Some say the end is near.
Some say we'll see Armageddon soon.
I certainly hope we will.
I sure could use a vacation from this
Bullshit three ring
Some say we'll see Armageddon soon.
I certainly hope we will.
I sure could use a vacation from this
Bullshit three ring
Circus sideshow of
Freaks
- “Aenima” by Tool
I turned the radio off and pulled the car over. It was raining hard, the static fall of drops pounding on leaves. Trees all around me.
Pulling up the collar of my coat, I walked around to the trunk. I drew my gun and opened the lid.
He stared up at me in horror. Hands cuffed behind him. The garbage bags bulged with the remains of his marriage. His life. His dreams and ambitions.
His wife.
Her head had fallen out, lifeless eyes staring in his. Her lower jaw missing. Tongue hanging limp.
Aiming my gun, I ordered him out and grabbed the shovel.
“I've got a terrible habit of finding random shit on the internet. A common theme recently is the end of the world. Predictions, both current and past, seem attracted to me like fish to bait, just waiting for me to reel it in and absorb its pessimistic promises. Like a shadow, always so near.”
“What is our obsession here? Why do we need to feel like everything around us has an expiration date?”
“Why do we want it to end?”
“The most recent and familiar event involves a certain Mr. Harold Camping. He originally predicted that the biblical kickoff known as The Rapture would begin on September 6, 1994. When that faithful day came and went, he quickly revised his calculations and set the timer instead on September 29, October the 2nd and again on March 31st, all for the year 1995. He would again warn of the end on May 21, 2011 before adjusting his claims for October 21 of the same year.”
“It's 2012 and we're still here.”
We walked for no more than ten minutes. He stumbled, tripping on roots and fallen birch. His bare knees scratched and torn. He dragged the bags along, beaten. Disheartened. I followed, the rain a cleansing shower. Cleansing from what, I don't know.
We reached our destination. The clearing was clean of grass. Nothing but dirt turned into mud.
I removed the cuffs and forced the shovel on him.
With a sob, he began to dig.
“Chuck Smith, founder of the Calvary Chapel, predicted that the world would end in the year 1981. That's the year I was born. Scottish clergyman John Cumming claimed we were fucked by 1862. January 1st of 1863 was when Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. In the year 1666, the number of the beast brought about fears of the Apocalypse. In 1284, Pope Innocent III declared the end was due, for it was 666 years since the rise of Islam. The Statute of Rhuddlan happened that year, incorporating Wales into England, and life continued.”
“The list goes on and on.”
“It seems to me that since mankind has first been able to contemplate the concept of time, space and death, we've been looking for a simple answer to when our stretch will end. Are we so unhappy as a species that we feel the need to check our timer consistently, judging repeatedly when it is we will stop? When we'll follow in the footsteps of so many creatures before us?”
“Why the fuck do we want things to end so badly?”
The hole was deep enough.
No one ever came here. There, in the middle of nowhere. A hole in the forest, far from human breath. Human sweat and human tears. A sanctuary against mankind, hiding in the heart of nature, the brain of wilderness.
When he crawled out of the hole, I let him know.
I wanted to keep the garbage bags.
He tore them open.
“Is it our own insecurities with death, or with society, that we feel the need to hope for a stop? Do we feel that, as a social and expanding parasite, we are off the right track and just looking for an easy way back? An undo button to wipe the slate clean. To give mankind a second chance. The Second Coming a rebirth. A global nuclear catastrophe our free exchange to a better beginning.”
“Maybe we don't want it to end, per say. We just can't think of a better way to start things anew.”
“Perhaps our obsessions with Armageddon is a spiritual reset button. In centuries since we first built the wheel, man has improved and then looked back with regret. We had wars that wiped out nations. Diseases that strangled our numbers. Religious mistakes that regressed our advances to complete and utter omnipotence. It could very well be that we simply want a second chance. We need to cleanse everything back to the way it was.”
Each piece of her was a part of his soul. His memory. Every choking sob that proceeded a part of his wife lost in the drowning shower. His eyes red with sorrow. His muscles weak with fatigue.
I lit a smoke and watched, leaning on a tree.
He took his time with her legs. Her arms. Her hands. He stared at each, remembering her. Remembering her as she was.
He closed his eyes in agony and finally lowered her head in. When he tried to close her vacant stare and failed, he was ready to grab the shovel and end the torture.
In the shelter of leaves above, I exhaled smoke.
“Today, we continue looking for the clock, that doomsday timer counting out our minutes. Our seconds. Why, with our families, careers and material distractions, do we find time to even think it could all end? We want a zombie uprising. We want the threat of nuclear war. We want our children to step out of the fallout chambers and look upon a new and alien world. Why?”
“Are we so desperately trapped in our conventional lives that we see it as a way out? We wouldn't have to go endure our dreaded 9 to 5 on Monday if the dead suddenly crawled out of the ground and started eating our neighbours. The divorce would mean little if a comet fell from the sky, landing in Times Square. Our grades will disappoint no one if Jesus rose a second time and the Four Horsemen rode on nightmares and fears.”
“I think we're just a lazy species regretful of our past and looking for a celestial suicide. The collective equivalent of slashed wrists and bloody bathtubs. The noose around our universal necks. Goodbye cruel world. Better luck next time.”
All that remained of her was a mound of dirt. An earthen tribute to tragedy. His dead wife. His lost love. Her smile imprinted on his mind. Her jawless grin.
Without turning to me, he stabbed the shovel down.
He began to dig anew beside her.
“Maybe I'm wrong, though. Maybe we are just scared little monkeys, spinning through space on a small rock, wondering when we'll crash. Holding each other and staring at the stars, waiting for them to grow until the light scorches away our lives. The fear of the end, the unmovable chain we have no luck affecting. Deflecting. Changing. Inevitability is our greatest horror. The sense of helplessness when the time comes and we have no choice but to join hands, bend over and kiss our asses goodbye.”
“Is it a fear of the end then, or the worry that despite all our accomplishments, we will fail to prevent our doom? Our anxieties reflect our weaknesses against death. We can't prevent our own conclusion. We therefore feel terrified of perishing globally.”
“Or perhaps we just don't want to die alone. The end times would see families, sitting at dining tables. In the comforts of each other. The sky lights up but they are together. Forever. We don't want to face our fears alone.”
He stood above his grave, staring at the emptiness of it. His flesh soaked with rain. Hair black, clinging to his skull. Eyes heavy.
Breathlessly he turned to me. To the barrel aimed at his face. His heart already dead and soon his body would follow.
“It has been predicted by Rashad Khalifa's research of the Qur’an Code that the world ends in 2280. Issac Newton said it would happen 2060. The Mayan calender ends this year.”
“We will go on. Clinging to each other. Reading signs where we think they are. Just waiting for that moment to come.”
“And in the end, it will. Each one of us has a clock above their head, ticking away. The tolling bells of death itself. Our own apocalypse. The end of everything we know.”
“The day I die. You die. Our eulogy.”
I grinned and pulled the trigger. The explosion was lost in the storm.
“We just don't want to go out alone.”
Midnight, Sunday on the 15th day of January, 2012.
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