In the Beginning (Anthology)

by Laureen Cantwell

He began to feel better immediately.

  The man had no chairs or other furniture to offer the woman teetering so precariously on such high heels and so he offered her a seat on the pillow-dappled floor. She trailed her fingernail down the side of his face, curling along his jawline until, to her surprise, he reached up and gently grasped her hand in both of his as if she were a child and he sought to warm her hand on a winter’s day. Then he patted the back of her hand and released it.

  J-Woww, Snooki, and a bunch of other girls were out at a club and the music throbbed through Barabbas’s brain. The deep bass sounds, and the glimpses his eyes caught of the way the club-goers were dressed and dancing, in between decadent bites of strawberries, had him thinking exactly the kinds of thoughts Routlege had aimed to discipline out of its attendees from their first moments on the campus. He’d begun to salivate over more than just the tray of “get well soon” desserts being hand-fed to him.

  “Are you feeling any better, Barabbas?” The woman inquired.

  Ignoring her question for the moment, he asked, “What’s your name?”

  If she was surprised at the question, she didn’t show it. “Kendra.”

  “Kendra?” He looked at her intently.

  The man let her follow him to the pillows, where he then sat, his knees drawn up toward his chest, arms lightly encircling them. He’d carried the food tray with him and shared his pitcher of water and rotisserie chicken. She accepted the food and water greedily, tearing into the meat with her teeth as if she’d not eaten in days.

  Kendra winked at him. “You want something else? Oysters? Or perhaps these grapes?” She grabbed each item as she said them, sampling them herself. “Or perhaps figs or bananas are more to your liking … ?”

  Barabbas couldn’t tear his eyes away.

  He’d nearly died today. He’d survived a freaking tiger attack, for Christ’s sake. He had no idea what would happen next in this … “Exhibition” thing.

  “Those do look tasty but … ”

  Across the mansion, the man fetched the bowl of grapes, giving the fruit to the woman. He borrowed the pitcher from her, briefly, to pour some of the water into the now-empty bowl he’d placed near her feet. He returned the pitcher to her just as full of water as it had been only moments ago. He grasped her feet in his hands and, with her permission, removed her shoes. He began to massage the bottom of one foot and paused to remove one of the pillow cases, dipping it into the water. He asked her a question to which she nodded her consent. He lifted her foot once more and, with great tenderness, began to wash her feet.

  She giggled. “Mr. Meriwether, you rascal!” Kendra’s eyebrow raised, toying with him. “Do you mean … me? You’d like to have me?”

  Barabbas chewed his bottom lip. The flirtation had been risky enough but … could he actually confess to her that he wanted her in that way? Go big or go home, Meriwether. He met her eyes directly and nodded.

  “I thought you’d never ask,” she sighed, smiling with pleasure at the desire she saw in his eyes. Kendra transfixed him more than any drug ever could have as he watched her hands grasp the hem of her dress and raise the conforming fabric inch by inch until she could shimmy it over her head. His heartbeat throbbed through his veins so loudly he never heard the dress drop to the floor.

  “Mr. Meriwether, please, you must open the door, we must head to The Dome shortly!”

  Barabbas groaned and stirred reluctantly. He’d had the most amazing dreams. “Kendra …” he sighed, feeling his body awaken, remembering the woman of his drug-induced fantasy. More knocking at the door.

  Ugh. Abe. Again.

  “I’m coming, okay?” Barabbas shouted at the door.

  “You’d better put some pants on then,” a voice cooed into his ear.

  He sat up slowly, his body tender from his … activities of the day, and night, before. And maybe early this morning, too; things felt a little foggy. He looked down at the naked goddess next to him and she made no move to cover herself. “You’re real?”

  She smiled, “Touch me and find out, my love.”

  He reached toward her, aching to do just that, when the door-thumping began again. “Damn you, Abe!” He closed his eyes and thought about everything boring he ever learned about philosophy and rose to his feet. Unable to take his eyes from Kendra, languidly stretching herself atop the silky pillows, he walked backward to the door. Cracking it open, he commanded, “What Abe?”

  The sigh. “We must go, Mr. Meriwether. Are you ready? You’re due at The Dome in twelve minutes.” More sighing. “Do you not even have pants on yet?”

  “Give me two minutes, man. Jeez.”

  At The Dome, to Barabbas’s surprise, he was informed he’d have a cooking lesson all day. Why, he had no idea, but hey, at least it’s not a tiger, he thought.

  So for the rest of the day, he listened and watched, watched and listened, to chefs talking about how they make their ravioli from scratch, how to produce the finest soup stocks, how to gauge the done-ness of a steak, how to tenderize octopus meat quickly … and more. On and on they went. One demonstration after the next. He guessed he was supposed to be taking notes, but each time he looked at the blank pages in the pad they’d provided, all he could picture was Kendra.

  When the day’s agenda concluded, Abe brought him back to the mansion, escorting him to his quarters as usual, and mentioned, “We all look forward to seeing what you come up with tomorrow, Mr. Meriwether.” Abe closed the door behind Barabbas.

  “You’re back!” Kendra exclaimed with delight. He watched her teeth sink into her lower lip, as if she were waiting for him to reinforce his reciprocal joy in seeing her. He couldn’t wait to show her just how happy he was.

  The next morning, Barabbas managed to tear himself away from Kendra just long enough to clean himself up before Abe arrived to bring him back to The Dome. It took longer than usual to get ready, as Kendra insisted on helping, but he figured it was time well-spent. Abe could wait a minute or two.

  Upon reaching The Dome, Barabbas was escorted into a fully-equipped kitchen space. He was given clear instructions: he had three hours to produce a gourmet meal, based on all he learned yesterday, for The Politicos, the Exhibition’s adjudicators. Every tool and ingredient every chef had discussed could be found in this kitchen and within its pantry, fridge, and freezer.

  At the end of the three hours, Barabbas, somewhat proudly, served his expectant diners bowls of lumpy gazpacho in oven-warmed bowls (that one guy had said it was classy to do that, to warm the dinnerware, hadn’t he?) with dollops of ricotta (which made it look curdled, but he’d swear it still tasted good), a touch of cinnamon, and a side of homemade pickles.

  Maybe it wasn’t the best meal of their lives, he reflected later at his door, shrugging off any guilty feelings for not having paid attention the day before. He smiled when he saw Kendra among the pillows.

  Day Four of the Exhibition arrived and Barabbas was escorted to The Dome as usual. This time, it looked more like a TV set: cameras were set up all around a half-moon platform, where two easy chairs sat placed at strategic angles to one another, as if the chairs were already engaged in conversation.

  Klein-Hoffer appeared, straightening his suit coat, flanked by several harried attendants with headsets on. He gave a quick tilt of his head indicating that Barabbas should take the three steps onto the stage and take a seat. Barabbas chose the seat on the right, since it’d be easier on the still-painful cuts on his back.

  All too fast, Klein-Hoffer was on the stage, in the seat opposite Barabbas, and staff members were clipping tiny mics to their shirts. They fussed over Klein-Hoffer’s hair for another moment then fled the stage as giant, hot lights popped on all around them, nearly blinding in their harshness. A crew member held up his fingers signaling three, two, one and then pointed at the two men on the stage. Klein-Hoffer looked up, plastered on a brilliant smile, and announced, “Thanks to all our viewers, we’ve got a great question for the i
nterview portion of our show today. Your burning question is: How will the world end? First up, we’ll get an answer from Barabbas.” He waited a beat before turning to the young man seated across from him. “Inquiring minds want to know, Barabbas—how do you think the world will end?”

  Barabbas looked down. Mr. Stroop had talked about catastrophic, world-ending scientific events often enough in Physics last year. There had to be some answer he could give to this question that’d sound reasonably intelligent. “Well, so, um … we know the universe is expanding. And, uh … it’s doing it at this increasing rate.” Barabbas launched into a pseudo-lecture, recalling and regurgitating as much as he could from Stroop’s rantings, trying to build a picture of what could be possible, only understanding about half of what he was saying.

  “And so … this dark energy, it, like, explains why the universe acts the way it does, right?” He tried to project confidence in his voice, his mannerisms. “Dark energy is to all of space what the water is to Earth, kind of.” Klein-Hoffer leaned toward Barabbas, enjoying the animated gestures he made as he tried to explain complex, theoretical cosmology to a monitor. “So you’ve got dark energy repulsing gravity, more and more, and while it’ll take billions of years, well, everything will just tear to shreds!” Barabbas made a dramatic tearing motion with his hands, causing Klein-Hoffer to quickly have to shift his body to avoid being hit in the face. “And the thing is, all the stars, all the planets, everything we know exists in the universe will actually still exist when that happens. All the forces holding everything together will snap-snap-snap like suspension cables on a failing bridge!” Out of breath, Barabbas slumped in his chair. “That’s it. The universe will be ripped apart.”

  Suddenly unsure of himself again, he looked at Klein-Hoffer, who fanned himself and turned his eyes to the cameras, “You heard it here first. Our contestant Barabbas thinks a ‘big rip’ will be tearing us apart. Stay tuned for another take on your question, viewers!”

  After Barabbas left the stage, the whole performance began again, this time between Klein-Hoffer and another man. When posed the same question, under equally hot lights, this man spoke of a scroll, horses, rivers, earthquakes, and swarms of bugs. Several times throughout, the cameras cheekily caught Klein-Hoffer rolling his eyes and even sighing, expressing how tedious he found listening to this man to be. Hunger, sickness, war, death—blah, blah … persecution, martyrdom, all stuff they already had. And trumpets. Trumpets. Klein-Hoffer only pepped up his posture and personae after the man concluded his tale with some rubbish about tears being wiped away, disgrace being removed, and the beauty of trusting in a higher power. “And there you have it. Two visionary takes on the end of the world.” He ripped the mic off and left the stage immediately.

  The next day, Barabbas put off getting ready until the last possible moment. He didn’t want to catch any flack from Abe; he was in too good a mood, thanks to Kendra. He was all smiles and whatever Abe was sighing about in the front seat of the car was of no interest to Barabbas. Instead, he whistled jauntily to himself the whole way to The Dome.

  Inside, yet another new set-up had been constructed. The room was nearly completely empty, but there was an old fashioned microphone dangling from the ceiling in the center of the room.

  In a nearby room, a man approached an antique microphone, blowing gently on it as a test to see if it was on or not. He heard a small reverberation of the sound.

  What was he supposed to do? Make a speech? Sing? Barabbas had spent years in the Academy’s choir, competing in long-distance competitions via advanced teleconferencing platforms. Finally, they give me something I’m good at!

  He reached for the mic, curling his left hand around the back of it. He took a few steadying breaths and began to sing the first song that came to mind:

  Ave Maria, gratia plena

  Maria, gratia plena

  Maria, gratia plena

  Ave, ave dominus

  Dominus tecum.

  The man thought for some time, in deep contemplation of what words he’d choose to put forth. After a while, he inhaled deeply, letting his lungs fill, and began a gentle, coaxing story-song, hypnotizing all who watched, all who heard, with a vision … a world where the lights burn brighter, where birds fly higher in bluer skies …

  In hora, mortis, mortis nostrae,

  In hora, mortis nostrae.

  Ave Maria.

  Barabbas held that final, stunning note as long as his lungs could bear it before letting his song fade to silence in the empty, echoing room. He’d never had a solo performance of that one, but he still knew he’d nailed it.

  The other man moved around as if singing for a room full of devoted listeners, as if connecting eyes with the entire world. His hands outstretched, imploring the invisible masses, his eyes closed, his chest swelled as he came to his vow, his final wish. So long as he could think, talk, stand, and walk … So long as he could dream, he wished that dream of a warmer sun, of hope shining on everyone, would come true that very moment. And, as tears edged out from his eyes and begin to slide down his face, all the viewers at home with their popcorn and recliners couldn’t help but see his dream, couldn’t help but feel his heartbreaking hope. When he finished the last note, he was sweating, panting, emotionally drained from the performance. He went down on one knee, right there in the dirt, and covered his face with his hands.

  Upon arriving back at the mansion, Barabbas entered his room only to find Kendra gone. Every trace of her vanished.

  On Day Six, he awoke depressed that Kendra was just as gone that morning as she had been when he’d come home last night. Abe had delivered dinner, plates of perhaps the simplest fare he’d received since leaving the Academy. Some pasta and a large salad for dinner. A bowl of mixed berries for dessert. He’d eaten it but had found it pretty unsatisfying; his anticipation for dinner had become caught up in Kendra’s presence. Overall, the depth of his disappointment over her disappearance added to the cardboard-like culinary experience of the evening. He’d hoped television would take his mind off of things, at least until he could fall asleep but no manner of game, reality, sitcom, or drama shows could effectively numb his mind. He’d eventually drifted into a restless, uncomfortable sleep, and was dressed and ready well in advance of Abe’s arrival.

  “Why … Mr. Meriwether … ” Abe stuttered, “I do believe you’re ready for the day! Do my eyes deceive me?”

  Barabbas bristled, “No, Abe, they don’t. Can we just go to The Dome now so I can find out what ridiculousness is in store for me today?” He walked past Abe, unapologetically bumping the elderly man’s shoulder with his own.

  Within a half hour, Barabbas was in The Dome, a bit startled to see the space had been bifurcated; where before there had been just one door to enter the facility, there were now two doors. Abe took Barabbas in through the one on the right into what he could only describe as a sitting room. There was a table, a few chairs, and a couch. Some shelves lined one wall with a wide selection of books. A beverage cart had been placed in the far left corner and on it he could see sodas, bottled waters, and juices as well as a selection of beers and wines.

  And then he saw the clock. It looked much like the one from the arena space in which he’d fought the tiger … except this time it was counting up: 00:03:42.

  A man pulled out a chair and sat down in the room next door, one exactly the same, only different due to the energy of the man within it.

  00:17:03.

  Barabbas rubbed his face, tired and frustrated with this whole stupid week. What was the point of all this? Why just make me sit in a room? He dropped his feet off the tabletop and let the front legs of his chair hit the ground with a jarring clunk. He scraped the metal feet against the cement flooring. He walked to the bookcase and grabbed an interesting looking title off the shelf, a worn copy of A Crown for Cold Silver, pulled another chair over, and began to read.

  03:29:57.

  Barabbas cracked his neck, an effort t
o release the tension building there, but also he’d been in one position so long his body felt stuck in place. He walked to the beverage cart, grabbed anything with caffeine, and drank deeply from the can, hoping it would revive him a bit.

  05:42:01.

  The caffeine had sunk in and Barabbas was trying to work it through his system with any kind of physical activity the room would permit. Pushups against the wall, against the floor … jumping jacks, reorganizing the furniture, putting the books in new orders—alphabetical by title, alphabetical by author’s last name, by author’s first name, by publication date (ascending and descending), by thickness, and by weight.

  09:31:37.

  Hrm. He had a hangnail. He began chewing off the pesky, uncomfortable stray bits of nail. Ow. He’d drawn blood. He wiped his hands on his pants, put his hands in his pockets, and decided to do some pacing. Ten strides left, fifteen strides forward, another ten strides right, another fifteen strides back to where he started. Fifty strides to loop the room.

  10:15:26.

  Maybe if I put the table on its side and get these chairs out of the way, I can integrate some zigzags, Barabbas considered, desperate to change the path of his pacing, for anything else to do. Turns out it took between seventy-three and eighty-four strides to zigzag the room.

  After a while he started feeling a bit dizzy and put the furniture back in place so he could sit again. He grabbed a copy of The Count of Monte Cristo and tried to relax again.

  On the other side of the wall, the other man hummed lightly to himself the song he’d sung just days ago, smiling to himself ever so slightly as he did. When he’d completed the song, he considered the bottles of water from the cart. He remembered the way the water had turned to wine as he’d placed it on the tray after cooking for The Politicos. He figured they’d never know it was the same meal he’d shared with his friends before answering the summons, before coming to the Exhibition.