Chapter Text
The world is on fire, the corpse of American democracy is being systematically picked apart by a flock of capitalist vultures, and the air is full of literal fucking miasma.
When you finally resolve to let the apocalypse happen without you, you wonder why it took you so long.
You sell everything you own. The textbooks from your useless English degree, the supplies from every craft you picked up and discarded during quarantine, your soulless corporate wardrobe, the ugly Hummel figurines you inherited from your grandmother. You’ll need your car and your bike and your laptop, but everything else is optional. To give up on society you’ll need to consume less, scale back your lifestyle, and at first the prospect does seem daunting.
But with every item that finds a new home via Craigslist or online thrifting, you feel a bit of tension melt out of your shoulders. Each time you drive away from the drugstore parking lot with cash in hand, you feel the giddy rush of your impending freedom.
Like the rest of your generation, you’ll never be able to afford a traditional house – and you hardly expect to inherit one, given your status as the black sheep of the family. Luckily, your dreams are far more modest. You’re a child of the Rust Belt, both acutely aware of its many problems and intensely proud of its natural beauty. And you know that in a tiny town called Naples, there’s a tiny state park called Grimes Glen, home to a tiny creek. And on the narrow lane leading to the creek there’s a tiny slip of property, just big enough to park a trailer or an RV. You’ve had your eye on this property for years, forever wondering why it remains empty – for the creek is a magical place, fully worth the long drive from the city to visit. The creek and the park’s lone hiking trail are one and the same; the only way to hike to the waterfall at the end is to hop into the water, to wade upstream while butterflies bob through the sunlit air and silver fish dart between your feet.
You’ve spent many summers driving back and forth, making yourself at home in the crystalline waters. And now, you never intend to leave.
Your last winter in the city finally thaws into a warm, breathing spring. You dare to drive out to the creek, where the rocks are still slick with ice and dead leaves, cold beneath the naked branches that arch high overhead. The property still has a rusted For Sale sign stuck in the hard, snow-trampled ground.
This time, though your fingers are stiff, you actually dial the number printed on it.
A few months later, the little slip of land belongs to you. You celebrate this milestone by yanking up the sign and flinging yourself atop the tender, new shoots of green grass with a bottle of cheap champagne, uncaring what your neighbors in the nearby trailers and cottages might think. If you lie back and stretch your toes and fingertips as far as they can go, you can practically touch the borders of the property. Doing so makes you giggle, makes you feel like a giant and a child at the same time.
The plot is small, but it’s yours. It’s yours, and it’s full of beautiful possibilities.
Your savings are depleted, but your good credit allows you to get a loan. You pick out a refurbished trailer online, and have it hauled to the property. Men come to install electrical and septic hookups, to mount solar panels and satellite internet infrastructure on the roof. Ostara and Beltane come and go, the sun grows warmer with each passing day, and you start exploring your new home in earnest. There’s a roadside stand across from the main street leading to your quiet lane, where you can fill your bike basket with fresh produce and baked goods. A small grocer in the nearby town, where you can pick up milk and other necessities. There are real, honest-to-God antique stores dotted along the closest highway, where treasures are stacked in precarious, disorganized piles and the owners wouldn’t think of fleecing a nice young lady like you. There’s even a local hardware store where you soon know the owner and her four sweet mutts by name, given how often you stop in for tools and gardening supplies.
Soon, the interior of the trailer is wholly yours. A little bohemian paradise full of warm candles, gauzy draperies, repainted antiques and embroidered pillows. While you have plans to build a deck later on, for the first year, you settle on establishing your vegetable gardens. Every moment you’re not leashed to your laptop for your remote job, you’re living outside the way you always wanted to, getting your hands dirty and letting the sun weave streaks of light into your hair. On rainy days, you pull out the craft supplies you didn’t sell, devoting yourself to the arts you’ve always loved. You sew your own clothes, you knit your own blankets, you cross-stitch cheeky samplers and depict the world outside in luminous watercolors.
You scrub your social media accounts. You stop reading the news. Whenever the itch to doomscroll hits you, you force yourself to pick up a physical book. You start biking to the library, just so you’ll feel obliged to finish what you borrow.
If the world will not offer you peace, then you’ll make your own.
If humankind is truly doomed, then you’ll make sure your little corner of Hell is the nicest that it can be.