Madeline Garfinkle
The End
The announcement came on a Friday which, according to experts, is the best day to relay bad news. (People have short attention spans.) However, when you tell people the world is ending, it’s not really something that gets washed over by Monday.
The message, broadcast around 3 p.m. EST everywhere, said that the meteors, which had started falling but were originally said to be harmless, were being downplayed. They had been full of big, destructive, world-ending-kind-of-harm all along. Humanity was to be demolished on the 30th of September. We should carry on until the end, the government said, however we choose. And that they were sorry for lying.
Civilian actions grew weirder by the day, like humanity was determined to destroy itself before the meteors got the chance. I’d leave my apartment to find people rolling around in the streets and throwing household items out the window, yelling things like To the end of capitalism! and tossing toasters and blenders down towards the concrete. A few people died that way. Can you imagine?
Maybe I should quit smoking, I thought, just to make my last breath that much clearer. A last ditch effort to hold my own hand and say: I care about you, I love you. Meaning it? That takes two life times of commitment and hard work. I thought, what’s the point in taking care of your future self if your future self won’t even be there to thank you? So, I decided not to quit, which meant nothing changed, only there was less shame orbiting my usual drag.
I intended to live out the rest of my life as usual, as if I had never heard the news. But then I lost my job. Well, everyone lost their job, because most jobs no longer existed. Especially ones in advertising. This thing I had committed my life to, convinced myself mattered, suddenly had no place in the survival of humanity.
I heard the office was still open, but the only people who went were those in complete denial, sitting at their desks in motionless stupors until 5 p.m. when they’d exit the echoing double doors and drink themselves into oblivion. I heard that Tom, from the sales department, had been there every day since the news, sleeping on the floor in a fetal position Monday through Friday. He was eventually found by one of the janitors, Benjamin, who spent the better part of his adult life combating insomnia through compulsive night cleaning (intimate intel Tom shared with our office wide listserv, still functioning). One night, there he was, sweet Tom, curled up on the floor grasping his disconnected work phone. Benjamin asked if he wanted to help take care of the office goldfish, since he was staying there anyways. Tom complied. Eventually he quit his job in sales to feed the fish full time. “I’m happier this way,” he wrote in his parting email. “I have, after much searching, found my purpose.”
The days were stretched and static, time pulled from sunrise to sunset like two ends of Silly Putty. I spent my afternoons with the homeless man who always leaned on some brick edge corner of the world near my apartment. He had been there even before the announcement of the world ending.
How are you, I would ask him, in the days following the news. The same, he always said. One day I realized I didn’t know his name.
I asked: what’s your name?
He answered: I don’t remember.
I tried: What would you like to be called?
In one beat, he said: Dad.
Then we shared a turkey sandwich and watched people light themselves on fire.
What were the things I really wanted to do, before I died, before everyone died? I had never been one for traveling. Monuments were underwhelming, a big price tag just to take a picture that’s already been taken a million times. Besides, I heard rumors that pilots started crashing planes for sport. I had always wanted to play piano, but learning a new skill seemed like a hopeless waste of time.
I looked around my airy penthouse apartment I had worked away my days to own. This living box, the one I had slaved for in a lustful strive for stability, suddenly felt like nothing more than an opulent shrine to my loneliness. Maybe this was my problem: I collected milestones like stamps in a scrapbook, passing years like rest stops. As though being fulfilled was a matter of waiting it out.
Naturally, I started to hate my apartment. I screamed at the walls in unhinged derailment: I have more rooms than I have limbs! I have more ROOOOMS! than I have LIMBSSSS! I began to understand the people who threw their household items out the window. But on the 29th of September, I decided to put this oversized box to good use and throw a party. I found some leftover construction paper from when I was in charge of office holiday party decorations (I didn’t want the job, it’s something they drew out of a hat). I made posters advertising an end of the world soiree. I taped them to lampposts, folded the invitations into paper airplanes and let them land wherever fate decided. I emailed and texted everyone in my contact book. I created a Facebook event and made it public. END OF THE WORLD PARTY with FREE BEER and DRUGS. What kind of drugs should I supply?
Since the world was ending, drugs were widespread and decriminalized because, well, the government figured it’d be pretty cruel to force people to stay sober and/or spend the last days of their lives in jail. Although, people have always been spending the last days of their lives in jail.
Still, I didn’t know where to start. I never had a party phase, only tried cocaine once in college and felt my brain go sideways for a month. I typed drugs into Yelp, and found a few dealers near me. I settled for Froggy, because he had rave reviews on his variety and quality, named by many as: good shit. I copied down the number and gave it a ring.
Hello, uh, hi. Froggy?
Wassup, he said cooly.
I’m interested in an assortment of your supply.
Froggy came by at four that afternoon, wearing a long trench coat and yellow tinted sunglasses. He didn’t have any hair, but I could tell it was an aesthetic choice, the stubble and razor burn showing in some places and not others. He shook my hand and I noticed the tattoos on his knuckles which read, from left to right, B I T E M E. He opened his trenchcoat to show me the small bags hanging inside. I wondered if he got the idea from a movie.
I asked: what was that movie? The one with the guy who has clocks inside his coat?
Froggy looked confused, or like he might slap me.
You know, I said, he opens his coat, like that one. And there’s a bunch of clocks. Come on, I know you know what I’m talking about.
Is this a fucking joke, he asked.
No, I told him, it’s not a fucking joke; I want everything.
Everything? he asked.
Yes, everything.
Damn, you’re not messing around, he said.
The world is ending, I reminded him, and I’m having a party.
Getting supplies was easy, stores were said to be open until the very end. But there weren’t many rules, money didn’t always count, and most of the time it was a matter of how much you could carry. I went to Best Buy and got a speaker so large that I asked for a delivery truck just to drive it home. The cross-eyed manager was the only one still working, standing guard over the remaining stock. He agreed to give me the truck, and I handed him an invitation. I stopped by Party City and got cone hats and streamers. Strangely, they were out of balloons. I decorated to the best of my abilities, and my apartment looked like a child’s 10th birthday, or a pathetic, low-budget office party. Either way, adults were sad and overdrinking. I put on my nicest button-down shirt. A red satin button-down I had been saving for a special occasion. I looked in the mirror and said, You look good. I said it again. Then again. I told myself I believed it, whether or not I actually did.
It was 8:05 p.m., and no one had arrived. I looked at the drugs scattered on the table like spilled M&M’s.I went for the pill that looked the most like a vitamin, the least threatening. Closed my eyes. Swallowed. The doorbell rang. It was Lucy, from accounting, who brought her husband, Jim, from home. We sat on the couch, our legs politely crossed like we were all waiting to interview for the same job.
Thank you for inviting us, Lucy said.
I didn’t invite Jim, I said.
You didn’t invite Jim, she confirmed.
But I’m glad Jim is here, I said, followed by: Look, I have party hats and drugs. Want some?
They did.
Then more people arrived, some I knew and some I didn’t. Soon my entire apartment was filled with flushed faces and bloodshot eyes and flailing arms and open lips. I couldn’t remember the last time I saw so many people pushed together at once. Probably, I thought, my last commuter rush the day before the announcement.
I watched my old boss, Larry, do lines of coke off one of the interns from last summer. He was still wearing his usual depressingly gray suit, even though we all stopped working weeks ago. Benjamin the insomniac janitor came, too, patrolled the party with a red cup in one hand and a bottle of Wet Ones in the other. I walked into my bedroom and found the Homeless Dad trying on the striped blazer I bought myself after my first raise. It looks good on you, I said, Keep it. Which he did. Froggy came despite my doubts, found him giving out free tattoos with a portable ink gun he kept in his trench coat.
You made it! I greeted him.
Made it where? he asked.
I went into the living room, laid down on the carpet and let my ears feel the ripple from the speakers. The thumps felt good, in a way, pulsing the building so vigorously, it was hard to believe that such force was only the product of noise. Maybe all it took for a building to collapse were the latest Top 40s blaring a notch too high.
When I opened my eyes, there was a woman standing over me. Her pupils were an absorbent black; in them I watched myself get swallowed and disappear. She pulled out a glass pipe and asked if I wanted any. I didn’t ask what Any meant, just took a hit and watched my heart jump out the window.
Do you love me, she asked.
Yes, I said. I love you.
How much, she asked.
It felt like we were playing a game, two kids pretending, exchanging dialogue we’d overheard on the television before bed. Is this, I wondered, how people actually fall in love?
I love you so much, I said, that the word love isn’t enough. I love you more than all the letters in the alphabet. I love you with all the letters in every language. I love you more than every combination of letters and numbers possible and I love you, I love you even more than that.
I heard my own heartbeat. How long had I forgotten what was keeping me alive?
She smiled giddy, jumped up like a child and yelped, I love you too!
Then we fucked like our lives depended on it.
After that I blacked out. There are photos of me smoking a joint with my third cousin who I hadn’t seen since childhood. Tom with his pet fish in a portable bowl, curled around his arms like a newborn baby. Lucy and Jim fucking in front of the television with an audience cheering in the back. Froggy giving the Homeless Dad a tattoo of Little Red Riding Hood on his bare chest. Benjamin giving a thumbs up as he converted my mahogany wooden table into a shoe shining station. Larry and the intern blowing the fire extinguisher all over the apartment like ashy confetti.
Around five in the morning on the 30th, I woke up to the buzzing of phones in unison. I watched my guests raise their heads one by one, whispering and chattering, crying and weeping, laughing and gasping, a chorus of relief and despair. The ‘what now’s’ and ‘thank god’s’ blended together like letters in a crossword. Where had I been, the exact moment my life was saved?
My lover who I loved more than all the letters in the world was asleep on the floor next to me. She didn’t wake up. I shook her again, nothing. I called over Froggy, who mentioned he was certified in CPR. Turns out, she was dead. I covered her face with a blanket, said a few words, and that I was glad I got to know her. Sorry, glad I got to love her. I loved her, it counts. I said it once more. I loved her, it counts.
Counts for what? Froggy asked.
I wanted to say that it has to count for something. That it cannot be true for all of life to not count for anything.
But I didn’t have an answer for him.