Doomsdays

by Jeffrey Thomas

  Some of the forks had plain, unadorned handles, while others boasted flowery filigree. Dinner forks and salad forks and baby forks.

  Suddenly, the memory slotted into place with a definitive click. He knew what the forks were for. What the Masters had done with them.

  But the Masters were gone. Just the forks, now. The billion forks lying like heaped bones, or fallen stars, fragmented and gone cold.

  He wandered unsteadily across the landscape, the forks slithering and shifting under his feet. He didn’t venture far, however, instead sat himself down in the shadow of a smokestack, his back against it.

  His cracked eggshell head lowered. He felt his body stilling. There was no purpose for him up here, after all. He had not been prepared for that. He had nothing to insert in its place. The knowledge seemed to empty him, blank him.

  He hugged his knees to his chest, and lowered his forehead onto his knees, weary from his long journey. Weary from a disillusionment too hollowed-out to be despair.

  The circle of his vision began to diminish, close up, the light at the center growing smaller, smaller, more distant, until darkness consumed it altogether.

  Another waterfall of forks swarmed around him. Later, there came more. Gradually, he was buried. Only the top of his bare skull showed. After a long time, not even that.

  For a while, he continued to hear the churning of the factory, even in his blind interment. But at last, one day, there was another small click inside him. And then, restful silence.

  The End

  The Green Spider

  Brice was struck by the ugliness of the Desmonds' dining room table. It had to be an expression of artistic chic; some hip, funky embracing of tackiness, campiness, kitsch. It was really two tables butted together, with metal legs and orange formica tops, such as might have been stolen from a fast food restaurant or workplace cafeteria. At least, upon it, the silvery cardboard ashtrays did not seem as incongruous as they might otherwise.

  Mrs. Desmond – Greer – was an artist, after all, and she had taken Brice aside and asked him if he cared to leave the little welcoming party thrown in his honor to have a peek at her studio.

  He had shown interest in a three-dimensional piece of hers hanging in the dining room. It was nothing really more than gears of various sizes meshed together, mounted inside a frame of rusty

  metal strips. Brice found it ugly, too, but it was curious how she had painted the entire piece a pale green that was almost white. It gave the metal a mock patina of verdigris. In view of the original purpose of this apartment building, at least it seemed appropriate, like a window broken open in the white-painted brick of the dining room wall to reveal the ancient guts of the factory it had once been.

  "Here we are," Greer proudly announced, gesturing him inside her studio. It had high narrow windows, higher brick walls than the other rooms, an open loft-like feel. "I fell in love with this room immediately. It's so big and airy...it must have been a storage room, a little warehouse thing. We were originally going to make it a combination living and dining room, but then I had this...vision. And like I was telling you, I never had an interest in sculpture before. I painted a little in high school, but that was it. But I just got so inspired in this place; it brought out the artist in me and now I'm obsessed with it." She chuckled. "David's been very good about it...and he even encourages me!"

  There were work benches, shelves stacked with pieces of machinery like disconnected dinosaur bones waiting to be catalogued; the raw material for her sculptures, as she called them.

  Or were those shelved items her finished pieces? There were tools spread upon the bench counters, and soldering irons, and in one corner there was even welding equipment – metal sheets having been laid down to protect the floor, hardwood where once it had been concrete.

  Brice was shocked that, despite her safeguards, she had gotten away with welding inside her expensive apartment.

  "Wow," he said. "You are really involved in your art, I can see that. I've never heard of a female artist so interested in an industrial...theme."

  "Well, it must be the environment. I loved these apartments from the first time David and I drove past them. I never even noticed this place before when it was a factory, and I must have been by it a thousand times, but when it was turned into apartments it grabbed me right away. I loved the red brick, the little green canopies and awnings. Oh...I thought it was sooo cool. I was thrilled that David fell in love with it, too."

  "Well, I was intrigued the minute I saw it, too. Really neat. But Mr. Orabona was a little vague about what it used to be. A textile mill, or something?"

  "Oh no, it was a shoe factory. Milton used to be the big shoe-making town in western Massachusetts. My father used to work over at the Milton Boots company, back when they made their boots here in town."

  "Too bad what happened to them, after Avery Brothers gobbled them up."

  "Oh, I know. My father was laid off at fifty-three years old. He'd worked there for thirty years as a leather cutter. They make their boots in Mexico, now...but the label still calls them Milton

  Boots, you know?"

  Brice wandered over to a piece mounted on one wall of clean white brick. "This is intriguing," he remarked. It was much like the arrangement of gears in the framed piece he had commented on before, but with plumbing pipes worked into it. And, spread across all the toothy wheels and aimless plumbing there was a giant spider jaggedly snipped out of a thin sheet of metal, its legs bent into joints, eight various-sized screw heads for eyes. All of the piece painted a pale green.

  "Speaking of my father," Greer said, coming to join him. "I call that one ‘Green Spider.’ It was inspired by a story my father told me; when I started sculpting it came back to me. When my father worked at Milton Boots they shut down every year for the first week of July. Well, one year during this vacation the company had the whole interior of the plant spray-painted a light green color. They had a lot of ground to cover so they did a fast, messy job, Dad told me. He thought it was awful...just indiscriminate. And when he returned to work he noticed a spider crawling on the wall of his work station. It was painted the same green as the wall. He thought it was sad, this poor thing sprayed along with everything else, but still alive and going about its business as usual...who knows, maybe blinded by the paint, maybe suffocating under it, but crawling along, doing his best. It must have made an impression on me, like it did him, because --" and she gestured at her artwork.

  "I like that," Brice admitted sincerely.

  "This place will be good for you, too, Brice. What is it you do for a living, if I might ask?"

  "I'm a web site designer, speaking of spiders," he joked.

  "Oh...so you must have artistic talent, yourself!"

  "Well...with computers. I took graphic design in school, so I like to think I'm artistic. I don't have a nice big area like this to work in but I have a little spare room set up as an office away from the office, so I hope to get some good work done here."

  "Oh, I'm sure you will. This great old place has become my muse."

  * * *

  In order to do good work, one needed a good work environment, and Brice had wondered what might be the best way to set up his computer in his new apartment. Instead of utilizing his old, too small computer desk, or buy a new one, he decided that he would design his own, customized to his needs and taste. Starting out fresh in a new apartment inspired him, motivated him, whereas in his old apartment he had never felt such an ambitious impulse.

  He bought some prefabricated shelving materials for the bulk of his work station, but he wanted to do something more with it, give it a quirky, adventurous touch, which at first eluded him. He knew he had found what he was looking for when, coming home from his small office in Worcester one evening, he saw some scrap leaning against the apartments' dumpster. He might not have noticed it had he not seen another tenant looking through the scrap like an old woman scouting out treasure at a flea market. He had spoken with this woman, Elean
or, several times; she was a retired CPA and a widow, friendly, and Brice felt comfortable enough with her that he was able to approach her and the beckoning collection of discarded matter.

  "Do you need a hand carrying something, Eleanor?" he asked, to mask -- for the moment -- his own interest in the treasure.

  "God, I hope I don't look like a bag lady going through the trash!" she chuckled warmly. "I've been making birdhouses lately...I started with one for my sister's yard, and it came out so nice that I'm making more for my three nieces. I put down a tarp on the floor of my spare bedroom soI could saw and sand them, but I'm letting them stay on the rough side, kind of homely looking -- it gives them an old, folksy feel. I'll have to show you."

  "They sound great. Um..." Brice's eyes fell on a large piece at the back of the stack, and he dragged it out. An old hand-painted sign, much of the badly blistered paint flaked away. "LO... MILLS," he read. "Was this the name of this place, do you think?"

  Eleanor inclined her head to read the sign. "I don't know if it was ever a mill. I think my uncle used to work here many years ago when it was a machine shop."

  "I thought they made shoes?"

  "I don't know about that. I'm sure it was a machine shop."

  Brice again regarded the wooden sign. "Hey, ah, did you have your eye on this, Eleanor?"

  "Oh no, by all means. Are you going to hang it up?"

  "Not like this. I thought I'd use it as the backboard for my work center. Well...by the time I put the computer in and the rest, it would pretty much obscure the letters, so I don't know..."

  "I thought you were going to say you wanted it as a headboard for your bed."

  A grin spread across his face. "What a cool idea! I like that! Thanks, Eleanor...I really like that." He passed his eyes over the debris once more. "That old door...that would be great. Paint all messed up and cracked – the 'distressed' look, they call it – that would be great as a backboard."

  "I hope you let me see it when you're done. In fact, if you don't mind helping me carry my wood inside, I could show you those birdhouses now..."

  "Sure. Love to."

  * * *

  After he had gushed sufficiently over Eleanor's birdhouses, and the start of her first dollhouse, Brice joined her for tea at her kitchen table. While she was pouring his hot water, they heard a metal grating sound and a clang like the cage door of an old elevator being dragged into place. "What was that?" he asked her.

  Dangling a tea bag into his cup, then draping the string over the side, his hostess shrugged. "I hear it sometimes...maybe something in one of the other apartments. Or a ghost." She smiled at him with a twinkle. "Ghost in the machine."

  "Or the ghost of a machine," he joked back. He glanced around the cozy, neat kitchen. "I sure do love this place."

  "Thanks," said Eleanor, sitting.

  "I'm sorry...your apartment is great. But I meant this building -- having been a factory. You know, I feel almost...guilty that I never worked in a factory. They're part of our American identity, but they're almost like this mythic thing now, a part of our past...like when every family could easily buy a house and a car."

  "They're still around. In case you hadn't noticed, there are more material things in existence

  now than there ever were in the good old days."

  "Yeah, factories are still around...in Hong Kong slums, and Taiwan, and wherever. It's a shame...all the Americans who can't get an honest job. Not everybody is cut out to be an office worker. My dad couldn't have been some customer service rep, or a smooth little corporate salesman. He worked for an abrasives company, making grinding wheels. He was this big guy with big rough hands, and he made stuff, you know? You should see his old plant now. Windows boarded up or broken, all these tall weeds growing up out of that big old empty parking lot. It looks like a scene you see in those movies about the end of the world...when everybody's dead."

  He dunked his tea bag distractedly, watching the steam. "We are all dead. We live a virtual life, now."

  "Well you're starting a new life here, aren't you, hon?"

  Brice turned his heavy, brightly glazed mug to have a better look at it. It was somewhat irregular, obviously individually crafted. "This is nice."

  "Cheryl in apartment four made that; isn't it pretty? She's a technical writer for some big office supply chain. Just recently she's taken up pottery..."

  * * *

  Brice had decided to paint the rest of the work station in progress the same dark campground green as the ugly door, so as to better merge it with the final piece. And he was staring at the sign (LO... MILLS), trying to imagine the best way to attach it to his bed frame, when a third inspiration found its way into his thoughts. He hurried out into the dark parking lot, afraid that he would find the scrap gone, but it was still there, among it a second dark green door. This, too, he carried inside. It would make, he had decided, a great coffee table.

  The next several weeks were filled with activity. He found himself doodling on his computer at the office: sketching out blueprints of his apartment, imagining how he could build a new entertainment center for his TV, VCR and stereo, and a kitchen table. And a bookcase; he really had a taste for amateur carpentry, now. He remembered how when he'd first moved into his old apartment, even hanging a picture had seemed an ordeal.

  He hadn't called Gwen in a week. They had met in an internet chat room, and had been dating in the wary, uncomfortable way of these times, as if both were reluctant but going through the motions, fulfilling some social prerequisite but without any real connection or personal passion (sex aside). Finally, she called him, but he was in the middle of painting the leg pieces of his bedside table and fairly glared at the phone for disrupting him. He listened to her leave a message on his machine, then turned back to his work...within moments was lost in it, Zen-like.

  * * *

  Idly, he flipped through a catalog of office supplies, his computer screen empty before him; if only he could find the ambition at work that he felt at home. He knew his two partners in the web design company had grown a bit impatient with him of late (he had called in sick earlier this week, so tired was he from staying up until four-thirty in the morning to finish the bookcase), but moving was an exhausting process, and he was still settling in; carting out his old furnishings, and creating their replacements.

  In the catalog, he found a page which advertised time clocks. This caught his fancy. Wouldn't it be cool, he thought, fun, if he bought one and put it in his little home office? He could, for his own amusement, punch in and out every time he went in to do some work. He had never punched an actual time clock in his life; it seemed so retro. The digital clocks were more expensive, but he preferred the older sort with clock faces, anyway. Two hundred dollars, was all. And he could order some punch cards from the catalog, too. He immediately flipped to the back and started filling out the order form.

  * * *

  In his dream, a great hand had extended from the wall of his bedroom, and was creeping slowly up his body, the fingers playing over his legs...his groin...his stomach. Across his chest, nearing his bared throat. It was dark, and he was paralyzed, but he was able to just lift his head enough to look down at the massive hand as it came. In the gloom, he saw faint glimmers on the hand. Rings, reflecting light? No, he realized...eyes. Eight eyes, made out of screw heads. It was not a vast hand that was climbing up his body toward his face, he now understood, but a huge spider cut from a sheet of metal...

  Brice was startled awake by that grating/rattling sound he had heard one time in Eleanor's apartment. A clang at the end, and then the sound was gone. Just as he reached out and turned on the bedside lamp, his phone rang. He jumped again at the sudden burst of sound. He got up from the bed, where he had dozed off fully dressed but for his shoes, his fingernails outlined in dark green paint, and shuffled to the phone to glower down at it resentfully. He had shut off the pesky answering machine, which seemed lately to have become a bottomless receptacle of unhappy disembodied voices,
but the caller ID display showed him that it was Gwen again. He wasn't happy with her for calling when he was trying to nap; he had been working hard. He returned to bed, ignoring the rings until they went away. He left the light on, still a little unsettled by his dream, and that sound which had awakened him...but soon he had drifted again into the deep, lush sleep of physical exhaustion.

  * * *

  "Brice – someone's here to see you!" Eleanor announced brightly, poking her head into her little workshop.

  Brice turned from his labors, and saw Gwen framed in the threshold. "Oh...hey," he said with a wary smile.

  Her eyes sprang from his face to the shelves he was mounting on the wall. "Haven't you been getting my calls?"

  "I'm really sorry, Gwen...I've been so busy moving, and then working..."

  "Working? Brice, Ed told me you quit the design company! He said you went into business for yourself selling crafts!"

  "No, no...look, it isn't just crafts. It's products. Eleanor makes these great birdhouses, doll houses, nativity scenes. Another tenant here makes great three-dimensional artwork. There are two women who make clothing, even a guy who makes quilts. You wouldn't believe the talent in this place, that was just waiting to all come together! So I'm not in business by myself...we all got together last week to start our own company. We call it Lost Mills."

  "And what does your landlord think of all this going on in here?"

  "I never really see him; he's some foreign guy who owns all kinds of properties. I don't think he cares so long as we pay our rent and don't wreck the place. Hey, we're looking into putting ads

  in Yankee, other magazines...we have a real collaborative here; we've got our hands in all kinds of areas. It's exciting!"

  Gwen stepped gingerly into the room, gazing at the shelves that already covered the walls, most of them filled with birdhouses – some painted, others waiting. It was like a small warehouse.

  "Well if you don't make some money on this pretty fast, I think your landlord is going to kick you out of this nice place, no matter how lenient he is."