I was still wearing the same pajamas I had on when they stole from me. 

Just a t-shirt and bottoms. 

Nothing special.

The neon pink light of the club beckoned me, whispering promises of a haven, where the fallen could finally be laid to rest. 

Inside, women clustered into small orbits, their voices hushed like a child’s lullaby. It wasn’t like the usual nightclubs I frequented—you know, the ones where pulsing blue strobe lights illuminated intoxicated bodies, illuminating the wild, the wicked, the darkest parts of man. 

Here, no one danced. No one laughed. The air was thick with screams unheard.

I made my way to the bar and leaned in.

“Sorry,” the bartender murmured under her breath. “Non-alcoholic drinks only.”

Her eyes roamed my face, sweeping over me before settling on the dried blood staining my sleeve.

“This your first?” she asked in a low voice. 

I nodded imperceptibly, glancing around to make sure the shadows weren’t listening.  

I tilted my chin towards her. “You?”

Her mouth was drawn into a tight line, and for a moment, she said nothing. Then softly, bitterly, “Second. But this time he finally went through with it.”

Her words seeped into my bones, rattling the cage that once held my soul. 

And then, from somewhere behind me—

“He spiked my drink.”

A pause.

“—left me on the side of the road.”

A whisper, barely more than a breath.

“I didn’t even know him.”

We gathered closer, stories slipping between us like a secret language, binding our fates together.

And then the door opened. A child entered the room. She couldn’t have been more than four or five, her Ariel dress trailing behind her, the pink sequins catching the neon light.

She was too young for this place. 

But innocence had never protected any of us. 

The people who stayed took it harder than the people who left. Those going could always return: if things didn’t work out in Float, they could have a fresh start on Earth. Wait half a year, and it would be a whole new planet—about a decade passed for every month gone. For those who stayed, the departure was just another death.

Minnie was a rare case: traveling alone. Few boarded the shuttle to Float without someone acting as a witness to who they’d been before. She savored the relative solitude of the trip, knowing on arrival she’d be installed in one of the living-housing communities. She’d chosen the Single Moms Clan, thinking some extra help would be welcomed, even if she didn’t quite match the Ideal Candidate description.

Her first look at Float was disappointing. The town mimicked Earth exactly, and Minnie felt like her Earth self exactly. Still, she smiled at Frida, her Clan Representative, who hugged her over the baby strapped to her chest. The sight made Minnie worry about dribbling milk, even though she’d dried up long before during the weeks on the shuttle. Frida acquainted Minnie with her Float responsibilities, only one of which caused Minnie chagrin: Dating-Pool Party Attendance. It was mandatory for unpartnered Floaters, but Frida assured her they were almost fun.

The DPP Organization Committee, ostensibly to increase the chance of population growth, threw themed parties, retrofitting the storage unit assigned to them into a new sort of date night each month. A seedy bar, complete with a sticky floor. A movie theater, minus the movie, popcorn inexplicably pressed into the recliner cushions. A downtown rave, with lights clipping every which way and too-loud music meant to draw people closer, into pheromone-range, if they wanted to be heard.

There, she met Nick, who had a mustache, who could somehow make a black t-shirt and jeans look pretentious. They would get drinks together. They developed a teasing sort of rapport, and their hours together would slip by, as quickly as Earth-time.

One day, they were laughing and joking and singing song lyrics at each other as a discotheque mirror ball orbited above them. Other single Floaters tried out the supplied rollerblades as pinks and blues strobed across Nick’s face. He belted out an old Earth song from their youth. “Hey-ey-ey baby, won’t you have my bay-ay-ay-ayby.” A strange sense of de ja vu: She’d somehow swirled back to the very moment that always undid her, where she would forget high risk had anything to do with her, where she’d misbelieve one more try would be enough to get it right—just one more try, and she’d show the little stone there was more to this world than sinking. Except this time, even the hope had turned rancid. Her old fashion tasted only of its bitters. The party was over.

Minnie boarded the next shuttle for Earth without telling a single soul.

“Excuse me,” Ted said as he squeezed through yet another pair of conjoined twins on his path toward the burly bouncer. It was slightly unnerving how many conjoined twins stood in line for the nightclub.

Unfortunately for him, this pair wasn’t as congenial as the others he passed.

“Hey, we were here first,” the lankier twin spat at him, moving to close the gap between Ted and the next person ahead. His brother nodded in support.

Ted couldn’t risk starting an argument. He was about ten people away from reaching the entrance of the pulsing nightclub. He could clearly spot the velvet rope and the six-foot, hooded bouncer who barely let a single soul into the club.

Ted glanced over the twins’ shoulders. Millions of heads glared back at him. Just twenty-million more heads down was his spot in line.

When Ted first found out that he was dead, his initial thought was: at least this is better than being stuck in that bed.

Ted’s body had been rotting in the same hospital bed for the past month. He had first arrived able-bodied with a mild fever. Now, his human body was trapped in a coma, and his only options were either waiting in the back of a line to what appeared to be a nightclub heaven or waiting in a hospital bed of hell. It was laughable how slim his options were. The first thing Ted was going to do when he got into that nightclub was ask for the manager. He had a few questions, concerns, and complaints about Mr. G-O-D.

Ted  held a finger up to the lanky twin. “Hang on to that thought for just a sec.” Ted didn’t bother waiting for their reply as he quickly slipped around them.

The nightclub’s looming doorway and echoing music welcomed him as he neared the entrance. On his way up, Ted had pondered what this moment would be like and what he would finally say to this emblematic bouncer. But when Ted finally approached, all his words left him.

“Um. Hi,” He finally said. “Can I…go in?”

For a long time, there was silence. Ted was sure he was going to be manhandled back down to the end of the line.

Then, the bouncer finally spoke. “Once you’re in, you ain’t coming back out.”

As Ted stared at the long arched doors and golden lights seeping through the cracks, he felt an incredible warmth. An inviting embrace that whispered Come on in, Ted. You don’t have to wait any longer.

It was both scary and comforting. But Ted was ready.

Then, a sharp pull at his spirit yanked Ted into a white tunnel.

Piercing fluorescent lights invaded his vision, and as he blinked and gathered his surroundings, he could barely discern the face in his peripheral vision. But Ted didn’t need a clear vision to sense he was back to square zero.

“He’s alive!” Someone shouted.

Goddamnit.

We didn’t feel it. I asked around, and everyone said the same thing: “I was alive until I wasn’t.” 

No one knows what happened. Before it was lights-out, there was talk of war, the oceans were getting too acidic, and all kinds of sea creatures were washing onto shores. Most said it had something to do with war, others global warming—and some said the Apocalypse, like in Revelations. I guess that means we got left behind.  

I don’t think it was a nuke or acidic oceans or the coming of Christ. I think someone stole the sun.  

I saw a pair of eyes in the sky. Have you ever looked into a fish bowl as a kid? That’s what it felt like, except I was the fish. And I had just died suddenly in my tank. Sometimes, I think we’re in a fishbowl or marble or something small and vulnerable, somewhere big and curious, where giant eyes belong to giant bodies with giant hands that can steal the sun just because they feel like it.  

Everything is a ghost now, even cockroaches. The plants are all dead, too, but they don’t seem to have ghosts. Some people are in denial, refusing to believe what’s right in front of them. They still try to go through life as it was before. As ghosts, we can’t move anything in the physical world. 

I haunt the beaches, far away from the cities and towns, with Dirk and Ginny Russo. They were married before all this, but marriage doesn’t matter at the end of the world. They agree something stole the sun. It’s the most obvious conclusion because when we all… well… died, we didn’t see the sun again. We haunt the planet in an eternal night. I am surprised no one else has thought about it. I guess they’re too concerned with the politics of life after death: who gets to haunt what, and who’s right about how the world ended, and is there a God?  

Ginny thought it would be a good idea to meet more lost souls and show them the pair of eyes. Here, the endless sea meets the endless sky, with no distractions or politics.  

“It’ll be like a party! Oh! Remember nightclubs? We’ll have a beach club!” She had said.  

I was never a fan of clubs or people. But there was a part of me that wanted everyone to know the eyes that watched us in our tank. 

When our beach filled up with ghosts and it got quiet, I said, “Look up.” Their translucent heads rose to view the stars and the moon and the faint shadow of a pair of eyes.  

I heard voices murmur things like “God.” Most pretended it wasn’t there. Others claimed they had explanations. Some started religions because of it.  

I didn’t pretend to know what the eyes were, but I still think they’re responsible for stealing the sun. 

Marlene stands with her back to the bar because her miniskirt won’t zip. She can feel the place just below her waist where the metal teeth split into a y, the clasp digging. Dead, and still trying to suck it in. Dead, and still caring what size she is. Well, maybe the real question is: Why is she any size at all now? She takes a sip from the amber-colored liquid in her glass–Paper Plane–maybe the last thing she drank before she…? Maybe the first? Briefly panics that she can’t remember and wonders if she’s already losing herself, a losing that happens slow and then all at once. But then, it comes to her.

Amaretto sour.

Takes another sip and frowns, the taste of rye shifting to the taste of almond. Strange place, the afterlife.

 Makes her uneasy. Makes her distrustful.

The dance floor looks like it’s bathed in navy velvet from the moonlight, white folds and fuzzed shadow sheen. Bodies sway. A disco ball descends and then it’s all Donna Summers and Madonna, and she wonders if they pick the music based on which generation is in the majority. It does not make her want to dance, so she drinks instead.

There’s another woman at the bar, much older, with gray ringlets. Her dress, Marlene notices, is zipped up to mid back.

“I hear it doesn’t count when you’re dead,” this mystery woman says.

“What doesn’t?”

She raises her eyebrows, nods at someone young, probably one of the 27s in his wide-legged pants, lurking at the edge of the dance floor. He doesn’t know how to move to the music and instead of endearing, it just makes Marlene feel old. Sad.

“Not for me,” Marlene says, and the woman shimmies off.

She looks down at her glass, thick and beveled with rounded lumps. At her hand wrapped around it. There’s a ring there and she remembers when Dave gave it to her, on the pier in Santa Monica. Hears the waves crash and a seagull and there’s something close to a keening in her chest, something she can’t verbalize. She looks for the exit.

“Who makes a nightclub without exits?” she says to herself.

The claustrophobia sets into her bones, the back of her molars. She notices the rising temperature escaping in steam off the not-yet-cold bodies, pressed together.

Thinks that even now, especially now, her ideal night out would be rotting on the couch, Dave’s feet set on her lap, or his head pressed against her arm. She presses it then against the bar but it’s too hard, too cold, too solid. Remembers, briefly, a fairytale about shoes danced to pieces. The music switches to something older, something Cohen. It’s brief, his croon, because then an alarm sounds, rain prickling across her skin.

The sprinklers, she thinks.

Health and safety, she thinks.

Water streams over her eyelids, blurring vision, and she wonders,

Where can we even go from here?

She stands by the bleachers in an auditorium that had been demolished years ago—a vision in a pale blue taffeta dress she’d worn to our high school prom. I stare at her, afraid to blink.

“Am I dead?” I ask.

She laughs, and the sound washes over me. Her cheeks flush as she smiles. “No, you aren’t dead. Just—elsewhere. For a moment.”

Pink balloons scatter across the old wood floor as she steps toward me, the edges of her dress whispering against her bare calves. Freckles dance like stars across her cheekbones and the bridge of her nose. I love her freckles.

“Are you gonna stare at me all night or are you gonna ask me to dance?” she asks.

I hold out my hand and realize I’m seventeen again, wearing the same ill-fitting suit I had mowed thirty-seven lawns to buy. Her hand slides into mine, and I feel my pulse pound everywhere our skin touches.

Heart in my throat, I lead her to the center of a makeshift dance floor blanketed in low draping lights. She raises my arm above her head so she can spin underneath it and winks at me over her shoulder. A smile breaks across my face, one that turns into a laugh when she tries to spin me under her arm.

She always knew how to do that. How to crack me open when I hardened, to bring warmth to my bones when I froze.

My hands shake as I pull her close, as she leans into me. “I Only Have Eyes for You” plays through the hazy speakers. The song she sang in the car, in the shower, in her studio as she painted. She wraps her arms around my shoulders, and she smells like summer flowers and sunshine, like soft rainfall on a Saturday morning, like cold nights curled under warm blankets, like love and laughter and all the dreams of the life we would have together. The life we built.

Tears fall down my face. She kisses them away.

I clutch her dress, blue taffeta wrinkling under desperate fingers, fearing she would disappear into old music and dusty memories.

“Save another dance for me?”

Smiling, she says, “Always.”

But we both knew I couldn’t stay.

I hold her close until the song fades to nothing.

***

I bring her old CD player to the funeral. I play our song.

My smile, sagging behind wrinkles of age and time and wear, wets with tears. But I can still feel the warmth of her palm on my chest, on my heart, as we danced among twinkling lights and pink balloons.

I don’t know where she went when she walked through the auditorium doors. But I knew that I would find her again. Someday.

And I knew that—wherever she was—she was saving me a dance.

An Interview with Lev GrossmanLev Grossman is the author of eight novels, including the bestselling The Bright Sword, an epic retelling of the story of King Arthur. He’s also the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling The Magicians trilogy which has been published in thirty countries and was adapted as a TV show. He has degrees from Harvard and…

Daytona Beach Babies

Ladies’ Night was Wednesday night.
I was a teen wearing the heat like charmeuse;

my rhinestone decolletage not far removed from 
games of Pretty Pretty Princess and Ring Pop richness.

How do fifteen years look,
all dressed up in patent anticipation?

Rappelling from windows like Rapunzel’s lust, two girls 
escaped plain homes to walk toward a sequined strip.

We waited outside Razzle’s, whispering 
Can I have your bracelet? to passersby,

pilfered paper wristbands to vouch for legal age. 
Men said yes, smiles laced with knowing.

We fixed our wrists in paper cuffs
sealed with bubble gum. Tits up for the bouncer.

Sheer surprise at entry. Flash of wrist to the bartender: 
I’ll have a Sex on the Beach, sunset-colored drink

with the naughty name that felt like power on my lips. 
We sat steps from the ocean. Shimmying silky pony hair

and laughing like chimps. Imping the cool girls,
the college girls, even them, barely skirting twenty-one.

Together we danced on go-go stages, hanging, 
small cages for the display of pretty birds like us.

We already knew how to move, how to grind 
our diamond belt buckles against the bars.

When we descended to the dancefloor, a ballroom if ever 
we’d known one, the men materialized in Marlboro clouds.

Our lips tied in bows, we ribboned together for safety.
But each hip thrust, each sip of ether, pulled us a little looser

until we hung askance, stringy and stupid. We imagined 
it was us, holding the keys to the castles between our ears.

We didn’t know better, couldn’t yet grasp 
the jeweled boxes of women

whose hinges and clasps were broken and forced open. 
Force: hadn’t occurred to us yet,

children plumped on American Dreams, 
tender foie gras goslings.

When they crushed their dicks against us
and corseted us in touch; squeezing and rubbing,

churning and shoving, we wondered:
Is this love?

Married on the Eve of Destruction

The roses here are like pomegranate seeds,
ruthlessly carnal and hopelessly tinged

with the scent of the dead.
The soil they grow in is leaden, fungicide

paints each head. The flower smell is bred out 
in a hedge for longevity.

How did this bloom that wreaths collective 
memory in sparking thorn and throbbing petal

become mostly poison? Our apples 
have met a similar fate,

vitamins and minerals bolting
at downshot rates, revolting from the flush.

Calcium, Iron, Phosphate: 
Bone, Blood, Soft Tissue—

What greater issue? If the blocks are lost, 
how will our bodies build?

After my vitals succumb, I will be spirit 
only, a scythe of the new moon.

So much has already been cut away
from my crooning fingers, which reach to grasp

a meager scrap of fragrance, flavor, feeling.
To hold those things like a yawn before thick sleep.

When I go under, my wraith will rake the leaves 
of you, unearth the time we ate apple crumble

hiding in the thicket of my grandmother’s rose 
bushes, that walled-up garden where the thorns

cut my back and your knees and nothing bloomed 
but us, despite the stoniest winter.

Sufficient to Destroy a Man

Behind the Manna of St. Nicholas 
she veiled a means of escape
brought by belladonna,
a clear champion of beautiful women 
(and aren’t we all beautiful)
pressed into a bottle, for ugly skin 
(and aren’t we all ugly).

For their cheeks that bloomed with 
bruises, nebulae forewarning the birth 
and death of stars, rouged with an 
atmosphere of long-waves and shaking 
with volcanic activity, molten in rivers 
and canyons cracked between their ribs.

These women knew the different
kinds of burn: spark, rage, smolder, rain. 
Degrees of damage done by ravaging, 
ravishing lips in red, their words lined in 
the color of blood. The head bleeds so 
much, the mouth heals so fast. The throat 
is always covered when in public. The back 
of the neck exposed when in the home.

Guiliana T. made a pretty bottle, named
for her sake, Aqua Tofana (Storm Water). 
Would it soothe the skin and disappear
the damage? Or could it make the water rise, 
take them to that deep and sleeping place, 
the foam lapping their lips, the sky’s
eyes closing—finally offering the rest— 
with which the moondrunk night is blessed.

Eli has officially been declared a missing person. I trudged through the snow, my boots leaving deep impressions, while I watched my breath escape in shivers. We had one flashlight and six people’s worth of determination to find Eli.

Max was ahead of me, shouting into the void: “Eli! Come on Eli! I know you can hear me, dammit!”

I jogged to catch up, my breath shallow in the cold.

“Max, we have been searching for hours.” I said, through choked back tears.

“He’s fine, Kit. We are going to find the idiot. Okay?”

“Okay,” I sniffed back.

I could feel something was wrong. It felt like the tether tying us together had snapped and Eli suddenly went loose.

We would always go for walks along the river together. Giggling, cracking jokes, howling up at the sky like the goons we were.

I took a turn through the woods and headed down the hill towards the riverbank. I kept walking, mindlessly, not really sure what I was even looking for. A body?

I was looking for a body.

The police found Eli’s car at the trailhead. His phone, keys, and wallet sitting in the front seat.

I continued walking along the rushing water of the partially frozen river, rubbing my hands together from the biting cold. I had been out here for hours, looking, longing, hoping.

As I continued down the riverbank, I stumbled into a clearing. There was a perfect opening lit by the moon; a tree poised so it hung gently over the water.

And there he was.

I dropped to my knees and screamed up at the sky. The kind of scream that stained memories, burned lungs, and caused aches in your bones.

Max and the others came running from behind and took in the scene. Max dropped down and wrapped his arms around me. We huddled there together in the snow—the moon the only reminder the Earth was still standing.

The child’s joy was contagious. He had no idea this would be one of the most symbolic moments of his life. He emanated sunlight, smiling.

Moments of happiness and recurring lucidity. Life previously so turbulent became a blue ocean of calm. We fought for the first time, the hurt flowed like rain, and the world collapsed after the relapse. I asked myself several times, “Does no one like me?”

Months that used to pass quickly now pass slowly, dragged by force through time.

At the end of the year, the bright star passed by so quickly that almost no one saw it, but that hopeful child did. He requested to have one more chance to change an uncertain future.

Just like the stars that shone that night, the notification appeared. In the middle of the pitch-black, hope rose again with one simple question, can we still be friends?

Maybe I was too hasty. Maybe I should have thought more. If I leave, will you remember me? It’s sad to know I no longer have you with me, smiling. It’s sad to delete the memories of good and magical moments. It’s sad to see you moved on, and I’m still standing at the same bus stop. Now, I’m the one asking the question, can we still be friends?

LETHE

here—                                          all along the path 
                                                     lead me
as if each step could do more than amplify 

                          the silence you left for me

look—               how the grass bows a slow
           gravity                              —dislocated
                        footfall after 
footfall after

                                          how the river runs 
                 to your body   runs

headwaters welling from every fracture

                                                     already
                                        i am forgetting
               how to pronounce your name

my good-for-nothing tongue                plumbs 
your good-for-nothing mouth

                                                      —mud-choked 
estuary split                   open with seed

those gardens that will never be

                             birds come with their hunger 
and i let them—

because the berries are too red
because secrets are graves         and i’m tired
                                                         of digging

there are other ways to make a body sacred

hoofprints measure
                           the width
                                       of every field
                                                               and i follow
simple as that—

what does it matter if the dreams are wordless?
if i am visited by ghosts or if
                                                   i have become one?

SELF PORTRAIT AS CIRCUMFERENCE & CROWS

for months after i dream 
             of sawing circles
                          out of ice      allow myself 
                                                fall through

                          since i outgrew my last body 
             winter arrives             one black bird
at a time & the snow
             ghosting into my memories
                          no matter how
                                                    i hold them

                          don’t tell me it’s only october 
                          that i have no sense of direction

             each day           i gather in the rafters
of every conversation 
             strange-voiced            as a god
                                                    distrusting 
             the construct of god
the idea that healing is possible

             if i am                to make you believe in 
             me        i must retrieve my body

                          walk across     the water
                                                    of a crow’s eye 
                          to find
             the blackhole               at its center 
to learn the art of undrowning

IN WHICH I BECOME THE WANING CRESCENT MOON

                              all night entranced              i watch my back
                                                 undress             mirror into
                      mirror   my scarlet mole             a tiny hole through
 my heart   there   breaths fatten like             wax   bead onto
                       sheets   room soft with             the opposite of
                                   candlelit   where             nothing
                                           touches me

                                                                             i crumble
                       where nothing touches              me   my magnetic field
                                   erratic and weak             admits all 
                                     manner of dark             matter    i draw back
                             along an involuntary            muscle   immune to
                                          stillness and             gravity   one ear
                             brimming with silver             one eye a field
                                          of milkweed

                                                                             i do not mean to 
                                         haunt myself             but i do   linger
                            in this disintegration              loop   with minutes
                                 gathering   ponds             in my palms
                                          with my face             eclipsed   in a shard
                                       of dinner plate             which i rise to find
                                  moon after moon             which i run from
                                                   circling             wolfish
                                  for the bitterness             of my own fingers
                                          in my mouth

A Community Feature with Lamp Lifeboat LadderLamp Lifeboat Ladder is a global refugee resettlement program that supports survivors of torture, sexual violence, and trauma who have been forced to flee their homeland. They provide protection and holistic accompaniment to survivors, and work with them to identify and address their needs—this may be medical care, safe housing, access to education, or therapeutic support. Lamp Lifeboat…