End of the World

Novel is Complete

2007-09-14T19:48:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a LONG time since I started this project and I envisioned publishing each chapter as I finished it. But doing a weekly on-line Super Spy comic was just too much work last year. However, I DID finish the novel over the summer by going to a cabin and locking myself up in the middle of nowhere and just finishing the whole thing over a week of constant writing. Since then I have re-written the entire thing several times and I'm finally done with the 5th draft. I'll be posting it in the next few weeks.

End of the World: Chapter 6

2006-03-29T18:51:00.000-08:00

I remember watching the flooding of New Orleans and thinking how much better the looting was during the L.A. riots because of the more condensed nature of the retail shops in Los Angeles (not to mention the water damage and practicality of getting around in the flood waters).

End of the World: Chapter 5

2006-03-29T18:33:00.000-08:00

Lines 1-4
This is a rather overt reference to the author getting laid off and his comparing it to several clichés of what it feels like to suddenly be freed from the burden of a conventional job. A burden the author of the poem apparently had trouble ridding himself of. Documentation indicates that while his record of employment appears noteworthy, his actual work ethic on the job was somewhat lackluster. [See notes on napping in work closets, "crap naps", 2 hour lunches and a plethora of "sick" days.]

Interesting parallels may be drawn by the creative reader to his relationship with work and his relationship and reaction to the death of everyone on earth. Shock and tears would be perhaps the standard reaction to losing one’s job/end of the world. Not the author's excitement over future potential and brisk walks around the block.

Lines 5-8
Again a rather pedestrian description of being at home during the day and the “adventure” of walking around the block, apparently not one but four times. Again, not what would be considered a “normal” reaction and a small hint that the narrator is perhaps not all together reliable.

Line 11
One wonders how long the author had been carrying around this “clever” observation of a neighborhood while everyone is hard at work.

Line 12
Awkward construction of phrases here. Are we to equate the postman with the dog? Or are we to equate the dog with the narrator? Or the postman with the narrator? As a reader we are unsure but surely he is not equating himself with the unending and thankless toils of the reliable postman, this being an absurd comparison when considering the author’s history of a non-existent work ethic [see previous note on notes].

Line 13
In case the reader didn’t comprehend the concept of the author not having a job, he has thoughtfully obliged said thoughtless reader with yet another line to drive the point home.

Line 17-18
Another awkward word and phrase coupling. It is the end of the author’s world. Is this caused by family and friends? If you stopped reading here, of course that would be the implication. Thankfully the author has blessed us with fifty more lines to make his point.

Line 19-22
Halfway through the poem now the author has abruptly switched the time and frame of reference. Now we find ourselves in the “present” and this is where the author has probably started to feel rather smug and content with himself as the parallel of joblessness and the death of 95% of the world’s population comes into focus.

This passage also touches on the only reference to date of that author’s reaction to and fate of his friends and family. We are aware of his wife and child but what of his parents? His in-laws? The omission of references to his family is perhaps more evocative and revealing then the whole of what the author has chosen to include in his poem and writing. Is he hiding something about his family or is he simply blocking out memories and thoughts too painful to address?

Line 23-28
Again a reference to those dead and gone around the author. And again very vague. The only implication from this passage (that on the surface appears “pregnant with deeper meaning”) is once again a cavalier attitude towards death and loss by the reference to a neighborhood dog that used to irritate the author and is now gone. The implication here that the author feels perhaps happier or better off after the worldwide catastrophe. Callous to say the least.

Line 29-34
Here, it appears that through the process of writing perhaps the author is coming to grips with the enormity of the situation and tremendous amount of loss. A nice (if not trite) use of sensory words and images gives the reader hope that the last few couplets may perhaps show more depth and resonate with the reader….

Line 35-40
…but alas, no. The author has once again reverted to shallow form by likening the empty houses of the plague victims to one vast estate sale that is open simply for him and for his advantage. This is a disturbing passage in that it sheds light on the feeling that the reader has had all along, that despite the world-changing events the author has not been cured of his rampant and acute materialism. This character “revelation” is not surprising considering the authors infantile attitude towards death and misplaced sense of humor regarding catastrophe. [See Chapter 6 for an illustration of said conduct.]

Line 41-45
Another clumsy “literary” reference to the author’s childhood fascination with Sherlock Holmes. The subtext here might also include allusions to his father and his father’s fascination with the rules and practice of deduction through simple observation. The “chalk on the pant leg” is a reference to the obscure Holmes story “The Dancing Men” by Doyle.

Line 46-47
A disturbing juxtaposition of a fictional man’s murdered wife and the reality of a child’s art on a refrigerator. Not an altogether terrible compilation of images if not shocking for shocking’s sake. These lines give us a better picture of the author (and family?) activities after the plague. Investigating (i.e. looting) homes in the neighborhood and positing theories on the fate of the missing occupants. The clichéd image of a child’s art still hanging on a refrigerator door in a home where the occupants are in all probability dead…I find reluctantly (if unintentionally) poignant.

Line 48-50
The author apparently never had a good idea he wasn’t afraid to repeat, even if it appeared only 4 lines before. Again, a reference to Sherlock Holmes and powers of deduction based on observation. Do you get it? We’re rifling through dead people’s belongings and making deduction about them as people based on their possessions. Maybe one more Holmes reference will hammer the point home? More interesting here is what is left unsaid. What are they looking for in strangers’ homes?

Line 51-52
A search of Amazon.com (if the internet were still up and running) would probably reveal over 500 titles on “How to Talk to your Cat”. It however, doesn’t lessen the impact of one person owning twenty of these titles and living alone. A rare (and perhaps only) moment of human understanding in the entire poem. In two lines the mind begins to wander and wonder about the fate of the widower? Images of a lonely man sick in bed with no one to care for him (as the rest of the world dies) and his cat wondering what is going on. How many days would he last by himself? Until finally he lays dead, his cat still bringing a ratty toy mouse and bag of old catnip and laying them hopefully on the dead man’s chest in hopes that he will play.

Line 53-61
Nine lines that in all probability could be excised from the poem without losing anything. Although that could be said of nearly any nine lines in the poem. This section of nine lines however could operate successfully on it’s own as a diagram of a house as the occupants grow older. The house serves as a cross-section of the owner’s life. The toys serving as both a metaphor for the owners childhood as well as the twighlight years as grandchildren play. Moving from floor to floor serves as a visual and metaphorical timeline as we track the progression and deterioration of the occupants life and health. Starting with youth at the top of the house and working our way to the basement where the bed pan, wheel chair and crutches are found.

Nice imagery but completely out of place in the context of this poem supposedly about the “end of the world”.

Line 62-63
This implies that the author has handwritten this poem with the intention of only showing it to himself, his wife and his daughter (the audience of three). A simple and effective ending. If only he had ended the poem there.

Line 64-65
A reference to a form of publishing in which the author pays for the printing and distribution of his writing. The term “Vanity Press” is often considered derogatory but is often accurate in it’s description of work that can’t or won’t be published by a traditional publisher. One hopes that the implication here is that the author is aware of his abilities (and massive shortcomings) as a “wordsmith”.

Line 67
In a world where 5% of the population has survived this statement that the poet is the “greatest living author” could unfortunately be completely accurate.

End of the World: Chapter 4

2006-03-29T18:24:00.000-08:00

End of the World: Chapter 3

2006-03-17T15:36:00.000-08:00

So the “plague” as they started calling it on the radio started a little over a year ago. Right before Ella was born. It started out slow. It was bird flu here and mad cow there. We’re both a little fuzzy on the details since we’d stopped watching TV. By the time we realized how big it was it was really too late. There were too many different strains I guess of everything just happening to hit and run rampant at the same time. Everything was making the jump from animals to humans I guess. Science was never really my thing and most of the capable minds were dead before they could even start figuring out the super-cure.

That’s it. The plague came in the form of flu and what-not so it kept the world (or at least the U.S.) pretty clean. People would go to the hospital, get told that there wasn’t a cure and then die in a week or so. Eventually hospitals started getting filled to capacity and then after that, people started to just stop showing up at hospitals and they emptied. People ended up staying home with their families if there was any family left. Looting never really started because there so many were dying so fast that it wasn’t really even necessary. Hard way for us abandon our materialistic ways.

We didn’t really have more than a few weeks to worry about what would happen to us. I just remember a few days of looking at Sharlene and hoping I’d die first for all the obvious abandonment issues I was afraid of and then maybe thinking it would be more practical if I survived to fend off the world from Ella. Then wondering if Ella would make it. And then the religious cult visions of us all laying together in our matching black and white Nikes. All the typical thoughts I’m sure but nothing happened to us. Not one of my nightmare scenarios for-sure.

So then I started wondering…what saved us? Was it the 1920’s lead in our paint that we accidentally inhaled while stripping the woodwork in our house? Maybe it was our abnormally large intake of black tea? And then I started thinking maybe our blood holds the cure! If we could just reach enough people or something. Or not.

It’s funny. When we first moved into our St. Louis suburb house (Webster Groves) we asked about the previous owners. Only two. The second couple had lived their all there lives. Until…? The realtor didn’t say. The wife was still alive and in a home I guess. But then, even months after we’d moved in I’d be walking down the stairs to the basement and wondering where the husband had died. Heart attack and voiding his bowels on the stairs (suggested by the fresh paint when we moved in)? Lead poisoning from the paint chips by his work bench in the corner? Or maybe a stroke in bed and his wife waking up the next morning to the unusual sound of no snoring.

Then as we drove out of the city I imagined every one of those scenarios happening in the thousands of houses we passed. Only now it was flu-like symptoms. Gurgling throats and fluid in chests. Blood-productive coughs. Husbands, wives kids, dogs, cats, birds.
Sharlene takes a turn driving. We made it to 2pm. Nap time. Ella is finally asleep and I take my turn in the passenger seat and unwrap and wrap my throbbing wrist again. I wonder if there are any doctors still alive. I wonder if Bigfoot is alive. I wonder if my brother and his family are alive.

End of the World: Chapter 2

2006-03-17T15:34:00.000-08:00

Half an hour on the road and we were already making our first stop. A gas station just outside St. Louis. Yes, still in Missouri. The world ended a month ago and we’re just now venturing outside of our hometown. And yes, if you hadn’t guessed from the handwritten title of this “book” on the cover: the world is over. Well, the world is still here but as far as we can tell, everybody is dead. 95% was the last percentage we heard on the radio before the last radio station stopped broadcasting. What happened? Bird Flu, Mad Cow, Crazy Chicken, fill in the blank. All of the above.

We stopped watching the news after 9-11. Well, not exactly after 9-11 but probably a month afterwards. Right after 9-11 we watched the news non-stop. In the morning before work and then as soon as we got home until we fell asleep. Sharlene got sick of it before I did but I just couldn’t look away. But after that I just couldn’t stand to watch the news anymore. It was like a filter had been lifted off of my eyes. Now when I watched the news I realized what I was watching. A fatal car crash on Highway 44. A shooting in Soulard. A homeless man murdered downtown. All of it terrible, sure. It just wasn’t news to me anymore. People die every day. There’s a fatal car wreck every 15 seconds somewhere. But then I started wondering. What was news? The latest election? Sports? The weather? There wasn’t anything that mattered that the news was telling me that I couldn’t walk out my front door and get. The weather? Open the door and check it.

The real news started being walking in the evenings with Sharlene. Talking. Daydreaming about getting a movie deal and buying one of the huge houses we walked by. The real news started being our neighbors and our neighborhood. Everyone inside. Everyone with windows open but not looking out. And everyone with the hard blue glow of a TV shining out the front window. That was the news. Old news really.

So the end of the world is pretty much as quiet as I always imagined it but not quite as much fun. At least not at first. And I guess I did used to imagine it a lot. The usual ideal “imagining scenario” would be in my car, late and night after a snow storm, driving around. All the traffic lights are flashing yellow and read. I’d get to the intersection by “our” grocery store and I could just roll through it slowly. The streets hadn’t been cleared and the snow covered everything acting as a sound dampener. The only was the car tires rubbing on the packed snow.

Another time it was 2am in Angouleme; a medieval hilltop village about two hours south of Paris. I was walking with a friend of mine and looking for a late night snack but the whole town shut down after midnight. Nothing open and all the metal shades pulled down tight over the shops. Even the windows in the houses were closed up tight.

The only sound you’d hear would be the crunching of our feet on the snow. And I remember standing at an intersection, looking left and right and deciding whether or not to turn and go back to the hotel or to keep going a little further. No cars around. No people. As I’m standing there I hear a buzzing sound and a click. I look around and then look up. There’s a billboard above me. Not a static image but one of those venetian blind looking billboards where the slats turn automatically and form a new image and a new advertisement. I’d driven by them a thousand times and now, here in the snow, with no cars and no people I could hear it. All quiet except for that sound. Outside in the air but as cozy as being in bed under a blanket at my grandmother’s house with the sound of her (ironically) grandfather clock ticking back and forth.

Outside and no birds. No cars. Just the click and buzz. The buzz and the click from a Citroen ad to the other side and some kind of French product that apparently makes the entire world happy, whether you’re a black man, Asian woman or white child.

There was always a weird kind of calm to the end of the world in my imagination. A quiet alternate reality. The real thing was a little different with Ella who can’t tolerate more than fifteen minutes in the car at a time. After the fifteen minutes – that’s when the inconsolable crying starts. Pacifier doesn’t help. Milk. Nothing. Nothing except stopping the car and getting her out into the open air.

It’s life on the road with Ella. If you’ve read Kerouac’s On the Road -- well, I imagine this being pretty much the same thing. Only not as much drinking and whoring but I think Neil Cassidy actually shit his pants a couple times on the way there. So we’ve got the basic premise down. Following the red veins of interstate from the east coast to the west.

Where are we going? That’s an entire chapter or two by itself, so let’s just get in and out of the gas station first and save that for Chapter 3 and/or 4. Those will be right before the chapters on how we survived and the footnote on what exactly happens to electricity when everybody on earth is dead.

So I stop the car next to a parked tow-truck and get out. Around the back of the car I open the trunk and pull out the long plastic tube…we’ve named it. The “gas tube”. I stick one end into the tow-truck tank and the other I start to suck on. This gives me a headache every time but I’ve at least gotten to the point that I can let go without having to taste gasoline. I get to that point and then drop the tube into our tank. Sharlene’s out of the car with Ella and squeegy-ing the windows with Ella on one hip.

All without a word. Not sure if she’s still mad at me about my wrist injury or not. Probably. Something kind of redundant about the silent treatment when you haven’t seen another living soul in a week. If I was the last man on earth would you give me the silent treatment? The answer is…silence. I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’

I walk away from the car while it’s filling up. Siphoning takes a lot longer than the super-pumps that jet the gas into your car. Always took that for granted I guess, but now really are we in that much of a hurry? It’s not like we’ll every be late for work again. I guess if zombies were chasing us it might be an issue. Not really a fan of Zombies as a genre but it sure is hard not to think about it in our new world.

I walk up to the glass door of the convenience store part of the station. Locked. I walk around to the garage side. We’re pretty well stocked for supplies since we’re only 30 minutes into our trip. Inside the garage it’s dark but I can see the front end of some vintage car.

I take out the digital camera and put the lens up to the glass to snap a photo. (See the footnote on how I love classic cars and how that ties into my love –- and footnote — on time travel). Just as I press the shutter, I see a dog inside the garage come loping up to the window. It’s some kind of large German Shepard or pit bull?

There’s a slight delay in the push of the button to when the flash goes off. **FLASH** Just as the flash goes off the dog jumps right at me against the glass – THUMP. I’m so startled that I nearly drop the camera. Startled not at the dog so much as just seeing another living moving thing. He’s safe behind the glass and I’m safe on the outside so I walk away.

I put the camera back in my front pocket and wonder about the wisdom of taking digital photos in a world with limited-to-none electricity. Well, we’ll figure something out. I probably should have just deleted that photo then and there and completely avoided the argument in Chapter 20. But then I guess there’d be no Chapter 20.

I get back to the car and Sharlene’s already taken out the siphon tube. Ella is standing/wobbling next to her.

"Thanks,” I say.

She doesn’t respond. End of the world silent treatment. My wrist throbs at the thought. I think I ran through my thousand ‘end of the world’ jokes before we even decided where we would drive. Sharlene, would you make ‘the sweet love’ to me if I was the last man on earth? What are you crying for? It’s not the end of the…uh…oh, yeah. It is. You get the idea. I file the rest of my “clever quips” with all the 9-11 jokes. Maybe they’ll be funny later.

I pick up Ella and fly her around the gas station for a minute (with Superman: The Movie soundtrack humming) until I’m out of breath and she’s laughing. Then before she knows it she’s buckled into her car seat again and we’re on the road. I feel the camera pressing uncomfortably against my leg in my front pocket so I struggle onto the highway and into my front pocket to get the camera out. I put it on the seat between myself and Sharlene and try not to think about the dog. About him being locked in the garage and still alive. About the permanent red stains around his mouth. And the fate of his owner.

End of the World: Chapter 1

2006-03-13T13:10:00.000-08:00

FADE IN to a LONG SHOT.

It’s a straight stretch of blacktop highway in the Midwest. This is the opening scene. This is where the credits would run. Something in a thin font, maybe just a Helvetica condensed white, with a subtle black drop shadow. The car is off on the horizon, barely seeming to creep away from the camera.

The soundtrack is music. Fiona Apple’s version of Across the Universe is playing. Nothin’s gonna change my world. Nothin’s gonna change my world.

With the slow plodding beat of the music we MOVE IN and DOWN, with nothing but the music playing. We’re moving now, closer (car-level) to the pavement creeping up on the speeding car from behind.

As we slowly gain on the car we start to notice something isn’t right. The weather is perfect but there are abandoned cars sprinkled along both sides of the highway. More than is normal on a mile-stretch of road.

We are closer now to the speeding car. We can make out the taillights and the expired license plate. The car is a vintage one. A black 1961 Chrysler Windsor. The back plate is customized: “AWESOM”.

The camera moves slowly up the back bumper and over the trunk and slowly up to and THROUGH the back window, the camera movement matching the slow deliberate pace of the song.

The beat of the song is soothing along with the piano and guitar accompaniment. The day is beautiful. Not a cloud in the sky. A perfect 60 degree April day in the MIDWEST.

We move THROUGH the back window of the car now and Fiona Apple is still singing but now there is the discordant sound of a baby crying. The crying is as loud as or maybe louder than the soundtrack music. As we enter the car, the camera swivels around 180 degrees so now we’re looking out the back window from where we came from but still moving, so now we’re PULLING AWAY from the back window.

A 1 -year-old girl is buckled into a car seat. ELLA is red-faced and crying at the top of her lungs. The camera LINGERS here as the character’s name FADES IN on the TITLES: “ELLA” (white type with black drop shadow).

ELLA is hating riding in a car. PULL BACK from ELLA and over the front seat. The crying is continuous. OVER the front seat, the camera keeps moving, pulling back now to reveal the two occupants in the front seat.

In this shot we see both SHARLENE and MATT in the same shot. SHARLENE is on the extreme left and MATTHEW is on the extreme right. The top of ELLA’S head can just be seen over the front seat.

SHARLENE is in the passenger seat. The TITLE reads: “SHARLENE” over her. The TITLE fades in and then fades out just as the TITLE “MATTHEW” fades in and then slowly out over MATTHEW in the driver’s seat. On MATTHEWS’S LEFT HAND we can see a flesh-colored BANDAGE around his wrist.

They are sitting expressionless despite the incessant crying. MATTHEW’S knuckles are in the 10 and 2 position on the steering wheel and his knuckles are white.

The camera creeps SLOWLY backwards and then out the front windshield . As it does, the crying becomes muted and the soundtrack music is again prominent. The camera PULLS BACK slowly over the hood of the car and the pulls ahead of the car so we can see the vintage grill and headlights. The TITLE slowly fades in: “END OF THE WORLD” in the same white type with black drop shadow over the front of the car.

The TITLE: “END OF THE WORLD” slowly FADES OUT.

PULL BACK slowly and away from the speeding car until it gets smaller in the distance. Again, we see abandoned cars on both sides of the road. They aren’t wrecked or destroyed. It’s as if the occupants just decided to slow down, pull over and park their cars safely off to the side of the road.

FADE TO BLACK as the song ends.