Everyone Says That at the End of the World

by Owen Egerton

  The man on the phone was still jabbering.

  “Oh my God!” Jim yelled. “So bright. So bright.”

  The phone went quiet. Then the car, the engine, the lights, all clicked off. The truck stop up ahead went dark, every light out in a snap. The red brake lights of the truck ahead disappeared, as did the headlights of the cars moving toward him. An oncoming car swerved into Jim’s lane. Jim twisted the wheel, but there was no time. In the light of the new star, Jim could see the face of the other driver screaming behind her windshield the moment before they collided.

  Pissant town

  “SOMEBODY! ANYBODY!”

  “Shut the fuck up, man. No one is coming.”

  “They can’t just leave us locked up. There’re rules.”

  “Shit, man. Not in this pissant town. What, a population of ten? Man, they are gone!”

  “I got drunk! I peed in an alley. Big deal! I didn’t even get my one phone call! I’ve got family waiting at home.”

  “You can bet your ass they’re all gone. It’s like Katrina. When the shit goes down anyone with legs to run gets the fuck out of town. They’ll leave old people and sick kids and sure as hell leave a drunk ass like you.”

  “That can’t be true.”

  “Shit, are you crying over there? You lame-ass motherfucker. Man, if I wasn’t locked in, I’d abandon you, too.”

  “No, you wouldn’t.”

  “Sure the fuck would. I don’t know you.”

  “Why does that matter? I’m a human being! I’m a—wait. Did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  “Shut up. Someone’s coming,” he hissed. “Hey! We’re in here!”

  The heavy door creaked open. Steps echoed against the cement floor. A crowd, over a dozen men and women, stopped in front of the cells, humming a slow melody.

  “Can you help us? Find the key.”

  A teenage girl near the front raised her hand. In her palm sat a hermit crab with a red arrow painted on his shell. She brought her hand up to the cell’s lock. The crab crept closer and reached a purple claw into the keyhole.

  “I don’t think that’s going to wor—”

  Click.

  Dot in the dirt

  HAYDEN WAS AFRAID. He had walked from the monastery into a darkness thicker than Los Angeles had known for a hundred years. He stepped carefully, slowly, trying to whistle away the fear. Madmen in masks from every slasher film he’d seen, bullies from his sixth grade class, rabid old women with evil powers all seemed to be hiding just past the shadows. How much fear was shoved down in his soul?

  “You’re safe, aren’t you?” he said to himself. “What’s to fear?”

  “Death,” he answered himself.

  “Well, I’ll die someday anyway.”

  “Pain,” he replied.

  “Good point,” he said. “I don’t like pain.”

  He glanced up. The stars, even that ridiculously bright one, all seemed too far away, too apathetic. He’d be horrendously tortured and those stars would observe in silence, their beauty untouched. Even at their brightest, they did little to touch the darkness.

  When Hayden was a boy he had played inside his grandfather’s closet. It was filled with canes and tweed coats and the close smell of leather. That was a good dark. This dark was wide and horrible and cold.

  “It’s fine. You’re fine. Just keep walking.”

  Hayden extended his stride. A wind pushed by and Hayden shoved his hands into his pockets. His fingers touched the smooth beads of Brendan’s rosary. He pulled them out and rolled them between his thumb and forefinger.

  Thank-yous, he thought. Okay.

  He was thankful for bourbon, his water bed, his parents, his lack of scars, Jim Edwards, hot showers . . . He got a little stuck. Could those be the only things he was thankful for? What else? When straight women make out with each other, his fifth semester of college . . . blood oranges, Advil, bread smells, the movement of his hands, stars, his chin . . . Ms. Tosh, his third grade teacher, balloon squeaks, harmonicas, his big toes, his pinky toes, all the toes in between . . . Something loosened inside of him. Each step was a bead. Each bead was a breath. Each breath was a thank-you. Chocolate milk, tequila, eyesight, the sound of applause, driving, strong coffee, skin, hair, snow, hot tubs, ultrathin condoms, John Woo films, Christmas, house-trained puppies, grapefruit, new car smell, women laughing, women breathing, women yelling, TV cop dramas, the Olympics, stunt kites . . .

  A shadow moved. Hayden stopped in his tracks. Barely ten feet from him someone was sitting on the ground. Hayden stared until the image formed from the shadow. He was sitting with his back to Hayden. A smallish man wearing a trucker hat.

  Hayden watched him for a few minutes before finally clearing his throat. The man startled and turned. He had a round, beard-covered face. He seemed to recognize Hayden, a look Hayden was familiar with. The man smiled and gestured to Hayden to come closer. Hayden carefully returned his beads to his pocket and walked over to the man.

  “Hello, I was just—” he started, but the stranger raised a hand and indicated that Hayden should sit beside him. Hayden swallowed and sat. The man smelled of sweat and diesel. But Hayden didn’t mind. He nodded at Hayden and then toward the horizon as if they were the audience for a spectacular show in the distant black. Hayden joined him in watching the sky.

  The show began. First, a soft change of light, as if a fire were burning a hundred miles away. Pine trees on a slope glowed warm, the sky seemed to heat, and then cresting over the low cliffs came the first tip of the moon. But instead of the off-white glow of a billion other nights, the moon was rust red. Hayden heard the man beside him muffle a giggle. Hayden looked at him, his face reflecting the red, his eyes bright and alive. Even behind the thick beard, Hayden could tell the grin was stretching even larger.

  Slowly the moon rose over the cliffs and floated into the sky, illuminating and dominating the night.

  “Why is it red?” Hayden asked.

  The man shrugged.

  “Does it mean something?”

  Another shrug.

  “I want to be a saint.” The words just came out. For some reason, this person seemed the right one to tell. It was clear he wasn’t Jesus. Jesus doesn’t wear a trucker hat. But Hayden had grown to expect wise words from unlikely mouths. This small, hairy trucker in the middle of the desert might be the most unlikely thus far.

  The man nodded to Hayden’s question and with his index finger made a dot in the dirt.

  Hayden looked up at the man. He was smiling. He was missing teeth. Hayden looked back to the ground and added his own dot.

  The stranger added a third dot.

  Hayden added a curved line.

  The stranger laughed out loud. He pulled his knees to his chest, took a deep breath, and began talking. The words were foreign to Hayden, but the tone was confident, warm, wise. The best kind of radio voice. The kind of voice that you could believe even if you had no idea what it was saying. The man kept talking, pointing out stars, or nearby shrubs, chuckling, then whispering, then nearly yelling. Hayden listened intently, nodding along, laughing when the man laughed, saying si every now and then in hopes that the man was speaking Spanish.

  Hayden was relaxed, calm. He leaned back and watched the rising red moon as the man continued. He was sure the man was telling a story of some kind. A good story. One with a fast plot and lots of action and romance. He closed his eyes and tried to follow the narrative. Someone losing a lover, having to walk and search. Fighting villains. But finding the lover, embracing. Singing together.

  Hayden lost the story after that. The man spoke quietly now. Tone upon tone upon tone. Like a nursery song his mother had whispered. Had his mother ever whispered a song to him? But it was like that. Some old soul-memory.

  A new story rolled into the old like a dream. Hayden could see the images in his mind’s eye. There was a child now. She had brown hair and eyes that Hayden knew. She was happy. Always singing. She runs, with friends,
across a sandy yard. She’s laughing. She runs up the steps to her classroom, she’s tripping, Hayden cannot stop her falling. She falls on the steps of her school, hitting her face. Her mouth is full of blood. She cries and he runs and he cradles her, blood staining his shirt. He holds her and rocks her, and her cries slow and quiet. She is not heavy. She is no burden. He could carry her down the highway, across rivers. She yawns. He rocks her. She sleeps. Her small hand curled on his chest.

  Someone near is still speaking, still tones with no words he knows. Hayden hums along, hums to the sleeping child in his arms. One word hiding among the tones: “Hay-din. Hay-din.”

  Hayden smiled.

  “Hay-din. Oh, Hay-din.”

  Hayden opened his eyes to the rose-colored night. The bearded man was standing a few feet away and beside him stood a tall, pale-blue man with a sad, gaping face.

  “An angel,” Hayden said.

  Her daughter’s hair

  WITHIN AN HOUR of the moon’s rising, Rica had stretched out beside Milton on the rocky desert ground. She closed her eyes, watching the clouds below the stars. The wind, stronger now, pushing and full of scents. Her first dreams were of sailing.

  A small white boat on a blue sea. Wind pushing the white sail outward and forward. She sits at the helm, a newborn in her arms. Gurgles and bright eyes. Then there are trees and a forest floor of leaves and a child crawling. Fat legs and arms pushing down the soft earth. Rica hears herself laugh. Now she’s home in Austin, walking in the early evening and singing her daughter to sleep. Brother John, where are you sleeping? And the child’s sleepy eyes look past her face to the new night sky. What’s that, mama? Rica looks and sees the moon. Now the child is older with a doll she pretends to breast-feed and a block of wood she uses to telephone Rica from the next room. Rica is cooking for her daughter, the steam rising to her face; she is searching for tastes the child will love. Swimming in Deep Eddy, cold and clear. Climbing out. Rica and her five-year-old daughter drying in the summer sun. She is six and has broken a tooth on the steps at school. Rica holds her for an hour, waiting for a doctor. Shhhh. In a bath now, Rica washes her daughter’s hair. She smells her daughter. Her hair, strong and dark, like Rica’s. Rica feels her daughter’s scalp, rubbing the shampoo into the roots, her daughter’s head bobbing along. Her daughter pushing the islands of bubbles across the surface of the bath water, singing. Rica pours water from a cup over her daughter’s hair, careful to keep soap from her eyes. The hair shines. The skin shines. The child smells soapy, clean. The child looks up to Rica. Mommy. None of this will ever happen.

  Diluted . . . eternal

  MILTON WOKE IN the dark of night. Beside him Rica was tossing, touching her belly, and making sad moans. He lay on his side and watched her, wondering where she walked, what she was seeing. On another day he might have woken her, but on this last night it seemed dreams, even nightmares, were too valuable to shatter.

  Then she froze. So did the air. Nothing moved. Milton sat up. Sitting across the unmoving remains of the fire sat his father, tall and calm. Milton was not surprised.

  “Hi, Dad.”

  “You’ve aged,” his father said. He poked at the fire with a long cedar branch.

  “Happens to the best of us.” Milton rubbed his cold knuckles. “You told me you got a lot wrong. About your death.”

  “I did. Got some right, too. But plenty wrong.”

  “What parts?”

  He looked up at Milton, his dark-rimmed glasses catching the shine of the coals. “When you think about an infinite number of yourself, how does it make you feel?”

  “Diluted.”

  “Bingo! Me too. And I liked it. It was a comfort to think that the existence of every possible possibility made a single possibility trivial.” He rubbed the X on his forehead. “But you see, by the same math a single electron’s spin creates worlds!” He flickered in the glow.

  “Milton, I was a basketball floating in the ocean. I thought the water’s surface was all there was. So I believed I was the shape of a plate, unaware of 99 percent of my actual being.”

  “And now?”

  “All those worlds I told you about? All those separate realities? Separate yous? They’re not separate. You are composed of countless yous spread across countless realities. You are not one them. You are all of them. You are not diluted. You’re eternal.” His father took his glasses off and began cleaning them with the corner of his shirt. “And you are nothing at all.”

  “How do I save my daughter?”

  “Infinite worlds, like infinite pages of a book. We are not the words. We are the ideas that pop to life when the words are read aloud. That’s the poetry of it.”

  “How do I save my daughter?”

  “I hate poetry. Always have. Why don’t you come with me? Check out of all this crap.”

  “Dad, how do I save my baby?”

  His father placed the glasses back on his face and met Milton’s eyes. “It could be, may very well be, that your baby is the reason for all of this.”

  “The end of the world?”

  “The world.”

  Milton felt a touch on his hand. He looked to see a young child sitting beside him. She had brown hair the color of morning tea and eyes brighter than the coals before them. Her small hand wrapped around two of his fingers.

  “Hello,” Milton said. “Look how much you’ve grown.”

  She smiled.

  “What do I do?” he asked her.

  She raised her arm and pointed west where the mystery lights danced on the edge of the sky.

  Right

  ZARATHUSTRA, FOUNDER OF Zoroastrianism, teaches that in the last days, the God of light, Ahura Mazda, will defeat the powers of darkness. He will then cleanse the world with liquid metal and holy fire. Each soul will be judged. The righteous will be welcomed into paradise. The sinners will endure three days of punishment, and then also be welcomed into paradise. He’s right.

  The Mayan people believe the world will conclude its fifth cycle and end in fire on December 21, 2012. They are right.

  Norse mythology describes an end times battle of the Norse gods that covers the world in mayhem and fire and concludes with all the lands of Earth sinking into the oceans, killing off the onlooking humans. Right again.

  Hilary of Poitiers believes the world ends in 365 CE. Correct.

  Islam teaches “the Beast” will emerge from an earthquake on Mount Safa in Makkah. He will speak to the people, separating believers and nonbelievers. A plague and fire will scour the earth. Right.

  Hindus believe the world has been created and destroyed countless times. And will be created and destroyed countless times to come. So very true.

  On Pentecost of 1000 CE, the long-dead body of the emperor Charlemagne is exhumed. It is understood that as the Apocalypse rages the emperor will rise and battle the Antichrist. He does.

  After a long examination of the movements of the planets, John of Toledo concludes the world ends in 1186. Right again.

  Pope Innocent III adds 666 to the year he understands Islam to have been founded and announces the world will end in 1284. Yes.

  In the late 1660s thousands of Russia’s Old Believers burn themselves and their children alive to avoid the coming Apocalypse. Perfect.

  Sir Isaac Newton makes a detailed study of the Christian and Jewish scriptures and determines that the world ends in 2060. Also right.

  Charles Wesley, the founder of Methodism, predicts the end to arrive in 1794. Souls will be separated by Jesus. Goats and sheep. Saved and unsaved. Blessed and burned. Yep.

  Pastor Charles Taze Russell predicts Armageddon will rage and God will wipe out all non-Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1914. Then 1915. And again in 1918. Right on all three accounts.

  William Miller and tens of thousands of Americans wait for the world to end on March 21, 1843. They are not disappointed.

  Meteorologist Albert Porta concludes that an alignment of six planets will cause an enormous magnetic current and the Earth wi
ll explode in 1919. It’s fantastic.

  Harold Camping convinces thousands that Christ will return and the world will meet final Judgment on May 21, 2011. Those who accept the gift of salvation by way of the cross of Christ will be saved. Others must face the wrath of a just God for all eternity. He’s right.

  Be careful what you believe. You’re right.

  Death and change

  CLICK AND HIS followers were not walking.

  Hours after the new star had burned in the low horizon, the crab wandered from the country road they were traveling and crawled into a stony field. He paused for a moment, scratching at the pebbles. Then using his two front claws, covered himself with soil and stone.

  The followers circled and stared.

  Click pulled himself into his dark shell home. He felt pressure, a swelling within his being as if every organ were trying to escape. The pressure built, squeezing Click until he could not move, could not think. Like a scream growing louder and louder, beyond what you believed you could endure.

  Surely this was death. He could not survive this.

  Finally, he heard his body crack. The seams burst. It was release and a new pain. All he wanted was to push his body from him. From him? What was him if not his body?

  Click’s claws twitched. His body felt alien, the tight embrace of an unwelcome stranger. He pushed his skin away, wriggling free into a soft newness. From a vantage point he could not understand, he saw his body—his claws, his legs, his eyes—slowly creep away from him.

  The followers leaned close, studying the crab by the red glow of the moon. For over an hour he had remained buried. But now the soil shifted.

  “My God,” someone gasped.