The Man Who Watched The World End

by Dietzel, Chris

  A good bet would wager how many more days I can go to the incinerator in my backyard before one of the animals is willing to dart out of the woods and attack in the sunlight.

  January 18I don’t want to think about being trapped in this neighborhood. I know we’re stuck here, but everything might be okay if I can just keep thinking about better times. It’s becoming more difficult, though, to act like everything will be fine. Instead of focusing on the end, I find myself reminiscing about the relics scattered around the house.

  One of my favorite pictures of Andrew is from an amusement park when I was twenty. The trip was a mini-vacation to celebrate his sixteenth birthday. All things considered, I wasn’t sure how much of an event it could be, but my dad shocked us by saying Andrew should ride one of the roller coasters. My mother didn’t want her son getting on that kind of ride but my father convinced her it would be okay. I soothed her by saying I would be next to him the entire time to make sure nothing happened to him. She didn’t stop worrying, she was a mother after all, but she relented and let him go on the ride.

  The roller coaster took forever to climb the first steep hill. The frantic whispering of people in front of and behind us grew louder as the train of chairs made its way up the sharp incline. Each yard up that giant hill meant the ride would be that much more ferocious as soon as it started speeding down the other side. It took forever to get to the top. Even I was getting nervous. The anticipation created by these rides always made my nerves worse than they needed to be. There would be loops and rolls until everyone could barely breathe. There would be spins and g-force until everybody wanted to throw up. I tensed all of my muscles so the shakes weren’t noticeable. This also helped keep my jaw from clattering. A girl behind me was crying. We were only five feet from the top. My fingers were clasped tightly around the chest guard that held us all in place. Just then, right as we got to the very top of the mountain, not a single thing higher in the sky than us, I turned and looked at Andrew. There was comfort to be found in how serene and unconcerned he was. His eyes were perfectly at peace. He was the only person on the entire ride who looked like he belonged there. Everyone else was screaming, or trying to scream, while heq in Camelot about ve been just sat there and let the roller coaster take us in three consecutive spirals followed by four consecutive loops. Each change in course made me feel like I’d been sucker-punched, but Andrew took it all in stride. He never moved so much as a finger, never made a single noise. When the ride was over he was in the exact same position as when it started. His hair was standing almost completely straight up because of the g-force, but other than that he was an angel.

  After the roller coaster, we went to one of those cutouts where you stand behind it and put your face through a hole to make it look like you’re the one flying a jetfighter, driving a race car, or otherwise doing something more spectacular than you would normally do. My father held Andrew where his head could stick out of one hole. I stood next to him with my head out the other hole. And just like that we became professional baseball players. Andrew was the catcher for the hated Chicago Cubs while I was the all-star slugger for the St. Louis Cardinals. I still laugh at the contrast in our faces. The hitter should be focused and calm, but I was hamming it up by making a face like I was going to charge the mound. The catcher, usually busy giving signs to the pitcher, looked like he was sound asleep.

  The picture has been on my bed stand ever since. As much as it was the perfect photo of us as brothers, it has somehow become even more than that for me now. I find myself staring at it for what seems like hours before I go to sleep. Some nights I’m still smiling when I close my eyes.

  I still constantly mention that picture to Andrew. Sometimes I bring it out of my room and show it to him to remind him how we spent our time as a family. It’s important to show him that, even if it was only for a moment and only for a photo, he was the catcher of a professional baseball team (it was the Cubs, though, so just barely a pro team). Sometimes, when I’m feeling lightheaded with the responsibilities of our lives, I tell him I ended up getting a homerun that day. Other times, when I realize he’s all I have left, I tell him he gave the pitcher good signs and I struck out.

  My favorite t-shirt is also from Andrew’s birthday that year. It doesn’t fit anymore, but I still pull it out of the closet occasionally just because it makes me smile. The shirt has a picture of a sixteen-year old Andrew sleeping (his eyes are closed) with a thought bubble showing that he’s dreaming about walking on the moon. I like to think there were options for what the dream’s picture could have been about—leading an army into battle, being at the beach with a swimsuit model—but that was the one my mom thought most fitting for him.

  Three months after Andrew’s birthday we were invited to a sweet sixteen party that one of our neighbors was throwing for their Block daughter. A hundred other local Blocks and their families were invited. All of the regulars celebrated this girl’s sixteenth birthday by going to the park and eating hot q if he edo dogs and flying kites while the birthday girl sat under a tree so the shade could keep her cool. She never played games, she never rode on the merry-go-round. Nor did she magically become a professional athlete. She remained motionless and quiet the entire time just like all the other Blocks, until the party was over and the Blocks’ parents loaded them back into cars and took them away. It was a nice party but it could never compare to my parents and me taking Andrew to the amusement park.

  January 21The amusement park I wrote about the other day, the one from Andrew’s sixteenth birthday, is no doubt dilapidated and abandoned now. Without men there maintaining the rides, acre upon acre of manmade structures, designed for the sole purpose of entertaining families, would slowly rust, the overly fun characters and graphics plastered all around the park withering away to look like vengeful demons painted all over the rides.

  How long would it have taken for the metal pins holding the rollercoaster’s tracks together to rust and snap? That first hill at the very top of the ride seemed impossibly high when I was young—ten stories, maybe twenty? After falling that far to the ground, I can’t imagine what kind of noise it must have made when it landed on the concrete below.

  What a waste it was for everyone to take time out of their lives just to buy cotton candy, watch teenagers parade around in preposterous costumes, and wait in line for rides that were over a minute later. Even the most deluxe of haunted houses from my childhood must pale in comparison with today’s abandoned theme parks. Those houses just had cobwebs and spooky noises, maybe scarecrows and fake blood thrown on the walls. The ghost town theme parks didn’t have any of that, but they did have bird shit covering every place where children used to laugh on their way to the next attraction and vultures perched at the top of each deserted ride waiting for the next wolf to leave a little bit of bloody guts from a vanquished cat.

  The ticket booth has a colony of thirty mixed-breed feral dogs living inside it. You couldn’t pay me to go there now. The screams of dying animals would echo across the empty park. Instead of little kids waiting impatiently for the next ride, kittens and puppies hide from the bears and wolves while they wait for their momma to come back with food, if the momma can avoid the hundreds of other animals and return at all.

  Everything has gone to hell. The happiest places on earth have become littered with animal carcasses. Random a giant brown bear lumbermeget sp bones scattered in random places. If I hadn’t spent the day cleaning up Andrew’s shit and feeling sorry for myself—no one is coming to save us; we are truly alone—I might be writing instead about how nice it would be to imagine a bear and a dog having their picture taken in the same cutout where Andrew and I once posed. It’s just not one of those days to be writing about happy things.

  I lost my patience with Andrew again today. He chose the exact moment I was repositioning him on the sofa, with one of my hands around his shoulder and the other under his leg, to crap himself. It squished against my palm. Pieces of liquid shit pushed through the cotto
n khakis he was dressed in.

  “God damn it!” I yelled.

  At that moment I swear I would have fought him if he had turned toward me and said, “Stop you’re whining, it’s just a little bit of crap.”

  I paced back and forth across the living room while Andrew remained motionless and speechless, devoid of any embarrassment at the mess he had made.

  “Son of a bitch,” I screamed, not at him, but at the neighborhood in general. It did not make me feel any better.

  One glance at my helpless brother was all it took for me to feel ashamed of my outburst. There was nothing he could do about changing his circumstances. I washed my hands before apologizing to him.

  It took all of my strength to get him back into his old position on the sofa. And when it was done, I was out of breath and desperately in need of a glass of water. My chest was on fire. I felt lightheaded.

  I sat next to him on the sofa until I stopped shaking. “I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that.”

  I wouldn’t have yelled at him if the Johnsons were still here, or, at the very least, if there was a chance someone might find us.

  January 22qoo about ve beenAndrew and I are over another round of colds. One reason Andrew is lucky: he doesn’t have the reflex to cough. He gets all the same colds I get, but as I walk from room to room announcing my presence and departure with long strings of hacking coughs, he sits perfectly still as though the frogs in his throat don’t exist. Perhaps the frogs in his throat are Block frogs.

  The days have become difficult for all of us. Andrew’s arm shows signs of irritation where the IV for his nutrient bag goes in. He hasn’t had an infection there since he was a baby. Either he is growing weak in his old age or I’m not doing as good a job of disinfecting the needles.

  Andrew would think me insane if he knew what I did today. He would break out of his spell long enough to say, “You’re crazy if you give that dog water. You’re just encouraging more animals to come up to our house.”

  I don’t even know if that would be his opinion or not, but it seems like something my parents would have said. I transfer their voice onto him since he doesn’t have one of his own. Each time a voice in the back of my head reminds me to get the day’s chores done before I relax in front of the TV, I think it’s something my parents would have said to me when I was younger, and because of that I think of it as something Andrew would say to me now. The same thing happens when I hear a tiny voice reminding me to clean the food processor before going to sleep. A clean kitchen keeps bugs away. “Yes, mom,” I would have said as a kid. “Okay, Andrew,” I think to myself now.

  In an attempt to gauge my brother’s reaction, I look over at him each time the dog arrives on our porch. On the days when I’m in a bad mood, Andrew would tell me to leave the dog alone. When I’ve had a good day, Andrew would say it might be fun to have a pet; it would be like old times.

  The dog gave cautious sniffs while approaching my patio. The bowl of water, it seemed, might be a trick of some kind. It’s possible the dog caught my scent on the bowl and questioned if it could trust this strange creature that lives inside a house while the other surrounding animals all live in the woods. Its head rose then, expecting an attack party from the woods, but for the moment at least there was nothing around to harm it. It didn’t stay for very long after having the water. I blame the constant shuffling of unknown predators lurking in the forest brush.

  I have to admit part of me would like the dog’s company at the edge of my driveway while I’m staring down at the Johnsons’ house. Its tail would flap against my leg. If the dog got nervous because of the smell, if it whined and wanted to retreat to the woods, I’d know I shouldn’t walk down the street to investigate. But if the dog panted and sniffed as though the smell wasn’t any worse than walking in the woods and coming across a huge mound of bear crap, I’d know it was okay t'go,be,o venture down the street.

  The dog will quickly get used to the water I provide. After drinking today, it looked at me through the glass panels, its head cocked sideways, a look that makes me think it was wondering where the food dish was that belongs next to the water.

  I’ve begun talking to it the way I would if it was next to me on the floor, my hand rubbing its belly, instead of us on either side of the glass door. It has learned not to be bothered when I make movements on my side of the glass. When I placed my hand on the glass today, it looked up casually, then rested its head again. And for my part, when its head darted up because of a sound from the forest, I didn’t accidently jump in my seat the way I would have a week ago. I knew it was reacting to something behind it, something it considered a threat, not to me, the man who sits and talks to it, gives it water. We were perfectly happy with each other’s company. Andrew had no complaints either.

  I was in the middle of my blabbering, one-sided conversation with the dog when a fox appeared at the edge of the woods. Immediately, the Labrador was on all four feet, the hair on its back standing straight up. I couldn’t believe the same dog I sat and relaxed with could growl so ferociously. It bared its fangs and saliva spilled out from between its teeth. I was amazed at how sharp, how long, its teeth were. They were the same teeth that every pet dog had, but as a wild beast they looked deadly. It was hard to imagine those same daggers retrieving a twig in a game of fetch.

  The fox was smart enough to stay at the edge of the forest. It crouched low to the ground but was also curious at this dog and man sharing a day together. Its teeth still bared, the dog took a small step toward the fox. Then another. The movement was so slight that I would have sworn the Labrador was in the same spot as before if I hadn’t personally seen it move. It repeated this miniature step again. I knew it was going to make a mad dash at the fox. Just then, the fox jumped higher than I would have thought possible, vanishing into the trees.

  The dog’s fur was still sticking straight up, its teeth still on display. Nothing else dared to approach. After a minute it relaxed and turned back toward the spot it had been occupying on my welcome mat. It grumbled a little, then went back to resting in the sunlight, giving a single whine in my direction as though apologizing for the outburst.

  “I’m sorry,” it was trying to say. “Nobody is more embarrassed by my behavior than I am, but I have to act like that if I want the other animals to leave me alone. It won’t happen again, I promise.”

  I tried to go back to my meaningless conversation with it, but I couldn’t get the image of it—ready to chase downqy do another creature, dig its teeth into the other animal’s throat, disembowel it—out of my head. The moment between us was ruined. The dog was on its side with its belly facing me. It gave me a carefree, happy glance, as though I was supposed to join it in acting like nothing had happened. I couldn’t think of it the way I had five minutes earlier; I couldn’t nurture it like it was my pet.

  It struck me as odd to think of the Johnsons at that moment, but that was exactly what I did. They had been my best friends. My only friends for the past two years. And then, just like that, they were gone. I had an idea of them that was based on nothing more than time spent together, and that understanding of them and who they were had been completely inaccurate. It took much less time with the dog, but in the end I realized the same thing. My romantic notions will be the end of me.

  I leaned over to check on Andrew. He was, as he always is, perfectly unaffected by everything that had taken place. When I walked by the patio door again the dog was gone.

  Now that I’m over the most recent bout of coughs and fever, I’m not going to wait any longer to find out what’s causing the smell down in the neighborhood. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Johnsons’ incinerator broke in the weeks leading to their departure, and instead of simply walking to one of the other working units in the neighborhood, they let a landfill build up behind their house before leaving Camelot.

  People always used to say that serial killers seemed like normal people; you would never suspect one of foul behavior becaus
e they presented a sense of normality in order to hide their insanity. I feel that way about the Johnsons now. These people who I spent thirty years next to, who I discussed the fate of our neighborhood with, not only snuck out in the middle of the night without saying goodbye, but they didn’t even burn their trash before they left. No matter how long someone lives down the street from you, you never really know them.

  My only concern in getting down the street is protecting myself from the animals on my way there. I was going to take a golf club with me but imagined it breaking in half after the first time I hit a dog (as if I can actually swing that hard anymore) and then being left with a useless grip to defend myself with. Instead, I’ll take a baseball bat. It’s heavier than I wanted, but it won’t break. And I’ll keep a knife in my backpack. And I’ll wait until the sun is at its highest. That’s when the animals are most likely to stay in the shadows. If I attempted the walk in the middle of the night I’d never make it past my driveway.

  To combat the smell, a bandana will be wrapped over my nose and mouth. That’s my plan. I’ll put it into action tomorrow.

  I like to think the Labrador will walk with me on my way there. I might cry if a dog actually did accompany me down the street like pets used to do. Maybe I would throw a tennis ball ahead of me and it would go and get it and bring it back. That’s a nice thing to think about as I fall asleep.