Between Here and Oblivion and Other Short Stories by Joe Milan Jr

Author:Joe Milan Jr.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Joe Milan Jr.
Published: 2021-01-29T00:00:00+00:00

BETWEEN HERE AND OBLIVION

For eight years Taegun Lee, team leader of the Seoul City Transit Authority Sanitation Special Decontamination Cleaning Crew, got up at six. And even after six months on unpaid leave he still did. He woke, drank, and cleaned. His place wasn't dirty–he had won the battle against calcified line in the toilet bowl, executed the dust clumps that resembled dead mice clinging to power cords, and cleansed the bachelor funk from all the pillows–no, he cleaned for the same reason he gulped soju in the morning: it made waiting easier.

Just as he finished his first bottle of soju and grabbed his brush to work the bathroom grout, he tried to have hope. He tried to focus on cleaning, not on his cell phone on the bed stand. It couldn't continue forever. The world would come back to its senses. But the waiting sickness crept up his throat and back into his thoughts. The lie. The hoax. The amazing sleight of hand that tricked an entire country.

Bodies disappeared.

Jumpers had flung themselves in front of the trains, then poof. Gone. Except for a rumpled pile of clothes chewed by the train wheels, there was nothing. No blood, no severed parts, nothing but clothes. It started as a rumor and a collection of cell phone videos. Amazing camera tricks, Taegun had thought. An overzealous prankster with convincing props, he had said. But when the CCTV footage was "leaked" onto YouTube of the bodies disappearing at the moment of impact, the world lost all sense. Witnesses came forward. Families wailed on camera. UFO hunters investigated it as abductions. Blink spotters camped on the platforms with cameras, hoping to see someone jump. North Koreans declared it was the result of imperialist oppression. Talk shows cancelled amazing dancing dogs to interview mystics with frizzy hair lecturing on the illusion of life and the soul. 2QToo made a music video at a train station for their song "All The Soul Needs Is a Lolly" and it hit number one on the K-pop hot twenty. And suddenly, the word "oblivion" formed on people's lips.

Life insurance companies refused to pay. There was nothing in their policies regarding oblivion. Even the mobsters stopped throwing people in front of the trains. Then there were no bodies. No blood to spray off metal. No far-flung limbs to collect. No work.

Taegun was working a black-stained corner of bathroom grout when the phone rang. He tripped over the bucket of bleach on his way to the bed stand. It was Pimples, a co-worker. He wanted to see Taegun at the Irish Pub at noon.

"You heard something?" Taegun said.

"Can't say, boss," Pimples said.

"A hint?"

"I'll see you at noon."

After hanging up Taegun tried to breathe. Noon. He could wait till noon. But even as he opened a new bottle of soju and smelled the spilled bleach in the bathroom, he knew another call would come: the call to come back to work.

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