Better Men

Apocalypse, won’t you wait another week? There is a stillness moving through nations like a common cold and I can see the quiet end in the creased smiles of the neighbors who only speak in sympathy cards. The house lost its heating Saturday and something is rotting in the wall behind the radiator. Charming used to be the word I’d use to describe this three floor nest. Clothes are piled in two corners: one for the dirty, one for the clean, and I keep forgetting which is which. The lightbulbs haven’t gone out in months, they just keep getting brighter. And no one catches the flies anymore.

For years I convinced myself it wouldn’t be long before I sold the place to an unassuming couple and moved somewhere I could bear to look outside. Here, my view is an unkempt lawn and a narrow street that even the old cars won’t drive down. If I was a better man I might consider the image somewhat romantic. Like a painter who finds more beauty in a scar than a spotless face, I could stare at the cracked road for hours, counting every imperfection. But I’m not a better man, and frankly I never tried too hard to be one. They’re boring, and though I’m sure their wives and children— each named after a different equally boring grandparent— would disagree, they’d serve a better use to the world if they stopped considering things entirely. Nothing good comes out of the mouth of a man who finds beauty in a cracked road. If we all thought that way, who would bother fixing them?

To be brutally honest, I expected you sooner. Lunatics have been calling it the end times since there was a beginning, but I could tell you were inching closer for a while now. Last Thanksgiving the mayor’s office held a parade on Main Street, with a marching band and decorative floats that looked like they were pulled from a child’s nightmare. It was an annual event, one I had avoided for decades. The usual tradition was to sleep past noon and wait for Mae to tempt me from bed with a meal she’d spent the morning preparing. But Mae was gone, and so I found myself drunk on a crowded sidewalk, watching the floats drift slowly by.

After a few minutes of intently watching, I peeled my eyes from the parade and began to examine the countless faces around me. Two feet from where I stood, an infant sat upon her father’s shoulders, staring straight ahead at a passing giant cornucopia in pure awe. Behind me, a couple laughed lightly at some hidden joke, holding hands with a tightness that only comes with young love. Near the empty shop window where the bookstore used to be, two high schoolers leaned against the wall in a futile attempt to appear indifferent. At once it dawned on me that I was the oldest there. And in a brief moment of infinite panic, I came to the solemn conclusion that I was the last of my kind. The rest had died out; cold and helpless as the day they were born. Some were surrounded by loved ones, but most were alone when the roof caved in. Mae was only the most recent, and though I took her limp hand in mine as she breathed her last, we both knew she was alone.

Her funeral had been the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. The service lasted fifteen minutes— there was no eulogy. Maybe it was then that I noticed you, as they lowered Mae into the casket I could barely afford. Or perhaps it was the parade when you entered my mind like a cold sore before a first kiss. Either way, you were an immediate truth. Repulsive and alluring, the thought of you has kept me captive on the ragged bed that Mae and I once shared. Yet tonight I will lie on this mattress stained with bitter tears for the final time. Apocalypse, in a few days I’ll be dead. The body I once called my own has forsaken me, and my mind unravels more with every passing hour. But I refuse to be found with my eyes shut, still dreaming of a pleasant view.

Life lasts far too long for it to end with a gravestone facing a four-lane highway, stretching forever towards nowhere in particular. There are no statues built for men like me. They’re saved for the famous poets and painters with houses that line the hills of Los Angeles. For the actors who played their parts while a whole generation bled out in the background. Now the world has watched us suffer and no one wants to take our place. Apocalypse, you’re exactly what we deserve.

Tomorrow at the break of dawn, I’ll gather my belongings and drive west. This town is a cancer ward with no windows, where the patients have taken a vow of silence and the doctors keep calling in sick. I’ll never turn around, it’d be too late if I tried. If I’m lucky I might make it to California. Mae had always loved it there, though we could never find the time to travel much. Still, she’d prance around the living room in her nightgown as if she were a movie star. We’ll live there someday, she’d promise every now and then. Some nights I even believed her.