Tea After the Apocalypse
A standalone post-apocalyptic literary horror story about two women, their daily ritual of tea, and a world turned hollow. About holding on and letting go.
🌙Welcome to By Luna Asli Kolcu. If you are new here, I write speculative fiction, fantasy, and horror. I also write personal essays on being me, rural life, motherhood, and my journey as an artist. You can adjust which one of these sections you want to receive emails or notifications from here: Subscription Preferences
This is a standalone post-apocalyptic literary horror story about two women, their daily ritual of tea, and a world turned hollow. About holding on and letting go.
Day 152. Almost 6 months since the solar flares fried the grid, and the sky… Well, the sky had become something else. But my neighbor still shows up for tea like the buses are just running late.
Here’s what nobody tells you about the apocalypse: It gets boring. Like waiting for paint to dry. Wait, I take that back. I think that would be more fun if I found some paint. In fact, the living room might be due for a makeover.
You expect explosions. Sirens. Gangs wearing leather looting everything. People trying to evacuate cities, blocking highways. And we had that. For about a week or two.
Then it got quiet. First, it slowed down, then every new day we woke up another sound we were expecting to hear was gone. There was dust in every crevice of your body, and you stopped trying to get rid of it.
Outside, a sky that can’t remember its own color. Long afternoons where the loudest sound is your own head telling you to shut up.
You don’t really expect to survive an apocalypse. I mean, unless you are a doomsday freak, yes I am aware of the irony of calling them freaks at this point. And if you did, you wouldn’t expect neighbors. Maybe a bunker that miraculously takes you in. Maybe a gang with face paint and repurposed car parts. Some wild-eyed guy with a shotgun and jerky made of god-knows-what. Or some kind of a mutant animal that is not dangerous visiting your garden. Neighbours in their pre-apocalypse houses? No.
Spoiler alert: None of that happened. Just a kettle that still whistles when the solar battery has juice.
Today is day 152. My doorbell is ringing—the backup power cell finally giving up, making it sound like a dying bird. Daisy is here for tea.
Yes, doorbell. Yes, Daisy. Yes, tea. The electromagnetic storms wiped out most of civilization, and she still shows up in an immaculate cardigan with shortbread, like the power grid failing was just a minor inconvenience.
And I let her in. Of course I do. I mean really, I am all alone in this house and she was a friend before all this too.
She sits in her chair—the wobble-legged one. We don’t fix it. We don’t move it. The wobble started before everything ended. I kept telling her I would get around to fixing it. She liked having her spot. Now the wobble makes it her spot. It always waits for her and I no longer promise to fix the wobble.
I pour the tea. Calling it tea is generous though. Boiled weeds from Mrs. Cooper’s old garden. They glow if you leave them in the dark. Side effect of the soil drinking whatever the rain contains now. Probably fine. If it kills us, at least it’ll be polite about it.
Daisy stirs with her silver spoon. Clockwise. Neat circles. Always civilized.
“Any post lately?” she asks.
“Only the ash,” I say. “Slips in under the door. I file it accordingly.” I assume I am funny as I say this of course.
She nods, pleased with the system. Her world gets smaller every day, but it still has proper filing.
“Shame about the corner shop,” she says. “Roof caved in last week.”
There is nobody left in the town to tell her that. And even if there were I doubt people would be going for walks much. The shops mostly been rubble since the first wave of storms. She just acts like knows things sometimes, the way you know a dream without remembering it.
I don’t correct her. Not anymore. Not after the world ended. Not that I corrected her much before either.
Here’s the thing about Daisy: she was already rehearsing for the end before it happened. Her brother died—wrong night, wrong driver. She found him. Yes, cliche. For her though how Hollywood script cliche that was did not matter. After that, she built herself a smaller world, safe enough to hold in her hands. Teacups, biscuits, the weather that used to be predictable.
And I let her. Because if I break her bubble, it’s just me alone with the house when it hums in the walls. When the loneliness gets so thick you can taste metal on your tongue.
She takes a sip from her tea and grimaces “Tastes too weak.Did you steep this pot shorter?.”
“Yes, Daisy. The apocalypse changed my brewing habits.”
She sighs, disappointed, then dunks shortbread into the glowing water like phosphorescent tea is perfectly ordinary.
“How’s your garden?” she asks.
“Thriving. If you like plants that whisper when you water them.”
“Better than nothing. You could pickle them.”
“I don’t think pickling cures radiation poisoning.”
She waves me off. “Stop being dramatic.”
Yes. Me. Dramatic. In the post-electromagnetic-God knows what caused it-we are pretty sure it was not natural-apocalypse.
“I saw Margaret yesterday,” Daisy says, smoothing her skirt with hands that shake just slightly. “She looked well.”
No one has seen Margaret since the firestorms destroyed half the street in May. Either Daisy’s lying to herself, or she’s greeting the echoes that hunger leaves behind.
Plot twist: The dead don’t stay buried when grief tastes like honey.
“Oh, did she?” I say, careful to keep my voice level.
“Yes. She waved. From her garden. Roses in bloom.”
There haven’t been roses since the ash started falling. Not unless you count the new ones that grow teeth and bite.
That’s when the doorbell rings.
Rule one: Don’t answer the door after sunset. If something wants in, it doesn’t knock. Doors are just manners for things that remember being human. And if something that is human or remembers the feeling is knocking on your door, you definitely do not want them inside.
But Daisy looks at me like I’m staff, and I am breaking a massive etiquette rule about not answering, so I get up and peek through the window first.
It’s Margaret. I turn my back instantly, like she won’t see me if I can’t see her. I slowly turn back around with a smile.
Well, it looks like Margaret. Same cardigan, same tidy hair, and that polite smile she’d give when I’d left the bins out a day too late.
But Margaret doesn’t cast a shadow on the porch.
And when she breathes, her chest rises a beat too late, like her body has to remember how.
The smile is painted on too carefully. She stands too straight, like invisible wires pull her shoulders up.
“Afternoon,” she says through the door. Her voice echoes faintly, like it’s coming from the bottom of a well rather than in front of my door. “I heard the kettle was on.”
I glance at Daisy. She’s gripping her teacup, knuckles white, but she nods.
“Come in, Margaret,” Daisy calls, voice sounding like it can break any minute. “Plenty of biscuits left.”
Margaret steps across the threshold without hesitation. Damp footprints appear on the rug—dark patches that I will learn later that will not dry. It hasn’t rained in weeks.
She takes the third chair. The one we keep empty.
I pour her a cup, watching her face in the reflection of the teapot. Nothing. The surface shows only steam and my own worried eyes.
She thanks me, her voice delayed like the words had to travel farther than they should.
She stirs counterclockwise.
Daisy notices. Daisy always notices. She just presses her lips together and lifts her own cup with trembling hands.
How is your garden doing?” Daisy asks, and I hear the slight tremble, the fear laced in my friends voice.
“My roses opened up last night.” Margaret’s voice carries harmonics now, like more than one mouth is speaking.
“That’s lovely,” Daisy says, too fast.
Margaret sets her spoon down. Doesn’t touch the tea. Just watches the steam like she’s waiting for something.
“And your cat?” Daisy tries. “Still keeping you company?”
“Yes. He came back last week.”
Daisy claps her hands. Too eager. Too cheerful. “Oh, how wonderful—”
“I buried him in May.”
Her smile doesn’t move. I think it can’t move. Like it’s painted on porcelain.
The sound of Daisy’s hands falling back into her lap is louder than it should be.
Margaret tilts her head. Too far. Joints that shouldn’t bend that way. “He still knows where the bowl is.”
The room holds its breath. Even the house stops humming.
“Cats are resourceful,” I say. My voice tastes like copper pennies.
Margaret’s smile widens, stretching her face in ways faces shouldn’t stretch. “So are we.”
Her words echo in layers, like a choir of hungry mouths.
Then Margaret leans forward, and I smell it—that wet earth scent of things that feed on loneliness, that grow fat on the spaces where love used to be.
“I remember your brother’s birthday, Daisy,” she says. “The cake. The candle that wouldn’t go out.”
Daisy goes rigid. Her spoon slips and hits the saucer, chips the corner.
She shakes her head. Once. Twice. Then her voice tears loose.
“That is not Margaret.” The words scrape from her throat like nails being dragged on rusty metal. “She never smiled like that. And my brother is dead. He is dead. Stop wearing her face!”
The word dead rips the air open.
Margaret tilts her head the other way. Steam from her untouched cup coils upward and stains the ceiling dark.
“They don’t stay buried when the living won’t let them rest,” she says in voices that sound like wind through empty houses. “When grief gets so thick it tastes like honey.”
Daisy breaks. She sobs, body shaking, clutching at herself like she’s trying to hold everything in.
I grab her shoulders. “You’re right,” I tell her, steady and low. “That thing wearing Margaret’s face? You see it clearly now.”
Her wet eyes search mine, desperate for an anchor.
“I hear it too,” I whisper. “Every night. The wanting. The thing that knocks and sounds like everyone you’ve lost. Some mornings I almost let it take me.”
Her sob hits my chest.
Margaret rises from her chair. Smooth. Silent. Too fluid, like she’s made of water wearing skin.
“You set a place for us,” she says, and now her voice is everyone who ever left—my mother, my lover, Daisy’s brother, the mailman who used to know everyone’s birthday. “You call us back with your teacups and your rituals. Did you think we wouldn’t answer?”
She moves toward the door, leaving wet prints across the rug again. Her hand hovers over the doorknob.
“We’ll keep coming,” she says. “As long as you call us back. And humans will not ever stop calling us back.”
She opens the door herself. Steps out into the rust-colored twilight. The door clicks shut.
But before she’s fully gone, I see her turn back. For just a moment, her face is Margaret’s again—real Margaret, confused and tired.
“Tell them I said goodbye,” real Margaret whispers.
Then the thing wearing her takes over again. She smiles. Disappears into the dark.
The hum in the walls softens. The stain on the ceiling stays. I look at the footprints.
Silence. Heavy and settling.
Daisy sinks into her chair. Her hands shake. Her face is streaked raw. “I can’t do this,” she whispers. “I can’t keep pretending the dead are just late for tea.”
“No,” I say. “But we get to decide what do tomorrow and after that”
I look at Margaret’s cup, still sitting there. Steam still curling from the surface. Untouched.
Then, I do something I’ve never done before. I pick up the cup and carry it to the kitchen sink. Pour the contents down the drain. Rinse it clean.
When I come back, Daisy is watching me with something like hope.
“Tomorrow,” I say, sitting back down, “we set two places. Just two.”
She wipes her sleeve across her face, leaving a smear. “What if she comes back?”
“Then we tell her the truth. That this kitchen is ours.”
The kettle gives a tired hiss as I tip it. The tea is lukewarm and bitter. It still pours. I slide her cup across.
She stares at it as if it might bite. Then she sips. Swallows.
Enough for now.
“I hate this tea,” she says.
I let out a sharp laugh. “Me too. Tomorrow, let’s try something else.”
The laugh breaks something in the air.
Daisy takes the last biscuit. Snaps it clean in half. But this time, instead of setting a piece by the third chair, she eats both halves.
We drink. Bitter. Wrong. Warm. Ours.
Here is what I learnt: love is not the same as keeping someone prisoner.
The revolution: Tomorrow, we set two places. Just two.
🕯️ For Your Reflection
Everyone keeps a chair for something that won’t come back. A person. A future. A version of yourself you buried but keep feeding.
What’s yours?
Tell me about your third chair.
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Really great work, the horrifying suggestion in the mundane conversation; the almost-snapping rubber bands of politeness that hold things together. Really good - a different way to tell the apocalypse story which is a very welcome change. And I love tea. And Biscuits.
Very impressed.