In the Ash We Fall - The Story of Meeting Elspeth

At first, no one really noticed the strange ash falling from the sky. It fell as isolated flakes, tiny collections of soft dust and dirt. They stood out no more than, say, an emergency flare floating lazily into the flames of a raging forest fire. And then, the ash came down thicker and thicker, resembling a thousand cherry trees stacked on a thousand more and letting loose their blossoms in steady, floating waves.

It was alarmingly beautiful in the beginning.

And then . . . it just became alarming.

Yes, oh yes. When the ash really began to fall, people flocked from their homes to gawk at the dark, grey sky. They left their front doors unlocked. They abandoned their late-morning brunch plates. They stopped their bickering and their merry-making. The registers were left unattended. All conversations, no matter how insipid or deeply-trained, stopped abruptly and trailed off into hushed murmurs and awestruck silence. People thronged the streets; we flooded schoolyards and ran to rooftops. Shoulder to shoulder, we packed open baseball fields and the balconies of every apartment building.

Everyone shoved their way around like sheep in a herd and held their palms up, open to the falling ash. At first, they did it out of whimsical curiosity – as if their bright eyes looked upon nothing more than a charming, yet untimely snow shower in the month of May. But the moment of charm fell on its face and the onlookers’ eyes widened and their jaws slackened. While holding out hope for a freakish snow, their hands instead came up smudged with grey. Many tried to wipe it away on their jackets and their pant legs, but it only smeared deeper into the lines of their hands and the swirling prints of their fingertips. Everything they touched turned grey.

This is what I saw in Seattle. This is precisely what happened all over the world. Angry, storm-like clouds suddenly materialized in all directions, covered the earth, and began spewing ash.  It looked like snow. It fell like snow. It began to accumulate just like snow.

The first ash flake in my hand.

I was one of those people standing in the street. I held my bike in one hand and outstretched the other in front of me. I caught a flake of ash. It was a cluster of soft, vein-like soot resting on my palm. I inspected it. It looked like a tiny root ball. I blew a swift puff of air on it. I expected it to take flight from my open hand, but it disintegrated and a plume of dust burst forth and settled at my feet.

I noticed out of the corner of my eye an older man standing next to me. He was a fella who often asked for spare change on the street, a man who people avoided as he yelled at imaginary ghosts. He wore an oversized, wool coat that was so dirty that it miraculously seemed cleaner as more ash fell on it – just like how when snow covers the land and it makes everything look uniformly white.

The man turned to me and said, “I hope you know how to love, man, ‘cause this world’s gonna need it to get through what’s comin'.”

“What’s coming?” I asked him pensively.

“There's gon' be blood comin',” he answered. “You gon’ need love when you see that blood.”

The man walked away, muttering to himself about how he was going to get ready. “Ready for what?” I thought to myself. “Ready . . . for what?”

Considering the region, we all thought Mt. Rainier had finally blown, but no earthquakes had rumbled, no colossal blast occurred, no pyro-clastic clouds formed. We glued ourselves to TVs and radios. No reports made sense of the ash. Earlier that morning, with nothing seemingly amiss, we ambled along with clouds overhead, which was, of course, nothing new to Seattle. But, by the time evening had descended, everything was covered in three inches of dark, grey soot.

And the ash kept falling.

Sure, people panicked eventually, but most everyone simply went about their day. It seemed to me most folks were in denial of the phenomenon; they claimed they were too busy to give it any thought. Some people, however, hid indoors, fearful something more terrible would fall from the sky. Religious zealots ranted furiously, saying the fire and brimstone would come next. Government officials and public figures made statements to assuage the masses . . . and it almost worked. A sort of organized chaos ensued and then it escalated.

I knew what to do, though.

I was built for this kind of event, like how I’m innately talented at talking about my feelings or how I’m particularly inclined to date women with armpit hair. Certainly, I reckon these are odd quirks for a man, but we are all born with some uncanny and unusual tendencies. And me, I was given the gift of managing and surviving bizarre emergencies. Although, until the ash came, this talent had never really been tested.

Nevertheless, in a matter of 20 minutes after the first ash-flake fell in my open hand, I had bolted to the nearest grocery store to buy supplies. I had made nearly half a dozen trips for food and water before other people started doing the same thing. I managed to fit in 6 more trips before the grocery store became mostly empty of rations and full of frantic people. I left when a man got stabbed for a handful of candy bars. I returned to my apartment. I locked the door and installed a heavy chain over it, from jamb to jamb. I called my family and friends . . . and waited.

The first few weeks were wretched. I didn't leave my apartment. Dumbstruck, I listened to reports of murders and looting on the radio. The first week snowplows desperately tried to clear roads so more supplies could get through, but even with open roads most trucks were raided by even more desperate people, hunting for food. So many people died that week.

The ash kept falling.

At the end of the second week, a man attempted to break into my apartment through a ground floor window in the middle of the night. When getting my door open didn't work, I yelled at him to leave, but he busted out the window with a crowbar anyway and began climbing a ladder into my apartment. I turned all the lights off. Two flashlights switched on behind the man. At least two people were ready to help him.

“We’re coming in! Give us some food or we’ll kill you and take it all!” he hollered.

I decided to remain quiet so as to not alert him of my position. I darted out of the flashlight beams and tip-toed in the dark to the side of the window and waited patiently for him to place a hand on the sill, which I promptly smashed with a hammer. I heard a crunch. He screamed and fell from the ladder. I followed my initial assault with projectiles launched from a sling shot I made from large rubber bands I used for physical therapy on my shoulder. I hit one flashlight man and all three of them bolted. I spent the rest of the night removing all the closet doors in my apartment and screwing them to the frames of my windows.

The temperature had noticeably dropped by the third week with highs in the low 40s. The temperature would continue to fall with the ash clouds completely blotting out the sun. People began worrying about a forthcoming ice age. Several feet of ash had fallen and most of the city had become impassable.

And then, the ash suddenly stopped. Though, the strange, thick clouds remained.

New reports started coming in and I watched them on the internet, which surprisingly still worked. In fact, with only a few brief interruptions here and there, electricity, water, and gas had all remained constant. People organized and community militias formed to protect utility workers and civic personnel. For days on end I helped teams of people armed with shovels to dig out nearby hospitals. While doing that I had the misfortune of uncovering a man buried in the ash. I found him crumpled next to a fire hydrant with the contents of his skull ejected nearby. His wallet was gone. In light of the terror, heroes literally rose from the ashes and the horror stories eventually gave way to ones of triumph and compassion.

Some places suffered more than others, but, all in all, about 46 million people died, which is a small number really, considering the population of the planet. Many people took this as a sign that not all was lost, that we weren't such a bad species after all. I think, in some sense, they were right.

Even though the dark clouds did not break, the sun could sometimes be seen through the eerie veil. The temperature held and scientists noticed a strange, yet positive side effect – our world's glaciers were no longer receding. After a month of difficult work, order was eventually restored. Supplies started getting to their destinations. Businesses began re-opening.

This semblance of normalcy had hiccups, though, when the ash would occasionally return. All productivity halted the moment the vein-like balls starting floating to the ground again. People feared the return of anarchy, but the ash would stop after only a few hours. And then it disappeared for a week and returned again for a day. This became the new normal, constant cloud cover with occasional ash fall. It remained this way for months and people, more or less, went back to their lives.

New jobs and trends developed over the next few years. Ash removal. Ash insurance – if the “big one” hits again. Cars came equipped with ash plows, winches, and special windshield wipers. If it rained, everything turned to mud and rubber boots couldn't be made fast enough. Handkerchiefs and goggles had also become fashionable – as they would often be used to cover one’s mouth and eyes while traveling outside. People began installing state-of-the art ventilation systems to keep ash out of buildings. Construction standards even changed and “dust rooms” were built at the entrances of every house and building. These dust rooms blew forced air onto the people inside and then vacuumed ash from their clothes before actually entering a structure. People even started naming their newborns Ash and Dusty to commemorate the cataclysm.

Dressed in ash, ready to see the blood, ready to give the love it needs.

There were a lot of theories about why the ash had come, but nobody really knew the cause for sure. Some insisted it could be explained by science and others believed the fire and brimstone was still on its way. As for me, I thought about the ash a lot. It occurred to me that each of us would find our own personal reasons for the ash and we’d learn them when the time was right. I had no epiphany about this until three years after that first ash-flake had fallen onto my hand.

This one evening, the ash was falling hard; the little root balls stuck together and fell as soft, amorphous shapes, some as big as baseballs. I had a crush on this gal I knew, and for a man who had struggled for years to find a partner worth keeping, this one seemed to hit the mark like no other. Her name was Tess. I was smitten. In fact, it might be more appropriate to say I was driven. I had to know her and it was unclear if she had similar feelings. Well, actually, I’m pretty sure she didn't even know my name.

I was late, on my way to see her at an art show, an installment of her photography at a local gallery. The show was called “Under the Ash,” which explored the aftermath of the initial storm. One of her pictures was of the man I found near the hospital by the fire hydrant. The back of my leg and the shovel I used were in the foreground. I remember when she took that picture, but my back was facing her. By the time I turned around she had her camera poised in the opposite direction and she walked away. I planned to tell her the story of uncovering the man’s body, while pointing out my leg in her picture. Getting her phone number seemed imminent.

As I said, I was late. I ran out the door and in a matter of seconds clumps of ash had covered my goggles. I smeared the ash away with the back of my hand and kept jogging through the heavy ash. I left puffs of dust in my tracks. My goggles had nearly gone opaque again. I reached up to wipe them off once more, but didn't succeed. Instead, I suddenly collided head-long into another person. We smashed together and spun off in different directions. I landed head-first into a low hedge and the other person sprawled out flat on their back on the sidewalk. I was clearly heavier than them.

I pulled myself from the shrubbery and staggered over to the other person. My goggles were lost and I tasted blood in my mouth. I knelt next to the person, who was finally rousing from the impact and had the shape of a tall woman. Blood matted her handkerchief.

“Damn, I’m sorry. You ok?” I asked as I helped her sit up.

She shook her head to scatter the stars that must have been circling her head.

“Yeah, I think so. And you?” she returned.

Her voice was deep, but it sang a handful of notches above baritone.

“I think I split my lip open on your forehead.”

She chuckled and said, “Sorry, I shouldn't have been running in this shit weather.”

“Oh, no need to apologize. I was running too.”

“Oh,” she said and then paused to pull her goggles up to her forehead. “My nose is bleeding.”

“Do you think it’s broken?”

She gingerly squeezed the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger and announced, “No, just a little bloody. Ack, I need to get cleaned up. I’m late for a show.”

“I have a place nearby. You can get cleaned up there.”

“Wha- . . . oh, sure. That’d be great. Thanks.”

I helped her to her feet. She stood nearly as tall as me and had a shape to behold. We walked back to my apartment. The dust room outside cleaned us up – mostly. Upon entering, my cat greeted us, as if to say “Back so soon?” I chirped back at her. She stared at me with big, green eyes, mewed once, and then walked over to my bleeding guest to rub her tiny face on her ankles.

“Welcome. That’s my cat, Eva. The bathroom is this way.”

“Thanks,” she said through a pinched nose. The bleeding was already subsiding.

We walked together. The woman wore all black and she had on petite boots that clunked on my hardwood floor. I flicked on the light and she walked past me to the sink. I joined her. We pulled our handkerchiefs down simultaneously. We both had blood on our mouths and chins. She had three black rings in her septum. My lip was definitely split open, but not too bad. We smiled at each other in the mirror.

“We’re  hilarious,” I said and she issued a quick, amused puff of air from her nose, which resulted in blood spatter on the mirror.

We laughed.

“Yeah, fucking hilarious,” she returned. “Sorry about that. First aid supplies?”

“Don't worry about it. And, yeah, in the drawer at your feet.”

Our blood touching in the sink.

Together, we stood side-by-side tending to our wounds and giving each other funny, sideways glances. Her eyes were brilliant, ice blue and her hair was shoulder-length, straight with short bangs, and the color of a raven. We introduced ourselves and shook hands between the exchange of warm, wet washcloths and taking turns to spit blood in the sink. The sink was where our blood touched for the first time. 

Her name was Elspeth.

“What show are you going to?” I asked.

“Ash Fall.”

“Oh, is that the space metal band whose members all lost somebody in the ash storm?”

“Yeah, that’s the one.”

“I saw them play last year.”

“Yeah . . . actually, I’m not really going to see them. I kinda have a crush on a fella who works the venue.”

I smiled and barely remembered I was going to a show myself. I told Elspeth about my crush. She shook her head and looked amused.

“Would you like a whiskey before you go?” I offered.

“Sure. Yeah, I would like that".

We relocated to my kitchen and I poured the drinks. In the end, neither one of us made it to our shows. And how we met, falling in ash, became one of our favorite stories.