Tuesday Tomlins
Content warning: death
22nd June 2099
Donna touched the finger scanner and closed her eyes as her wardrobe did a head-to-toe scan.
The Wardrobe was mahogany, with charming flowers painted up its grooves. In the eve of the 22nd century, it was somewhat of a vintage anomaly. Not that vintage was anywhere close to out of fashion, but it was scarce among the field of AI advancements. It was like Donna’s peers had made a pact that the aesthetic would be beige, white, metallic, etcetera. It was all very faux-futuristic, like Future Land comics from the mid-20th century depicting women with poodle cuts and silver-spun swing dresses. How depressing to imagine a world so mechanised, so efficient, that the only colour palette needed was slate.
The Wardrobe began to whirr. Donna had invented a version where the mechanics were muffled, but found she missed the clattering hum of the Wardrobe at work. It reminded her of her childhood, when washing machines used to take half an hour to spin a load and you could stand in a laundromat and hear the clack, clack of somebody’s button hitting the metal insides.
A friendly ding! announced the arrival of Donna’s outfit of the day. The door swung open. A weak June light illuminated the interior, the perfect reflection of today’s weather. As Donna lay her eyes on the outfit her mouth went dry.
Today was her daughter’s baby shower, and Donna had hoped for something causal chic to wear. With her fashion expertise, she might have chosen a soft blue coat, like the hydrangeas in her garden. And maybe a boat neck top in a bright jewel blue and a pink purse. But the Wardrobe always knew better. Sometimes it knew so well that Donna was baffled it could have such foresight. But now, staring at the outfit awaiting her, Donna thought for the first time in years that the Wardrobe was malfunctioning. Surely, with its daily feed of fashion trends, weather updates, commentary, colour analysis, and everything pertaining to fashion, comfort, and practicality, the Wardrobe would not pick this.
Ten years of trust they had built between them, Donna reminded herself. She slipped the outfit off its hook and dressed, slowly. It was tough to get on, seeing as it was all one piece. She got her legs in first and began to zip up the stomach, one arm and then the next. The headpiece was heavy, weighted like a bowling ball. She almost choked as she zipped herself up to the neck before she got the bulbous head to sit over her own. She kept zipping the cool, mesh-like fabric up over her mouth and nose, until the zip met its end in her hairline. The fabric bunched up over her head, and it took some fiddling to realise she needed to fold it down over her face.
Huffing, Donna plodded to her mirror slowly. The speed was partly due to apprehension and partly because the outfit had a low-hanging crotch that made her shuffle-walk. Despite all the material over her eyes, Donna could see just fine, and when she made it to the mirror the details of the outfit popped.
The outfit was slate-grey. Huge black sockets for eyes. Small, straight mouth stitched over her own. She looked like a late 20th century pop culture alien. The kind that rode flying saucers and kidnapped people for medical experiments and left crop circles and sucked up cows in cones of light. It was giving Area 51, thigh-gap, long-limbed, buccal fat removed, vitamin deficiency, extra-terrestrial chic: a slight deviation from the Winter Vogue catalogue.
Donna poked the fabric gently with her tongue. It was membrane-thin, but in the mirror, she couldn’t see a hint of her human face beneath the alien one. If she had to, she could poke an IV drip through the fabric, but who was she kidding? She wasn’t going to leave the house in this. Except that… there was nothing else. The Wardrobe was only programmed for one outfit per day, and yesterday’s outfit had been responsibly recycled like all the other outfits she had worn over ten years. And nothing short of an early grave would prevent Donna from going to her daughter’s baby shower.
It took several pep talks in the mirror, her best Prada handbag, and the mortifying thought of rocking up to the baby shower as E.T. to get Donna out the door. The plan was to get to the shops and back quicker than you could say Men in Black. She hoped the only casualty would be her neighbour (who had just shut his hand in his own door while gawping at Donna) and that her reputation would survive the day.
As Donna navigated her fusion bike through town and onto the city-bound bridge, she pretended the stares of passers-by were the usual admiration of a hot, fashionable older woman. With her mental blinkers on, it took a moment to register the sound of screeching metal. Donna hit the brakes and yelped as she was almost flung over her handlebars and through the gaping rift that had opened up before her. Panting, she clutched at her bike and stared through the opening. Murky water swirled with debris twenty feet beneath the bridge. Above, a giant pole skewered the bike path diagonally. The top of it teetered outwards, straining against one of the bridge’s suspension cables. Donna watched as the cable snapped. The pole slammed into the pedestrian railing as it fell, and then disappeared through the hole.
But Donna barely registered as it crashed into the river below. All her attention was trained upwards, to a giant, saucer-shaped UFO. It hovered, stationary and silent. On the underside, an opening spat light. A mass of frozen people watched on as the first gob of molten light fizzled into the river. The UFO tilted and tried again. A man tumbled out his window onto the bitumen as the light hit his truck and scorched a hole through the cargo trailer. The smell of burning wool saturated the air. The people unfroze and began to run, and to scream and to holler.
Donna swerved her bike around the hole in the bridge and squeezed the accelerator. She couldn’t make sense of anything around her. She wished the giant eyes that overlayed her own would blind her. Off the bridge and into the city she rode. More destruction. UFOs crowded the city skyline. A searing light encompassed Donna’s vision and then resolved into a laser, which swept up the street eviscerating every human in its path. Donna only registered that she was still alive by the aching twist of her own scream beneath the layers of cooling-tech mesh.
The light dimmed. The sky emptied. The UFOs were gone, and Donna remained perfectly intact in the rubble and ash. Clutching her Prada handbag, Donna staggered off her bike. The microchip in her ear chirped to signal an incoming phone call. She accepted the call and her daughter’s voice rang out into the eerie quiet.
‘Mum your invention is acting up, are you sure you gave me the latest version?’
‘Honey, thank god!’ Donna sank to her knees.
‘I mean c’mon, a pregnant alien isn’t exactly the look I was going for today.’ Her daughter sounded like she was shuffling around her house. Her voice brimmed with humour and light and goodness. Donna sniffled and then stood.
‘Well, you’re putting it on, no buts. I’ll be over soon.’
‘Mum?’
‘The wardrobe always knows best. See you in twenty.’
Donna hung up, hitched up her handbag with mesh-webbed fingers, and clambered back onto her bike. The UFOs had flown east towards the ocean, towards her daughter and unborn grandchild. Donna pointed her fusion bike east and turned up the speed to max.
Tuesday Tomlins is an emerging Meanjin-based (Brisbane) writer in her last semester of study. She finds endless inspiration in the history and landscape of Australia, and channels this into much of her memoir and non-fiction. She is interested in exploring fear, humanity, and points of beauty. Recently, she has begun experimenting with micro-fiction, horror vignettes, and poetry.
With a diverse artistic background in oil paints, acrylics, charcoal, and printmaking, Tremayne Stocks (he/him) creates a multitude of art which reflects his personal connections to his upbringing in Bryon Bay. Influenced by the urban cityscape he currently resides in, Tremayne aims to communicate the beauty of Australia’s vast and alluring nature, as well as display his own use of art as an emotional outlet.
Instagram: @tremaynestocks_art