Everyone Says That at the End of the World

by Owen Egerton

  He pranced from the bathroom feeling clean and light. “Melinda,” he sang, and leaped onto the bed where she now sat using the remote control to flip through the adult-movie selections. “I’m driving east.” He stomped around her like a child on an inflated moonscape. “Why don’t you come with me?”

  “I can’t,” she said, laughing.

  “Sure you can!”

  “No, really, I can’t,” she said. “What would my husband say?”

  Hayden stopped stomping. “You’re married?”

  “You’d like him. He’s a big fan of your show.”

  “But you slept with me.” Hayden stepped from the bed. The flicker of the television on Melinda’s face made her look distorted, evil. Hayden searched for his pants. “And you’re a Catholic.”

  “You’re Saint Rick. You seduced me.”

  “I seduced you?” He found his pants under the bed and his boxers wrapped around Melinda’s prosthetic leg.

  “Don’t worry. I have no regrets. It was passion. No one can fault passion,” she said, reaching out and touching Hayden’s shoulder as he tied his shoes. “Let’s order ice cream.”

  Hayden stared for a long moment. What was this feeling? Disgust. That was it. He was disgusted. And proud to feel so.

  Hayden stood. He stared down at Melinda as he buttoned his shirt. “I’m very disappointed in you,” he said. He shoved his Catholic books into his traveling bag and stamped out of the room. The door had just clicked shut when, with a swipe of the key card, the door reopened. Hayden marched back in and bent down beside the bed.

  “What are you doing?” Melinda asked.

  Hayden stood, bouncing the leg against his palm like a batter with his bat.

  “Hey wait,” Melinda said, lurching forward. “That’s mine!”

  Hayden shook his head in disappointment and walked from the room with Melinda’s leg under his arm.

  Baby simply

  MILTON WATCHED RICA sleep, how she curled into herself, her hands holding her taut belly.

  They had talked for nearly two hours before she had finally yawned and retreated to the bedroom.

  “My head hurts,” she had said, crawling under the sheets. “The world’s not ending this morning, is it?”

  “No,” Milton said. “Sunday, I think.”

  “Okay, let’s take a break.” She smiled. “Don’t run off today, all right?”

  Now watching her sleep, he thought of the child. His child and hers.

  Did the baby know where her food came from? Where the warmth came from? Where the muffled voice and happy hormones came from? Or was her world simply the womb, just what she saw and touched? A world whose edges she could palm. Or did she suspect more? Did the baby believe in the existence of the Mother?

  Rica rolled her face deeper into her pillow.

  The baby didn’t question. Milton knew that. The baby simply lived. A living, unquestioned faith so complete that it appeared effortless. The Mother was where the baby lived, breathed, and had her being. Is that faith or recognition? Do we have faith in gravity? Imagine the gravity-doubter grasping on to handrails and fence posts, leaping from stronghold to stronghold in fear he might float away. Gravity still there, but the man’s lack of trust, of faith, preventing him from enjoying it.

  So the baby trusts without effort. Then the baby is born, removed from the Mother. Pulled from the state of unquestioned and unrealized faith into a cold new world where the edges are an eternity away and even breathing is new. It must be horrifying. Colors, air on skin, space, and moving blurs. To suddenly be alone and separate. The baby is given a breast. She connects again. And faith grows legs. The baby seeks and finds the Mother seeking her. The baby grows. She is a walking child. She can survive alone. She believes in the actuality of the Mother, but does she know, trust, love her Mother? She leaves the womb to meet the Mother. She leaves the womb to grow, to become a mother herself.

  Damn it, Milton, he told himself, you don’t believe in God. Try and remember that.

  Milton crawled into bed beside Rica. He stared at the white ceiling.

  Sunday will be a birthday. The amniotic fluid will wash away and all our philosophies will be revealed to be nothing more than the bubbles of fetuses. The outer world will be strange, as incomprehensible as our world is to the newborn. What will Sunday bring? What will Monday be? Utterly strange and somehow recognizable? Will we breast-feed?

  He closed his eyes and was asleep in a breath.

  Shit Walk

  THE MUCK CLUNG to his boots like instant brownie batter, but Kiefer Bran didn’t mind. As a rule, he was supposed to dislike the required hikes through the low-ceilinged, ripe-smelling, dark bowels of the city. But Kiefer loved them. An on-site inspection, a “Shit Walk” they called it back in the office, offered solitude, the adventure of the unknown, and the strange unearthly beauty of Seattle’s undercity labyrinth. It was the very reason he had taken the job with the Sewage and Wastewater Department eighteen years before.

  This night’s inspection was not the average Shit Walk. The department had received over fifty calls reporting sinks and toilets backing up with thick, red sludge. One woman’s bathtub had filled with red ooze from her drain. A phone call had yanked Kiefer from his bed and sent him hiking below.

  He swung his flashlight down tunnel 18, one of the city’s oldest. Directly above him, he knew, was Twenty-fifth Avenue where rich women go to buy expensive shoes and tiny lunches. He was below them, and by being below them he felt above them. The walls glistened in the light as Kiefer checked for damage or irregularities in any of the pipes emptying into the flow. Nothing out of the ordinary. Rounding a curve in the sewer, he noticed something moving at the end of pipe 18C. He aimed his flashlight. Hanging onto the edge of the pipe, dangling over the waste, was a blue and green-shelled crab.

  “I’ll be damned,” Kiefer said. He stepped closer and watched the tiny thing try its best to climb back up into the pipe. “Look at you, little fella.” As he watched, the crab lost its grip and Kiefer stuck out a gloved hand and caught it before it splashed into the filth. “Got ya.”

  He placed the crab in a sample jar and tapped on the glass. “I’ll find you a good home.”

  He placed the jar in his pocket and continued examining the pipes. He expected the sludge was due to rust. Some of these pipes were a century old and in need of serious maintenance. But people don’t give a shit where their shit goes. Not until it bubbles back into their houses. Then they start yelling.

  Kiefer was whistling, the sound echoing back to him from all directions. Right under pipe 18F, he knelt by the thick creek of filth and filled another sample jar. He shone his light into the goo. It was a dark red. He stopped whistling. This didn’t look like rust. Hard to say, though, with all that crap in there. He stood up, screwing on the cap. For a second he lost his footing and slipped against the wet wall. He steadied himself and shone the flashlight on his sleeve. It was wet and red. He wiped his gloved hand along the bricks. Sticky. He rubbed the liquid between his thumb and fingers.

  Blood? Couldn’t be. Too much of it.

  He looked at the creek and down the miles of tunnel. This is all blood. Shit rivers don’t just turn into blood.

  Above him something popped. Kiefer looked up just as a dense spray of blood rained down on him. He lurched away, but his feet slipped and Kiefer fell into the creek. The blood continued to pour, gallons of the stuff. Thicker than paint and stinking of salt and copper. He coughed, covering his face with an arm and crawling from the downpour.

  He rose to his feet, red and sick, and trudged backward toward the street entrance wishing to God he could burn his mouth clean.

  Finger closer

  MILTON OPENED HIS eyes. Something was in the room. His muscles tightened. Beside him Rica slept. Milton did not make a noise. He blinked, begging his eyes to adjust to the dark. It was near. Milton scanned the room without moving his head. He saw it standing by the window staring down at him. The Non-Man.

  M
ilton couldn’t breathe. He wanted to yell, to grab Rica and run. He couldn’t move. Milton strained to move, to scream. Nothing.

  Please, God, don’t let them hurt her.

  “Relax, Milton,” a voice spoke. A voice he knew. “He’s on your side.”

  Milton could feel the weight of someone sitting at the end of his bed. He strained, but in the dark and unable to move his head, all Milton could make out was the shadowy outline of a man.

  “There’s a lot of things to see,” said the voice. “They’re removing the fetter field. Way up in the magnetosphere. The prison doors are opening. Means you can leave. Anyone can. Everyone should. I’m guessing no one does.”

  The Non-Man moved closer. It hovered over Milton, staring down like Munch’s screaming figure. It lifted a hand, smooth and free of lines, before Milton’s face. It folded three fingers and a thumb and directed one digit toward Milton’s eye. It moved the finger closer.

  “He’s going to unlock something in your head,” the familiar voice said from the bottom of the bed. “I would like to say it won’t hurt. But it will.”

  Milton’s throat spasmed in an attempt to scream.

  “Stop breathing so fast. You’ll hyperventilate.”

  Please don’t. Please don’t.

  The Non-Man’s pale hand reached toward Milton’s face.

  “Relax, Milton. And for once in your goddamn life, try and listen,” the voice said from the foot of the bed. He patted Milton’s shin. “I’m going to tell you what this planet is all about. You think you know. You haven’t got a clue. Not the faintest.”

  The Non-Man extended one long finger toward Milton’s unblinking right eye.

  Wicks trimmed

  “THAT WAS LARRY Norman’s ‘I Wish We’d All Been Ready.’” Truly a retro classic, but never more appropriate than now. Personally, I prefer his version to DC Talk’s, yes? Intern Ami is nodding. Ha!

  “Now I know some of you want me to shut up. Want me to stop my yapping and just play the tunes. I get your mail! ‘Dear Van Sturgeon. Shut up!’ Ha! But I won’t. You know who wants me to shut my trap? You know who hated the day we went to satellite radio? Satan. The Prince of Lies hates my truth. It burns his ears. Is it burning yours?

  “What can we do? Do we wait? Do we sit in our AC houses all fat and bored and American? No! America is the Whore of Babylon. That’s why so many other false prophets have misjudged the day. They thought America was the Jerusalem, American was chosen! I thought it, too! Well, that’s just not true. America is a whore, people. I know, it’s hard to hear. We are the Whore of Babylon. We are worse than that. We have deceived and seduced the nations. The Antichrist is America!

  “I’m so excited! Glory is so close you can just feel it, can’t you?

  “Intern Ami looks nervous. She’s great. Intern Ami, I know you love her. Can you imagine the things to come, the words of John and Daniel, the visions God gave thousands of years ago, now coming to be? He promised. And he shall not fail to fulfill the work he has begun, he will be faithful, he will not be mocked. He is God! And he will call for his own.

  “What are we to do? We are the virgins, we must have our wicks trimmed, we must have the feast prepared. Are you going to your job tomorrow? Why? Are you saving for retirement? Are you sending your kids to some public school tomorrow to learn whatever new idea strikes their fancy? There’s no time for that! Do you—and I despise this phrase—‘Live and let live?’ No more! Time to prepare. The owner of the Vineyard is returning. Some in your churches will say I’m wrong, that it’s untrue, that the world will continue as it always has. This is a lie, and it comes from the Father of all Lies! They are cold water, and even if you are on fire for God, their chill is making your church lukewarm, and what did Jesus say about the lukewarm? He said spit them out! Spit them out! I’d say it’s time for hot churches. Churches glowing like coals! Push those ice cubes from your churches. Let them go. Push them out. Purify your houses of worship!

  “Okay, okay. I know! More music! Well here’s ‘Last Breath’ by PFR. Love this song!”

  Go shower

  RICA OPENED HER eyes. It was dark. Milton was standing beside the bed, staring down at her.

  “Milt?” she said.

  “They’ve sent fire into my bones.”

  “Milton? Wake up, babe.”

  “I know what Earth is. It’s an institution. This whole planet is. Earth is the mental asylum for the entire universe. Insane souls, every one of us.”

  “Milton, just wait.”

  Milton circled the bed, his eyes bright.

  “We are the mentally ill of the universe. Earth is our asylum. Do you realize there hasn’t been a murder anywhere else in the universe for the last three million years?” He punched the wall and a framed photo fell to the floor. “All this—countries, religions, families, art, wars—it’s all just sand castles in the nuthouse. Our bodies are holding cells for insane souls.”

  “Sit down, babe.”

  “We’re just patients. Just inmates.” He turned to her and his expression made her shiver. “You don’t believe me.”

  She said nothing.

  “Go shower,” he whispered.

  “What?”

  “Go shower!” He pulled the sheets off Rica and dropped them to the floor. “You’re filthy. You’re covered in vomit. Go.”

  Rica didn’t move.

  “Go!” He threw his fist down on the mattress. Rica pushed herself back and stood on the other side of the bed.

  “What are you doing?” she said, her hands moving to her belly. “You’re still asleep.”

  “I am not asleep. Now get in the shower.”

  “You calm the fuck down right now, Milton!” Rica yelled.

  Milton’s expression changed. He looked confused. “I’m trying to help you,” he said in a quiet voice. “Don’t you feel dirty?” He stepped forward.

  “You stay right there,” she said, pointing at him with one hand and pulling on her sweatpants with the other. “Something is wrong with you, Milton.” She grabbed her purse. As she moved to the door, Milton stepped in front of it.

  “Please don’t go.”

  She paused for a moment, studied his eyes, and then maneuvered around him. He didn’t try to stop her.

  Holy fuck

  HAYDEN BROCK WAS lost. He had left the interstate on a whim only a dozen miles after leaving the hotel and quickly found himself swirling around narrow unlit desert roads in the dead of the night. He had no specific place he wanted to drive to, no specific direction he wanted to head. Just vaguely east. You would think a person free from the responsibilities of a destination would have no problem being lost. If you don’t care where you’re heading, why would you care where you are? But Hayden was panicking. The dark roads had been a thrill for approximately fifteen minutes. Then he started to worry. Where was the interstate? Where were the large green signs shining with information and arrows? Where was he? His heart felt like a shaken hornet’s nest.

  He was driving fast, speeding to somewhere else. But each somewhere else was as distant and dark as the place before. The road rose and fell in gentle swells and for an hour he saw no other car and no buildings. He turned onto different roads, one after another, randomly hoping this one would lead him back to the bright world. As he sped forward, roadside images caught the headlights and glowed for a passing moment—tractor parts, tires, metal remains of he-did-not-know-what. A lone coyote cowered on the shoulder, its eyes gray-green, its back arched. This stretch of road was pockmarked with potholes and tar-filled scars. Hayden eased on the gas and bounced along. The edges of the road were jagged lines of crumbled pavement. Then the road ended. Hayden slammed on the brakes, and the car skidded along sandy asphalt. He sat in the idling car, staring out the windshield, trying to understand what he was seeing. No barrier, no sign. The road had just faded away, thinned, and vanished. It wasn’t that the road changed into an unpaved road. In the splash of headlights he could see no path, no tire tracks, just scrawny shru
bs and stone.

  Hayden turned off the ignition and stepped from the car. He held his breath and stepped to the uneven edge, like an unmoving lap of surf. He looked out. To his surprise, with the headlights off, he could see more. The moon, nearly full, was low, disappearing behind a rocky hill miles away.

  As he released his breath, all the panic left his chest. Hornets flying into the open air. He took several deep breaths. Moments before he had been moving, enclosed in his tiny car, smelling nothing more than conditioned air and seeing only what his headlights showed him. Now he was still and the entire silent world lay before him. The silence was the strangest thing Hayden had ever heard. It filled the air in a way that all the blaring sounds, beats, and screams of Los Angeles never had.

  And the stars. He could see worlds and worlds. I had no idea, he thought. This, this I can believe.

  Hayden watched one star glide through the others. Not a shooting star. Just a dot of light slowly moving past the others. I didn’t know stars moved like that. It looked happy, enjoying its unhurried tour. He followed it across the sky till it was almost directly above him.

  “God,” Hayden whispered. “Are you here now?”

  The star seemed to twinkle, to wink at him. Hayden smiled. It winked again. Grew brighter. Much brighter. Hayden rubbed his eyes. It was larger now, far larger and brighter than any other star, and every moment it was larger still. Hayden stopped smiling.

  The star’s white was now a glowing red and orange, growing, filling more and more of the sky. Far away, near the horizon, two white streaks burned in the sky. A roar filled Hayden’s ears as if all the air had been sucked from the world and was immediately blown back in. Hayden screamed. The star was now a ball of fire rocketing down to the desert like a falling red sun. Hayden saw it hit in the mountains, saw a cloud of rock and sand explode upward. He had one breath before the sound slammed into him like a body-size fist and threw him to the ground.