The Last Tomorrow Read Free

sun. Then black.
    There is no transition, just click, like a light being turned off.

THREE
    1
    Headlights flash briefly against Sandy’s bedroom window as a vehicle turns onto the street. It rolls up the hill from the corner and pulls to a stop outside. The brakes
squeal. The engine dies, turning over a last couple times slowly, winding down like a clockwork toy, then going silent. A car door squeaks open, slams shut. Footsteps approach the front door and
the front door, after a jangling of keys, swings open. A moment later it closes. Then the sound of a dead-bolt sliding into place. Keys being set down on the scratched surface of the table by the
front door. Shoes being kicked off and dropping to the floor one after the other with a thud and a thud. Footsteps padding away. Water running in the kitchen. The pipes moaning. A glass being
filled. Silence. A glass being set down on the counter. Creaking floorboards. The couch straining.
    Then five minutes of silence. It rings loudly in Sandy’s ears, like tinnitus.
    Finally the snoring begins. His stepfather’s asleep. Soon he’ll be asleep forever.
    Sandy pushes off the bed.
    The carpet feels strange beneath his feet, coarse and unnatural and unpleasant. He sets down the gun to put clothes on. His stepfather’s asleep; he’s not going to look in on him and
wonder what the hell he’s doing dressed in the middle of the night. You up to no good again? What you been up to? You answer me, you little shit, don’t just shrug with that blank-stupid
look on your face. What you been up to? Why you dressed? His stepfather’s asleep and Sandy wants to be clothed for what he’s about to do.
    Being unclothed makes him feel vulnerable.
    After putting on a pair of pants and a T-shirt Sandy collects the bullets from a shoebox under his bed and puts one into his pocket. The other he puts into the back of his homemade gun. He walks
to his bedroom door. He stands there for a long time – heart pounding, hands sweaty. He licks his lips.
    His mind is chaos, thoughts coming at him from every direction. Don’t do it, you have to do it. What if mom comes home? What if he wakes up? What if mom comes home? Don’t do it. If
he wakes up and sees you with the gun he’ll take it from you and kill you with it. You have to do it, don’t do it, just get undressed and get back into bed and go to sleep. Just get
into bed and sleep. It’s safer. What if he wakes up? Sometimes you have good dreams. If you go to sleep now maybe you’ll have good dreams. Don’t do it, don’t do it, you have
to do it, you’ve got to, you must, don’t—
    He steps into the hallway. He walks down its narrow length. The walls feel like they’re pushing toward him. Then he’s through the hallway and into the living room with the gun
gripped in his fist. Gripped tight.
    He’s afraid.
    But as he walks, a strange thing happens:
    Picture a single-storey house with blue-painted wood siding covering the exterior walls and gray asphalt shingles lining the roof. Picture it standing in the dark of night, the windows bright
yellow rectangles revealing every room to anyone who might wander by. A record player blares scratchy in the dining room, sounding as if the record’s spinning the wrong way. On a radio in the
front bedroom someone talks excitedly but incoherently, the consonants and vowels somehow failing to form words. In the kitchen a dog wails like an infant while in the hallway a baby barks
madly.
    This is Sandy’s mind when he begins walking.
    But with each step one room in the house of his mind goes dark. With each step one room goes silent. Each step is like a switch shutting off part of his brain until when he arrives before his
stepfather his mind’s quiet and dark and calm as the space between two heartbeats. Everything outside this moment is a dream. Everything outside this moment has ceased to exist.
    There’s only one window still lighted and Sandy, standing on the sidewalk, can see himself