
But the truth is, that Leah did not feel mourning, grief, or sadness. She supposed that those feelings would come — she hoped they did — because she didn't know what it would mean for herself if they did not. However, emotions are not domestic creatures that can be summoned with a whistle. They are wild. And they move as they please. So try as she might to access her sadness, Leah couldn't. What she could find, to her horror and shame, was relief. She felt SO relieved. And she felt free! She felt absolutely free, and completely relieved, and she felt that she must be the worst person in the world for feeling those things. "What is wrong with me?" she said. And nothing that heard her answered, except a lone coyote, who started, and fled to a warm groove in the earth, where he felt safe from predators.
There was nothing wrong with Leah. She was free. And she felt relieved. Later she would feel sadness — sadness that's vast shape would hardly be conveyed by such a simple word — but not now. Now she walked until she couldn't see her car, until the lights of Night Vale disappeared behind a hill. Until it seemed possible that no other person lived on the earth.
As she stood there, a silver craft descended from the sky. It rotated above her: brilliant, multicolored lights coming from windows on all sides. She watched it hover. And then watched as it rose back up into the sky, until it was indistinguishable from all the other wandering stars.
"Huh." she said. And began the long walk back to her car.
