monday muddlings: the world’s last night

Per usual, though today it is a bit late, I bring you some fiction for the Monday. I will admit and warn you now that this contains violent content that I do not normally feature in my writing. As with all stories, this had its own life. I collared it in a few places, especially with regard to the profanity, which would have suited the story well, I think. But I pulled that impulse back. This is … odd. I admit that. But it also wouldn’t leave me alone until I wrote it out. So I have now written a story about the end of the world. I suppose this means I’ve entered into some new genre of writing. I still don’t think I’ll end up in a Christian bookstore any time soon.

“The World’s Last Night”

Camilla dangled her hand over the side of the sofa, dragging her fingers across the sharp coarseness of the concrete top of their building’s roof. She wanted them to be cut against the jagged rocks. She wanted to bleed.

The sofa smelled of mold. They had spent too much on the outdoor furniture and it had rarely been used. At one time, looking out on the endless expanse of skyscrapers and the artificial stars of city lights had seemed romantic. It didn’t matter much now, at the end of the world.

When Camilla had studied anthropology for her Ph.D., which she would now never earn, she had been fascinated by ritual sacrifice, especially those used to prevent the end of the world.

It was magical thinking. A sense that cause and effect was the most elementary and fundamental approach to handling a god. If the virgin were sacrificed, the rain would come. Often enough, coincidence provided that it was proven to be true. Or was it coincidence? Perhaps that was the great cosmic joke.

What was there left to sacrifice now?

Juliette Gréco played on the phonograph, which was a neo-geometric design that didn’t actually play records, but streamed the languid voice from the music library on the computer in the penthouse. They had bought it three days ago. It had seemed ridiculous, to pay for it, but the stores were still accepting money, so they paid. They paid and they now reclined on the roof and listened to the melancholy narrative of a France in the late twentieth century, when the world was supposed to end in a great and spontaneous cry of delight, not by being struck by some great unknown, which had suddenly appeared in the cosmos.

The air was still, with a convicting heaviness to it, warm for the season, but to be expected under the circumstances. There were two lights set in the sky. The lesser light was the full and luminous moon. The greater light was ever-increasing in brightness and had been since Sunday.

That was a week ago. Now it was so close, so bright, that Camilla thought she could reach out her hand and touch it. It was the most horrible kind of beautiful.

“It won’t be long now.” Adam sat in the chair beside the sofa. He drained his vodka stinger, raised the crystal glass back, and hurled it over the side of the building. He didn’t watch it fall, but kept his eyes on the greater light, which already seemed closer than the last time he had looked.

Camilla pushed herself up from her reclining position on the sofa, drawing her legs up to herself. “You shouldn’t do that.” She was annoyed.

“It doesn’t make a difference.”

“It could hit someone. We’re so high up, Adam. It could hurt them.”

Adam laughed darkly. “They’re going to get hit regardless. And since when do you care?” He stood up and walked over to the bar, pouring some crème de menthe into another glass and then splashing in enough vodka that it nearly spilled over the brim. He nursed it close to him as he walked back to the chair, sitting down and looking at the greater light again.

It was even closer now. He felt warmer.

Camilla turned her face from the light and looked at Adam. She fumbled in the pocket of her white dressing gown, fishing out a lighter, a cigarette. She lit it, taking a long drag before she exhaled shallowly. “All her songs are sad,” she gestured to the phonograph, “Even the happy ones.” Camilla flicked her ash onto the floor. “I haven’t stopped caring about things. You just stopped noticing.” She let out a violent cough, choking on the smoke.

He drew his eyes from the light and looked at her sternly. “You’re smoking.”

She took another drag. “I’m smoking.” She repeated it defiantly.

Adam raised his glass and flooded his mouth with the purging burn. He swallowed. “So you don’t care anymore, Camilla. You don’t care at all.”

What was there left to sacrifice?

“You think of me as a thing, Adam, a thing to be looked after. I made a choice once to try and end things and you wouldn’t let me. You love suffering too much. You’re in love with the pain of having your existence bound to mine so you couldn’t just let me go.”

Another drag on the cigarette as she rolled her eyes. “It was supposed to be so easy. I was trying to set you free but you just didn’t want to lose your excuse.” She worried her lower lip, blinked several times, and then laughed. “With me, you get to sleep with your students and to drink until you can’t see. If you didn’t have me…” she trailed off, studying the cigarette in her hand before placing it back in her mouth. “Without me, you have no reason to act how you act. Everyone would see right through the clever little lie that your wife drove you to all of it and they would realize like I did in our first year of marriage just how incredibly sad you are.”

The hatred of her eyes danced across Adam’s cheek. “You’re such a sad, pathetic man.”

Adam didn’t look at her, but kept his eyes on the greater light. They had been married for four years. It all seemed so pointless now.

Camilla shook her head in indignant frustration when she didn’t get a response, letting out a vengeful sigh. She too looked back to the greater light. She suddenly wanted to rise from the sofa and run as fast as she could toward it, leap into time and space and fall into it.

There was something important about greeting it instead of simply waiting. What was there even left to sacrifice?

She coughed from the smoke once more. “Besides,” she said, addressing the light, “there’s nothing left to care for.” Camilla took a deep draw of the cigarette, followed by more coughing. She flicked the ash onto the floor.

“Yes.”

Camilla fingered the pearls around her neck. It was getting warmer. She could no longer remember why she had worn the pearls in the first place. It seemed silly. She remembered how when she was a little girl she would put on her mother’s pearls and sit in the conservatory for hours pretending to be a lady, lounging in the sun reading Edith Wharton and sipping a virgin Tom Collins, which was essentially lemonade and soda water. She had spoken to her mother earlier over the phone. They talked about grocery shopping and what the weather was like. It was nice, but Camilla couldn’t remember much of what else they discussed. She imagined she had said something sentimental at the end. She could even imagine that she at some point cried. But that could have just been her imagining.

“None of it matters.” She muttered it into her lap.

“Yes.” Adam repeated.

“And that’s why I’m smoking,” her eyes moved from the greater light to her husband. She couldn’t see him through the darkness left over by the brightness still lingering in her vision. “I’m smoking because it doesn’t matter anymore.”

“If that doesn’t matter,” he finished off his glass and threw it over the side of the building as he had the first, “Than neither should this.”

Camilla rolled her eyes. “Adam, it doesn’t matter because there is nothing to be concerned about now. It was taken care of.”

He moved his eyes from the greater light and looked at her, though he saw her as a wash of darkness. “What does that mean?”

Her eyes were on the greater light. “I went to the doctor and took care of it. There’s nothing to care about now.” She raised the cigarette to her lips, pulled as much smoke as she could into her lungs, then coughed loudly as she exhaled.

The side table was overturned when he rose in rage from the chair. He had his hand around her throat and pushed her back against the sofa. She fixed her eyes on him, laughter dancing in them. Her hands did not move or waver, but rested gently at her side, dangling the cigarette, then letting it fall to the concrete. The smile on her lips taunted him as her eyes began to roll back into her head. With an expletive he released her, throwing her back against the sofa and screaming into the illumined night.

Her hands went to her neck and she coughed fiercely, catching her breath.

He retreated several yards from her, covering his face with his hands and sobbing.

She let her hands move down from her neck, back to her lap. Her neck bore signs of bruising.

“When?” he demanded, through the sobs. “When did you go?”

She pulled another cigarette from her dressing gown and lit it. “Does that even matter?” Camilla looked at him with a sense of bewildered fascination.

“It matters,” he hissed, gaining control as anger replaced grief.

A slow drag, a violent cough. “Three weeks ago.”

He screamed an expletive, which ruptured the stability of the world. “What did you do, Camilla? What have you done?”

She was on her feet, a crazed look in her eye, coming toward him. “What have I done? I spared our child this end, Adam. I saved our child.”

Disbelief met her gaze. “We didn’t even know about this until seven days ago. We knew nothing,” he screamed, throwing his hand wildly toward the greater light, “about this until seven days ago!”

“I saved him from evil.” Camilla whispered, her eyes frantic. What was there left to sacrifice? “I saved him from the evil of the world. There is always evil, Adam, so long as we’re here. Evil that must be purged. God will purge it all from the earth. He is purging it all from—”

He slapped her, hard.

There was a moment where the silence between them seemed as great as the silence that would follow the destruction of the world.

Deep, bitter laughter tore through the fabric of the quiet. Camilla spat blood onto the ground and brought her eyes back to face him. “‘Such as in the days of Noah.’”

“Don’t give me that. You and your alleged research. Psychobabble and feminist trapeze acts of logic.” He turned from her, walking toward the ledge of the roof, fixing his eyes on the greater light. “I’ve heard enough of it over the years. Evil and mystery cults. How your mother named you Camilla because she knew you’d turn out to be a handmaiden of the dark arts. It’s the same senselessness that drove you to try and kill yourself the first time.” He laughed into the false night. “And I should have let you do it! But now, now I suppose it doesn’t matter anymore, does it? Now we’re all doomed, and it doesn’t matter if you killed our unborn child or if you’re just a crazy, cold, narcissistic harpy. It all ends tonight.”

When the painful scream that was caressed by a haunting note of the erotic erupted from Camilla behind him, Adam whirled. He could not see her at first. The brightness of the greater light had overwhelmed his senses. It was so close he could feel it licking his neck. He blinked repeatedly. Finally he saw that she had taken the cigarette and had driven it into her left forearm. Rushing forward, he pulled the cigarette from her and saw the deep burn left in her flesh. He threw the cigarette on the ground.

“What were you thinking?” he demanded, shaking her.

In the struggle, her dressing gown had slipped slightly, exposing some of her flesh. What was there left to sacrifice? The music seemed to be skipping, which was impossible. But wasn’t impossible now?

“I feel, Adam.” She breathed deeply and pushed herself back from him. “See how I feel? Is this what you wanted from me for all these years? Do you see me now?”

His eyes were wide. Adam stepped back from her, shaking slightly. “I see you for what you are, Camilla.” He turned from her, looking into the brightness of the greater light. “I finally see you for what you are.”

He heard her scrape a finger against the cement of the roof. He considered turning, but then he felt the burn to the back of his neck. It was at once exhilarating and excruciating. Adam whirled in time to see Camilla withdraw the cigarette, but only to come at him once more, driving it into his right eye. A violent scream of anguish erupted from him as it was driven in. Adam stepped back to try and get away from her, but she calmly followed his every move, her eyes unwavering in their certainty, until there was nothing but the ledge behind him, and Adam was falling.

There was nothing left to sacrifice.

As he fell, Adam could see Camilla’s vacant eyes staring down at him, watching him tumble. He didn’t stop looking at her, until the brightness of the greater light was so overwhelming that he could no longer see her. Then there was the sudden rush of silence, of darkness, and an unspeakable sense of peace.

Camilla looked at the tiny specs of form and substance so far below from where she stood. One of them was the man she had been married to. She could no longer quite recall what his name was. She moved her eyes to the sky, looking to the lesser light. It occurred to her that she never had much considered the moon. It seemed a shame now.

Everything seemed a shame now.

Far below, a man was helping an elderly woman to her feet. A glass that had fallen off the building had struck her shoulder with such force that it had knocked her backward. The homeless man had thought to call the police, until he remembered that they would not be answering a call on this night.

“Bless you, my child.” The woman thanked him, collecting her habit, which had fallen off her head when she had struck the ground.

“Sister,” the man smelled of urine and desperation, “Is this the end?”

She looked into his face and knew him for a moment before she replied. “In the Scripture we are told that no man knows the hour, it shall happen in a flash.” A gentle smile played at the corner of her lips, “But we do know that when it happens, we are to be found in the way of faithfulness. I was on my way to the cathedral to pray. Shall you come with me? We can talk more there.”

Wordlessly they moved down the sidewalk, though when they passed the man who lay facedown in the concrete, his body crumpled like an old rag that had been tossed aside, the Sister calmly answered the question that lingered between them. “We shall pray for him, too.”

They did not speak again until they reached the small cathedral at the end of the street, where in the sanctuary they knelt together, and she prayed aloud in small fragments that he repeated.

Eternity passed between them in that space.

But atop the roof, still looking out into the sky, Camilla could no longer see the moon. The brightness of the greater light consumed the sky. The skyscrapers seemed to be on fire. This was the great purge. All the evil would be washed away and the earth laid raw and clean. That was the promise.

When she was a little girl she would wear pearls and pretend to be a lady. She would read Edith Wharton and drink virgin Tom Collins. She had spoken to her mother earlier that day.

Hadn’t her mother died nearly a decade earlier?

Maybe. But she could have imagined that.

Camilla lifted her hands into the air. The heat covered her like velum. She watched as smoke began to rise from her burning fingers. All that was solid melted into the air. It was the end of all things, and it was beautiful. Her mouth opened and she breathed the frigidity of her soul into the furnace of judgement and watched as it fell as ash before her eyes. The light blinded her; she could no longer see anything but the beauty of the coming destruction.

The music from the phonograph stopped.

A violent flash of lightening split the sky. With it came a most terrifying sound of the most enchanting music that had ever been heard. The earth itself had broken open in song and the sky was singing a response.

Camilla blinked.

She could no longer feel anything. The smoke rising from her fingers was frozen in the air. The greater light was now nothing but an immobile luminary.

It was the new light, the light that had split the sky, the light that had brought the music, which now encompassed the entirety of the sky and the earth, the very cosmos itself and somehow Camilla knew.

And Camilla could see by this light. She could see everything. She knew suddenly how all was to be well and all manner of things would be well. And in one terrible moment, as the music swelled and the tears she wanted to cry over its beauty refused to come forth from her eyes, she understood.

She knew as she was known, then darkness.

© 2011, Preston. All rights reserved.