The World of Myth Magazine

"For last year's words belong to last year's language and next year's words await another voice" T.S. Eliot

The year the world lost its senses, Jay turned eighteen. He had been counting down the time until he could leave his little town and reinvent himself at University. In preparation, he got a tattoo, a dragonfly, to symbolize getting past his self-limiting illusions. Jay intended it to be the first one of a collection that he would curate on his arm. But, even to his ears, that sounded wanky, so he kept his aspirations and tattoo to himself.

Then when he was fingertip close, everything was reinvented in the space of twelve months.

At first, Jay, like everyone else, thought it was just another variant of Coronavirus, and so he masked up and kept a super strength sanitizer in his pocket. The news reported that people were losing their sense of smell and taste, but they had no other symptoms, no cough or fever, no breathlessness, or body aches. Hence, people felt optimistic that this virus, already christened CO-VA 66, would be much less deadly than previous variants. But, unfortunately, it did seem more contagious; within the space of February, seventy-five percent of people were infected, and most of the world had gone into lockdown mode. But when it turned out that there were no fatalities, life got back to pretty much normal.

By the end of March, Jay had succumbed. He was mildly irritated as he was revising for his mock 'A' levels and relied on Mars bars to get him through; now, without the sugar-hit, they felt like putty in his mouth, but on the whole, it was a minor inconvenience.

The most worrying thing was that nobody seemed to be regaining their taste or smell, and the hospitality industry was struggling once again. Then, finally, the more imaginative restaurants started to provide menus that concentrated on texture. Crunchy, sticky, or slimy offerings served steaming hot or icy that were popular for a while. But soon, people stopped spending their hard-earned money on something they could easily replicate by chewing on a cinnamon stick in their own home.

In early May, Jay was listening to the radio; the BBC reported trials of a new vaccine that might restore a person's taste. Unfortunately, progress was slow as traditional testing on mice or other animals wasn't possible, animals being immune to CO-VA-66. Jay's Mum was unloading the dishwasher. She had recently decided to let her hair go grey and had stopped wearing make-up, so she appeared like a ghostly representation of the vivid mother Jay had grown up with.

She turned to Jay and said, "I'm off to visit your Grandpa, never an easy or pleasant task. Last week, he was ranting that this new disease is the end of times, and it should be called 666". Jay looked up from his book, "666?" he asked, "What's so special about that?"

His Mum wiped her hands and shrugged on her puffy coat, "God, it was a terrible mistake to stop teaching R.E. in schools. 666 is the sign of the Beast". Then, when Jay still looked blankly, she added, "Book of Revelations, end of times Jay-Jay look it up. Anyway, I'll see you later. I'll pop by the shops and pick up some more shakes. We're almost out. Bye, love".

Jay finished slurping down his Complete Shake just as the BBC reported school lunches would switch to Complete Shakes from the following month. A woman with a very high-pitched voice said, "This is so typical of this Government, so quick to jump on the bandwagon if it is cheap, but what about..." and then the broadcast cut off. Sighing, Jay raised his voice and said, "Alexa…" But he didn't continue; he couldn't hear his own voice. He started to shout for his mother, even though he knew she wasn't there, he banged his fists on the table. He could hear nothing.

By the end of May, the whole world was deaf, and Jay's exams were postponed indefinitely. Universities had closed apart from departments teaching sign language, and every scientist in the land was studying the virus's genome to discover where it had come from. They knew it had not originated in animals, so it wasn't a true coronavirus. It was renamed Sensibus-1, but Jay couldn't help but think of it as 666; it felt like the end of times.

His Grandpa came to live with him and his Mum, and it was as if this new turn of events had given him a shot of adrenalin. He was a short man who used to have a big voice but much to Jay's puzzlement, he didn't seem to mind the loss of hearing. When Jay scribbled a question to his Mum asking why this was, she arched an eyebrow and wrote, "His hearing was going much too vain for hearing aid a world everyone deaf saves face." And then she shrugged. So, every morning, his Grandpa was up by six-thirty, clean shaved, whipping up the morning shakes, and then he spent the morning at the Community Center learning sign. Jay had resisted learning sign, communicating in text, or writing, but he relented seeing his seventy-year-old Grandpa speaking with his hands with an almost balletic grace.

Jay got a job in one of the new hydroponic centers that had sprung up all over the Midlands to supply the essential nutrients that went into the Complete Shake. Although some people clung to the old ways, cooking, and eating food, most switched to the convenience of getting their food needs in the form of a shake. His mother had embraced this change wholeheartedly almost as soon as they went on the market. She'd told Jay, "You can't imagine how many hours of my life have been eaten up….eaten up…see what I did there…by shopping for food, cooking clearing up now I blend and go". And she did.

Before she lost her hearing, his Mum had taken a pottery class, and now she spent hours in what she called 'her studio' throwing pots inspired by the female form. The studio was actually the garage, but she had installed a pottery wheel and a drying space. She had even started teaching ceramics at Jay's old school. Initially, schools had closed, but as parents realized life was going on, they began to petition the Government to reopen them. However, most teachers refused to come back, so Educational Authorities were given leave to hire people without teaching qualifications to get schools open. Jay had seen his old English teacher interviewed on the local news; he used sign as if he were a slow learner, making lots of mistakes. The gist of what he said was that he had gone into teaching because he loved the spoken word, and without that, education was unrewarding. Privately Jay thought it was more likely that he had just loved the sound of his own voice.

After his shift on a Friday, Jay would go with some of his fellow workers to Vibes, a club that served a colorful array of drinks and played sounds over a bank of speakers that made the floor vibrate. The drinks, made up of a basic Moonshine, were dyed to glow and were strong enough to strip paint.

On one such Friday, Dai, who had moved from Wales to work for Complete Shakes, placed two glasses of a torrid yellow concoction called Pure E in front of Jay. Tapping Jay on the shoulder to get his attention, he signed, "So if I sing God Save The King and nobody hears does that mean the King is damned?" Jay drained his glass and felt the popping in his veins; he put his hands flat on the table and felt the pulse of the club in his palms. "What is it with you and the royal family," Jay signed, and then before Dai could put his glass down to respond, he signed, "Another?". Dai nodded and finished his drink. After the second drink, they were jumping up and down and shaking their heads on the dance floor.

Saturday morning, Jay opened his eyes and immediately closed them again. He put his fingers to his throat so he could feel himself humming. Each morning, it was a ritual, so he knew he could still feel and still rage if needed. His Grandpa stuck his head around the door, and seeing Jay awake, came in and placed a Revival Shake on his nightstand. Poking Jay, he motioned to the shake and mimed drinking. Jay shook his head, but his Grandpa signed, "You need to hurry, we'll be late to your mother's show. Shift your deaf as a doorknob arse".

Arriving at the show for local artists, they saw Jay's Mum in a heated discussion. She was signing with an etiolated man; he had a scraggly ginger mustache that completely covered up his lips, a comb-over, and he was spinning his arms as if a swarm of bees were attacking him. As Jay and his Grandpa approached, he slunk off, his body in the shape of a question mark, to a podium displaying what appeared to be an extremely large clay penis with goggle eyes and a lolling tongue. The sculpture was labeled 'Penis with Personality.' Jay's Grandpa started to sign, "If that's art, then I'm…" but before he could finish, Jay's Mum grabbed his arms, signing furtively, "Stop, he'll be able to understand, it's not like you're whispering."

Jay put his back to the man and asked, "What was that all about, Mum? Are you ok?" Jay's Mum smiled and signed, "Oh yes, we were just discussing which sense we would choose to lose next. I said sight because I could still make my pots, but if I couldn't feel I don't know what I'd do, Joe disagreed." The conversation was cut short as a string of women approached. They were dressed in primary colors and reminded Jay of colorful bunting as they flapped around his mother. As they commandeered his Mum, Jay took this as a cue to leave. "I'm going," he told his Grandpa, "You coming?" His Grandpa shook his head, "I'm going to have a look around. I might stop by the penis exhibition and suggest Joe changes the title to dick head."

As Jay walked towards the high street, his phone vibrated in his pocket. Fishing it out, he saw he had a text from Dai asking him if he fancied a game of pick-up football. As he walked to the park, Jay's mind kept circling back to the question of which sense he could bear to lose next. It wasn't a new thought, and he always came back to the realization if another sense went, it would only be a matter of time until all of them were lost. Jay dredged up a quote from a T.S. Eliot poem, "And that's how the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper." He had already decided he would go out with a bang.

Jay could see Dai flicking the V's at another player at the park. That was a sign nobody had had to learn, Jay thought, laughing as he dumped his bag and jogged onto the make-shift pitch. Then, almost at once, Dai passed him the ball, and Jay streamed towards the bins that were acted as goalposts; pulling back his leg, he let rip, and the ball flew through the space ricocheted off a bench just missing a young mother who jumped up and shook her fists at Jay. The ball flew back through the goal like a bullet, making everyone duck, and then they all started to laugh, and although Jay couldn't hear them, it made him feel better somehow.

The sleeping baby was startled awake by the sudden noise.

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