We fell asleep, all of us, on the couch. The one from Jim’s basement and who knows what it absorbed there—what hallucinatory dust—what magic in the flat box it was packed in, springing up to form a couch. A couch! We put it in the living room, ugly as it was, because kids are destructive anyway. The cat, too.
We fell asleep, the family. Jill and I and Birdie and Peter. The cat, too. We fell asleep to magic, I suppose. I don’t know how else to explain. We fell asleep to Sleeping Beauty on TV—what a snoozefest—not the cartoon, the ballet.
When we woke, it was a whoosh. A wave, a swell of water. It swirled down the hallway and lifted the couch beneath us. With a rush, we blew the walls to dust. We blasted through them.
Jill was quick—god, I love her—she grabbed the coat rack, clutching Birdie to her chest. So we had jackets against the cold and wet. Peter lunged too. For an umbrella? He missed and got a snow shovel. A paddle, I thought. Then we had some control, at least a bit.
The world was water. A lake, or maybe a whole ocean, but with chimneys poking up. Except it wasn’t salty. It wasn’t dirty flood water either, but clear.
We had dust in our hair, but we dipped our heads and rinsed. There was motion from the wind. Maybe a current? We were moving but not too fast. The roofs of our neighborhood scraped the couch legs from time to time. It was difficult to steer around them.
Birdie of course was hungry. That girl always is. Jill found a handful of fishy crackers and a single peanut in the couch cushions.
I only found a dime, useless, which I flung into the water. “Make a wish!” I yelled. “This is one heck of a fountain!”
A day later, Jilly unraveled a thread of her shirt. She wiggled a safety pin into a fishhook. So resourceful. Then—monsters of the deep are tasty!—we ate. It was raw and slimy. But if the cat could do it, so could we.
Birdie caught a gallon of milk with the hook, careful not to pierce the plastic handle as she reeled it in. She caught a can of pears, too, but we couldn’t open it.
So that’s where we are now: a couch afloat with a fishing line, some pears in heavy syrup, and no can opener. Well, maybe we’ll find a way. I have some hope.
But Jill is sad and won’t talk to me. The kids too. I ask why, and they act like I’m the indecipherable one.
“Grandma was in her bedroom!”
Ah! Jill’s mother. I’d forgotten about her in the excitement. Well, there’s no going back. Anyway, this couch is full and hard to balance.
Still, I keep a lookout. Before long what do I see but a gray-haired lady clinging to a chimney. She looks kinder than the last one and just as spry. My how this flood does provide!
I take the paddle/shovel from Peter and haul ass to the spot. “Come with us!”
“But this is my home!”
“It’s underwater now, Grandma,” I call out.
Splash. She’s missed the couch, but Jill hauls her up, drenching all three cushions. That should make her happy—Jill, I mean.
A few more days pass and we’ve crashed against a bakery roof. Jill is elated. But it’s day-old, and more than one day, that’s for sure. Anyway, I don’t feel like bread. What about a danish, she pleads? Give it to the kids, I say, but don’t sink the couch stocking up. She stocks up anyway, hides it from me, but it’s easy to see where her cushion sits higher.
Just as well, because I wake up at night, famished. Nothing but fish will screw with your gut, I reason, as I carefully tip Jill off her cushion to wiggle out a stale bear claw.
Otherwise, it’s fish and the fruit from trees we float by. Jill figures out an ingenious method of burning a stick and cooking the fish from the inside.
I don’t like the weight we’ve put on. Not in our bodies but in the grandmother we picked up.
The couch lists that way, but the other option is to seat her in the middle, which the kids, still missing their own, will not abide. I tried feeding her less but the wife snuck her apples and she isn’t bad at catching her own fish. They jump right in her lap.
Peter’s the opposite, bobbing for apples off the front cushion. Jill doesn’t like it, but it’s a useful skill for this new world, so I wink as I scold. He keeps it up but on the sly.
We see other couches of people. A recliner. A set of dining room chairs, trailing behind a table, still set, but the food licked from every plate and bowl.
We wave! We shout! But it doesn’t seem wise to get close. The grandma only grumbles.
We reach downtown. Well, some downtown. It doesn’t seem like the one I worked in before the flood, but who knows? It’s a new angle on the buildings for sure, and water well above the street signs.
The water is rising. We haven’t scraped a roof in a week, but it hasn’t yet leveled with the skyscrapers. They stretch up and up. Water laps the reflective windows. Here and there, they’ve smashed enough to reach through or catch a glimpse of office furniture.
Then a wobble, a dip, a splash! I didn’t see her gearing up. We’ve lost the grandma!
All hands shift weight to right the couch, as the gray-haired lady executes a flawless breaststroke toward a smashed-out window in the skyscraper.
She’s striking out for downtown glory. I can’t blame her. We don’t pursue.
After all, what is this life, this world, but striking out in a new direction? A family, together, made of whatever scraps we can pick up and just the people who won’t escape. Or can’t. At least not yet.
Allison Wyss is the author of the short story collection Splendid Anatomies (Veliz Books, 2022), which was a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award. Her stories have also appeared in Wigleaf, Cincinnati Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and many other places. She lives and teaches and writes in Minneapolis.
Photo by Alicia Christin Gerald on Unsplash