Vicesimus Octavus Gradus

Adira took a large bite out of a golden apple that gleamed in the evening sunlight. It was fresh, cool, and juicy. As the crunch of the bite filled the air, Kaya recoiled and her eye twitched. 

“You know, if you put your lips on the skin it wouldn’t splash so much,” she complained while inching away from Adira.

“Mm,” Adira responded, mouth full of apple, “yes,” she swallowed, “but that would ruin my lipstick.” True enough, her bright red lipstick would surely smear onto the apple skin. But Adira’s argument—which was both logical and snarky as a consequence of her practice at family dinners against her corporate lawyer mother—fell on deaf ears. Kaya was busy falling; she had backed too far away and slipped off the curb of the sidewalk.

“Oh!” She called. She felt a strong arm catch her shoulders. Eric steadied her in an instant. Kaya turned to thank him, his hand still on her back, and her cheeks turning apple-colored themselves.

“Alright, Kaya, move along,” Aster, a third girl with a sporty white jacket, poked. “I’ve had enough of you trying to poach my boyfriend today.”

Kaya skipped away, looking much like a cautious bird hopping away from a stranger. She cupped her hands together and squeezed her fingers tight. 

Aster held back a chuckle, casting a glance at Eric. Her pursed lips and wide eyes caused Eric to chuckle. Naturally, this caused Aster to laugh. Kaya’s face reddened and her shoulders pulled up toward her chin while they spiraled into giddiness. They weren’t targeting Kaya, though she felt they were. Really, they were laughing at each other. Meanwhile, Adira munched on bits of apple and observed with a haughty expression she’d learned from her mother. She was careful to wipe her red mouth with her thumb after every bite.

Then the scruffiest of the bunch jogged toward them from the direction of the sun. 

His shaggy hair bobbed as he approached them. Short of breath, he was clutching a spacious leather bag close to his chest. It was latched shut.

“Zeek, what have you got there?” Eric asked with a bit of a cackle at the end, for no reason other than the general silliness that dominates one’s mind after they’ve been laughing for a few minutes. And, Zeek was always an amusing sight himself.

“I-I-I…” he stammered. “A bag, I guess, but check this out!” His face was unusually pale, but he was quick. Before she could protest, he had plucked the apple out of Adira’s hand and skipped out of her reach. “Hey, hey,” he repeated to Eric and Aster, “check this out.”

When he saw that he had their attention, as well as Kaya’s and a nettled Adira’s, he held the half-eaten golden apple to the bag and opened the leather flap. Then, holding the apple above the bag, he dropped it in.

Kaya noticed something peculiar. From her angle, she should’ve been able to see the inside lining of the bag. But she could not; it was simply… not visible. It wasn’t black, per se, but it wasn’t not black. And she also noticed something that the others did not. Zeek hadn’t dropped the apple. For an instant, it seemed to have stretched like putty into the bag and disappeared. But this trick of the mind was immediately forgotten when Adira snapped out,

“Nice, you can drop an apple into a leather sack. Now it’s all dirty and completely wasted.”

“No, no, you missed it.” Zeek’s eyes scrambled over the street. They settled on a birdbath about four and a half feet tall in a neighboring yard. “Come on!” He chirped, setting off toward it, “come get a closer look.”

Kaya shivered as she moved, mindful of the curb, to the new location. Eric and Aster were still recovering from themselves as they, too, followed Zeek. 

“What are you gonna do, Zeek? Dump water in your bag and ruin my apple some more?” Adira sniped, trudging along the sidewalk. She was the last one to arrive in the next yard.

Zeek opened up the bag and pointed it toward the bird bath, moving nearer and nearer until it compacted and stretched like putty, seemingly vacuumed into the container. In a mere moment, it was gone. A few liters of water fell to the ground in a ball and splashed out.

Eric and Aster were dumbstruck. Kaya felt a wash of horror writhe through her arms and legs like a serpent through desert sand.

“Give me the bag!” Adira commanded, lurching toward Zeek. Zeek, more terrified by her stern expression than the item which he held, sacrificed it immediately as he stumbled away from her and the spot where the bird bath had been. Adira held the leather pouch in front of her, licking her red lips slowly.

“Adira,” Eric started, “look at that car. Isn’t that Viktor’s?” In fact, the sports car did belong to Viktor. (Or, more technically, Viktor’s father.) Aster’s ex-boyfriend and the second-best debate student, Viktor. Adira’s tongue receded and her lip coiled up.

“Yes,” she said, heading toward the red car, “it is.”

“Wait!” Kaya shouted. “We can’t just wreck a car, we’ll get in so much trouble.”

“Y-yeah,” Zeek added, “and Viktor will kill us.”
“Nobody can prove we did anything,” Eric reasoned. “Who would believe we made a car disappear into a bag? Only idiots who believe those magic TV shows are real.”

“We can do whatever we want,” Adira finished. 

Zeek nodded, then squared his shoulders. “But we have to keep it secret,” he said.

Adira glanced at him with a strike of annoyance. Then she opened the bag next to the sports car and it disappeared the same way the birdbath and the apple had. Aster started to laugh; Adira beamed; Eric chuckled.

“That feels so good,” Aster said. Kaya wasn’t sure what she meant.

“Does it have a limit?” Zeek thought aloud. Adira looked at him, considering.

“Of course it has a limit. Here, I’ll show you,” Eric reached for the bag. Instinctively, Adira pulled it away. But Eric’s arms were long. He grasped the leather in his strong hands and yanked it away. Adira glared at him with hateful eyes. Eric turned the bag upside down.

“No!” Kaya cried, lunging at Eric. “What are you thinking?” He swept the bag away as she passed through the space where it had been.

“Kaya, relax, ok? Don’t be so uptight.”

“Yeah, Kaya, come on. It can’t suck in the whole universe,” Zeek snipped. 

“Can you pull things out of it?” Aster asked Eric. “Maybe we can find a mansion and take it somewhere for us to live in.”

“Um, I’m not sure. Zeek, did you try pulling anything out of it?”

“And stick my hand in? No way!”

“Make Kaya try it,” Adira grumbled. “If she wants to share the bag with us, she needs to quit being such a baby.” Of course, Kaya didn’t want to share the bag at all. She’d rather it didn’t exist. She sighed.

“Okay,” she said with added reluctance, “let me see it, I’ll try to pull the apple out.”

Eric held the bag out to her, open. She jumped back. 

“Whoah, careful Eric! Don’t put her in it,” Aster called.

“Well, fine, ok. I’ll hold it sideways, like this.”

“Just let me hold it.”

“No! No, I’ll hold it,” Eric snapped. Quivering, but seeing no other way to take it from them, Kaya moved her hand toward the bag. She thought about the golden apple, slowly inching her hand nearer the opening. She blinked, and felt her hand grow wet. There was the apple.

A chorus of light cheers rang up from the group. “See? We can just undo whatever we want if it’s really that bad,” Eric rolled his eyes. “Now look!” And with that, he knelt, even as Kaya grabbed at his arm and shoulder. 

Like a ball of putty set in front of a piece of black construction paper, then stretched and sucked into a tiny point, so the Earth fell into the bag.

In its place was left a formless, whirling collection of untethered atmosphere. The air shifted violently in reaction to new gravitational dynamics. Water sloshed in the void, quickly consolidating into huge spheres. Among the largest new space debris were airplanes and sea vessels, specks compared to the empty space they now inhabited, which careened through the water and air violently. Birds and animals floated in the cosmic cloud, struck and killed by other debris, otherwise burned or frozen or suffocated or drowned to death. They were joined by people who endured the same.

Eric, Aster, Adira, Zeek, and Kaya stretched out, unable to control their limbs against the harsh wind. They were deafened by its howls. All they could do was look desperately at one another with shocked, terrified, suffering eyes. The whites of them turned redder and redder imperceptibly fast. A sedan smashed silently into Adira, forcing her out of Kaya’s view. Eric still had the bag in his hand, the latch and cover flapping wildly in the rushing wind. With every thread of strength in her body, Kaya reached for the bag. She ignored her bleeding ears, boiling skin, the coldness that froze her bones, and her lungs which fought to claim some of the leftover atmosphere. 

But Eric’s corpse was hurtling further and further away from her own.