The End of the World

I was standing outside my classroom working out the logistics of a drug deal with a chubby, dark-haired acquaintance of mine I'd been trying to find for some time; in this dream I was fifteen and back in school. Acquaintances of mine had all pitched in enough with me to score a bag, so considering how others’ money and expectations were riding on the successful completion of this transaction and how long it had already been taking I was impatient to get it over with. Just come over to her house near the Tigard Fred Meyer after school she said, she'd already bought the weed earlier; the directions she gave me were simple enough, I didn’t feel a need to write them down. That taken care of, I said I’d see her later and entered the classroom — I think it was a biology or chemistry class — to take a test. The room was medium-sized and lit feebly by a single yellow bulb hanging from the ceiling, reluctantly illuminating walls the color of tobacco-stained teeth. I breezed through the test with ease, having had enough time to triple-check my answers, after which I handed both the written exam and a cassette I recorded earlier to my instructor, whose wild sylvan disarray of a coif and the matching brown slacks and sweater reminded me of pictures of Albert Einstein, only there was no spark of life or brilliance to this inert, melancholic figure. Just as I started getting my things together to leave I panicked, thinking for some inexplicable reason that I’d forgotten the cassette; I rushed past my instructor, who was still standing in front of the rows of rapidly emptying desks, a vacuous expression on his face, to search the desk I knew he kept our submissions in. I was relieved to see that I had indeed just lost my mind and it was right there on top of my test, along with thirty-one dollars. That was exactly how much bus fare was, and I looked sidelong at the instructor to see if he’d woken out of his trance, having in mind to steal the money so I could use my fare for something else, though as yet no clear image of a specific desire had formed. Never mind; I closed the drawer, leaving the money behind as I walked away, realizing my instructor could easily misplace my exam or fail it if he suspected I’d stolen from him.

By the time I arrived at the designated Fred Meyer it was already completely dark out, one of those late November evenings I always like; not one of the vicious, chilly sideways deluges you have to hold onto your hat in, but one of the pleasantly cool — mercury just north of brisk — nights speckled with intermittent patches of light rain tossed casually on mild breezes. It was wet enough to soften the sounds and smells of the world, cool enough for me to wear my favorite heavy flannel. As I crossed the parking lot I suddenly stopped short in my second panic attack of the day: I'd completely forgotten the directions to my ad hoc friend-cum-dealer's house! Not only that, but I didn't have change for the pay phone and hadn’t even bothered to write down her number; did she even have a phone? Jesus Christ! I snarled at myself in contempt as I jerked back into brisk motion towards the store, waves of anger resonating at high frequency through my body and evaporating into steam off my clothing. I paced back and forth near the store entrance, wracking my brains trying to remember just one or two of the directions, knowing that once my feet started marching in the right direction my internal pigeon will faithfully guide me the rest of the way to my destination. No dice; my mind felt like gelatin that had started to set, squeezing out even the most elementary thought was like trying to suck molten glass up a ten-foot metal straw. Once my fury had subsided and I accepted the fact that I wasn’t getting any drugs tonight, I stood with my hands in my pocket staring blankly at the butt cans lurking in the corners of the entryway, halfheartedly hoping beyond reason that a dry cigarette would materialize out of those fetid, tar-colored pools. Shaking my head to wrest myself out of my imbecilic reverie, I slowly walked back to the bus stop; best just to give up on the already-failed endeavor and catch the next bus home before my transfer ran out of time and forced me to continue the journey by foot, an hours-long prospect that filled me with no joy and a not a little dread. Besides, I though pursing my lips downward, my acquaintances can deal with disappointment, just as I can deal with their histrionics. Don’t we all do that stuff all the time, anyway?

I must have loitered at Fred Meyer longer than I realized, because the bus arrived just a few minutes after I arrived at the stop. During the half-hour trip home I reflected on the abysmal state of the world I lived in, how civilization had declined so far the half of the dry part of the globe that was still inhabitable to some degree was enmired in a morass of desperation, terror, violence, and despair. We weren't taught much history in school, in fact it was actively encouraged to skirt the subject: school was a half-hearted attempt to keep in motion the creaking wheels of an ancient education, now watered down to reading, writing, arithmetic, and a smattering of business- and agriculture-related subjects. Perhaps it was hoped ignorance could be used to buttress the sagging bulwarks of our species’ morale? Being inquisitive and stubborn, I wasn’t about to go along with that particular program and so did my own research and came up with a reasonably complete picture of what happened. The day of reckoning had been a long time coming for us, the brilliant masters of the earth who couldn’t seem to apply rational cooperative self-interest to our use of the world’s once resources or in living with together; wars fought with terrifying weapons blistered and scarred vast swathes of the surface, so much poison was poured onto the land and into the air and seas that much of the world was a noxiously lethal cesspool, rising temperatures and melting ice caps turned a benign planet into a ball of raging storms of water and ice and fire and dirt. Even the gene pool was scorched and warped: not only had we exterminated millions of plant and animal species, but we in turn have become mostly sterile — less than one birth for every twenty people, with an average life expectancy down to the late twenties, if the more optimistic estimations are anything to go by. Worst of all was the plague that struck out of nowhere, transforming billions of living human beings into the walking dead; or so we called them, but they weren't the zombies from the ancient flat-screen films, but were eerily similar in personality and nearly as intelligent as they were when they were alive, though over years they gradually decayed into mindlessly violent ghouls. Needless to say, these horrors only fanned the flames of war that had already engulfed our dying world, but it was a fool's campaign because the ghouls were smart enough to fight back and with every fallen opponent their ranks swelled by one. Eventually we learned, and now the living and the undead live together in peace for the most part, an uneasy one here in the western hemisphere and revered in the much of Confucian Maoist Asia. To our credit, despite American tendency towards boorishness we gave the ghouls the same constitutional privileges and protections we enjoy, though how much use that unwieldy tome full of contradictions and loopholes is against prejudice is questionable. Not that it mattered, I thought grimly as I stepped down into the small lake that was my stop for three months out of the year: there won’t be a living soul left in a hundred years. Sure, rumors flew about research labs working on a cure for the disease and our infertility, but whatever remained of advanced medical science was dispersed in myriad small drug manufacturing labs. I was living in the End of the World.

I walked up the river of mud our driveway always became during this time of year to find a group of kids on my front lawn, my little brother and his friends were gathered around a very bright young ghoul their age. Despite being wet and it still raining I decided to hang around for a little to see what they were up to; they were discussing their favorite subject, perhaps a favorite subject of pre-teens since the dawn of human history, which was the mystery of sex and birth. The ghoul was asking them all the questions, really, but none of her living peers knew any more about the matter than she did and so the conversation degenerated into outlandish conjecture and coarse humor. My curiosity satisfied I decided to go inside to change out of my wet clothing and relax. On my way down the stairs to my basement room I was met with the spectacle of another ghoul, this one a powerful heavyset man who was almost an idiot, battling one of the monsters that roamed the world, another legacy of our ancestors misguided application of their advanced sciences. In the wake of the relative peace that had descended on the world in the past few decades their numbers had been growing, which terrified us remnants because we long thought that they had been created sterile, ironic considering that their creators now are. He, who was in fact my grandfather, was skewering a large tentacle that had forced its way into the house through the garage set into the hillside with a makeshift spear fashioned from a fireplace poker lashed to a metal pole; I knew immediately it was the dreaded kraken, named after mythical sea monsters that resembled the recently become mythical giant ocean squid. His wife, another ghoul but this one a disembodied and rotting head perched on a thick mass of thin tentacles, was screaming hysterically about how we were all doomed. I knew I lacked the strength to engage in such combat, and honestly the selfish part of me figured that the undead were more fitting disposable front line troopers anyway, so I turned instead to my grandmother and tried as best as I could to console her by cradling her head in my arms.

After a few minutes of unsuccessfully trying to calm grandma's hysteria and realizing there would be no peace for me to have in my room for the better part of the evening I climbed back upstairs to grab a bite to eat and see if the TV had anything more entertaining than static to offer, the pangs of hunger beginning to settle desultorily in my stomach. On my way to the kitchen I glanced out the living room picture windows to see the undead girl bent over an oak barrel used as a flower pot, her pants down around her ankles and legs spread out while the living children excitedly stuck their fingers in her ass and vagina, pulling them in and out in a crude parody of the sex act, undoubtedly for her education and their morbid titillation. At one point she seemed to groan and a torrent of some kind of watery fluid gushed out of her ass onto the just withdrawn fingers of my leering little brother, whom I despised. Having been sufficiently repulsed and saddened by the scene to lose my appetite I instead headed out the back door to join my sister, who was desultorily swinging in the bamboo cage that was her playpen. She was a year younger than me, blond, and a perfect gothic Lolita counterpart to Alice Liddell of Through the Looking Glass renown. I had the deepest sympathy for her, for like her bright and colorful alternate self she was caught in a vicious and maddening current, only through a macabre negative of that other impossible world; we all were, but she seemed more powerless than anyone else I knew, and more innocent if such a thing existed or ever did. I always enjoyed reading about Alice's adventures in Wonderland, though much of it was vexingly incomprehensible to me. We talked quietly for a bit — she on the swing and I sitting a few feet in front of her on a wood chair — about things I don't remember. She was confined to that cage for her protection, though against what and how the cage protected her I didn't know and it seemed absurd and unjust, since none of the rest of us were. She was my only real friend in the whole world, and I loved her dearly.