by Ellen Datlow
“Comforting?” He laughed again. “It would seem that in the absence of pain, no comfort is necessary.” He paused, as if waiting for me to challenge him on that, and then stuck out his hand. “I’m Sandor.”
“Jess.” The warmth of his unmarked, uncut hand was a mild shock. Fluctuations in body temperatures were as nonexistent as blood in these nontimes. Which would only stand to reason, since blood flow governed skin temperature. Everyone was the same temperature now, but whether that was something feverish or as cold as a tomb was impossible to tell with no variation. Perhaps I just hadn’t been touching the right people.
“Odd, isn’t it,” he said, politely disengaging his hand from mine. I felt a rush of embarrassment. “They wanted to investigate it at the hospital, but I wouldn’t let them. Do you know, at the hospital, people are offering themselves for exploratory surgery and vivisection? And the doctors who have a stomach for such things take them willingly. Yes. They cut them open, these people, and explore their insides. Sometimes they remove internal organs and sew the people up again to see how they manage without them. They manage fine. And there is no blood, no blood anywhere, just a peculiar watery substance that pools in the body cavity.
“And hidden away in the hospital, there is a doctor who has removed a woman’s head. Her body is inactive, of course, but it does not rot. The head functions, though without air to blow through the vocal cords, it’s silent. It watches him, they say, and he talks to it. They say he is trying to get the head to communicate with him in tongue-clicks, but it won’t cooperate. She won’t cooperate, if you prefer. And then there’s the children’s ward and the nursery where they keep the babies. These babies—”
“Stop it,” I said.
He looked dazed, as if I’d slapped him.
“Are you insane?”
Now he gave me a wary smile. “Does sanity even come into it?”
“I mean … well, we just met.”
“Ah, how thoughtless of me.”
I started to turn away.
That strangely warm hand was on my arm. “I do mean it. It was thoughtless, pouring all that out on someone I don’t know. And a stranger here as well. It must be hard for you, all this and so far from home.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” I glanced at the crucified man. “It’s all so weird, I think maybe I’d just as soon not see it happen anyplace familiar. I don’t really like to think about what it must be like back home.” I jerked my thumb at the man nailed to the wall. “Like, I’d rather that be some total stranger than one of my neighbors.”
“Yes, I can see that. Though it must be a little easier to be with someone you’re close to, as well.” He looked down for a moment. “I saw you come in with your companion.”
I gave him points for perception—most people assumed Jim was my husband. “Are you from here?” I asked.
“No. As I’m sure you could tell.”
“Not really. Is Sandor a Polish name?”
He shrugged. “Could be. But I’m not from there, either.”
There was a minor commotion as the police came in, or rather, some people dressed in police uniforms. Scheveningen was maintaining a loose local government—God knew why, force of habit, perhaps—with a volunteer uniformed cadre that seemed to work primarily as moderators or referees, mostly for the foreigners. They pushed easily through the thinning crowd and started to remove the crucified man from the wall, ignoring his protests that he wasn’t finished, or it wasn’t finished, or something.
“Ite missa est,” I said, watching. “Go, the Mass is over. Or something like that.”
“You remember the Latin rite. I’m impressed.”
“Some things hang on.” I winced at the sound of ersatz-Christ’s forearm breaking. “That sounded awful, even if it didn’t hurt.”
“It won’t heal, either. Just goes on looking terrible. Inconvenient, too. At the hospital, they have—” He stopped. “Sorry. As you said, some things hang on.”
“What do you suppose they’ll do with him?” I asked as they took him out. “It’s not like it’s worth putting him in jail or anything.”
“The hospital. It’s where they take all the mutilation cases bad enough that they can’t move around on their own. If they want mutilation, they can have plenty there, under better conditions, for better reasons, where no one has to see them.”
Finally, I understood. “Did you work there long?”
“Volunteered,” he said, after a moment of hesitation. “There are no employees anymore, just volunteers. A way to keep busy. I left—” He shrugged. “Sitting ducks.”
“Pardon?”
“That’s the expression in English, isn’t it? For people who leave themselves open to harm? In this case, literally open.”
“If it doesn’t hurt and it doesn’t kill them, and this is the end of it all as we know it,” I said slowly, “how can they be leaving themselves open to harm?”
“A matter of differing cultural perspectives.” He smiled.
I smiled back. “You never told me what culture you were from.”
“I think you could say that we’re all from here now. Or might as well be. There’s an old saying that you are from the place where you die, not where you were born.”
“I’ve never heard that one. And nobody’s dying at the moment.”
“But nothing happens. No matter what happens, nothing happens. Isn’t that a description of a dying world? But perhaps you don’t see it that way. And if you don’t, then perhaps you aren’t dying yet. Do you think if you cut yourself, you might bleed? Is it that belief that keeps you from mutilating yourself, or someone else? Do you even wonder about that?”
I looked from side to side. “I feel like I’m under siege here.”
He laughed. “But don’t you wonder? Why there aren’t people running through the streets in an orgy of destruction, smashing windows and cars and each other? And themselves.”
“Offhand, I’d say there just doesn’t seem to be much point to it.” I took a step back from him.
“Exactly. No point. No reward, no punishment, no pleasure, no pain. The family of humanity has stopped bickering, world peace at last. Do you think if humans had known what it would take to bring about world peace, that they’d have worked a lot harder for it?”
“Do you really think it’s like this everywhere in the world?” I said, casually moving back another step.
“Don’t you?” He spread his hands. “Can’t you feel it?”
“Actually, I don’t feel much.” I shrugged. “Excuse me, I’m going to go catch up on my reading.”
“Wait.” He grabbed my arm and I jumped. “I’m sorry,” he said, letting go almost immediately. “I suppose I’m wrong about there being no pleasure and pain. I’d forgotten about the pleasure of being able to talk to someone. Of sharing thoughts, if you’ll pardon the expression.”
I smiled. “Yeah. See you around.” I shook his hand again, more to confirm what I’d felt when he’d grabbed my arm than out of courtesy, and found I’d been right. His skin definitely felt cooler. Maybe he was the one who wasn’t dying and I had sucked whatever real life he had out of him.
Only the weird survive, I thought, and went upstairs.
No matter what happens, nothing happens. Jim was curled up on the bed, motionless. The silence in the room was darkening. Sleep canceled the breathing habit, if “sleep” it actually was. There were no dreams, nothing much like rest—more like being a machine that had been switched off. Another end-of-the-world absurdity.
At least I hadn’t walked in to find him slicing himself up with a razor, I thought, going over to the pile of books on the nightstand. Whatever had possessed me to think that I would wait out the end of the world by catching up with my reading had drained away with my ambition. If I touched any of the books now, it was just to shift them around. Sometimes, when I looked at the covers, the words on them didn’t always make sense right away, as if my ability to read was doing a slow fade along with everything
else.
I didn’t touch the books now as I stretched out on the bed next to Jim. He still didn’t move. On the day—if “day” is the word for it—the world had ended, we’d be in this room, in this bed, lying side by side the way we were now. I am certain that we both came awake at the same moment, or came to might be a better way to put it. Went from unconscious to conscious was the way it felt, because I didn’t wake up the way I usually did, slowly, groggily, and wanting nothing more than to roll over and go back to sleep for several more hours. I had never woken up well, as if my body had always been fighting the busy life my mind had imposed on it. But that “day,” I was abruptly awake without transition, staring at the ceiling, and deep down I just knew.
There was no surprise in me, no regret, and no resistance. It was that certainty: Time’s up. More than something I knew, it was something I was. Over, finished, done, used up … but not quite gone, as a bottle is not gone though emptied of its contents. I thought of Jim Morrison singing “The End,” and felt some slight amusement that in the real end, it hadn’t been anywhere near so dramatic. Just… time’s up.
And when I’d finally said, “Jim … ?”he’d answered, “Uh-huh. I’ve got it, too.” And so had everyone else.
I raised up on one elbow and looked at him without thinking anything. After awhile, still not thinking anything, I pulled at his shirt and rolled him over.
Sex at the end of the world was as pointless as anything else, or as impossible as bleeding, depending on your point of view, I guess. The bodies didn’t function; the minds didn’t care. I felt some mild regret about that, and about the fact that all I could feel was mild regret.
But it was still possible to show affection—or to engage in pointless foreplay—and take a certain comfort in the contact. We hadn’t been much for that in this no-time winding-down. Maybe passion had only been some long, pleasant dream that had ended with everything else. I slipped my hand under Jim’s shirt.
His unmoving chest was cadaver-cold.
That’s it, I thought, now we’re dying for real. There was a fearful relief in the idea that I wouldn’t have to worry about him mutilating himself any further.
Jim’s eyes snapped open and he stared down at my hand still splayed on his stomach, as if it were some kind of alien, deformed starfish that had crawled out of the woodwork onto his torso.
“You’re warm,” he said, frowning.
And like that, I was lost in the memory of what it was to feel passion for another human being. What it was to want, emotions become physical reactions, flesh waking from calm to a level of response where the edge between pleasure and pain thinned to the wisp of a nerve ending.
I rolled off the bed and went into the bathroom. Behind me, I heard Jim rolling over again. Evidently he didn’t want to know about my sudden change in temperature if I didn’t want to tell him. A disposable razor sat abandoned on the counter near the sink. If I took it and ran my fingertip along the blade, would I see the blood well up in a bright, uneven bead? I didn’t want to know, either.
The exploding star was a fiery blue-white flower against the black sky. Its light fell on the upturned faces of the crowd on the promenade, turning them milky for a few moments before it faded.
“Better than fireworks,” I heard someone say.
“Ridiculous,” said someone else. “Some kind of trick. The stars are thousands and millions of light-years away from us. If we see them exploding now, it means the universe actually ended millions of years ago and we’re just now catching up with it.”
“Then no wonder we never made any contact with life on other planets,” said the first voice. “Doesn’t that make sense? If the universe has been unraveling for the last million years, all extraterrestrial life was gone by the time we got the technology to search for it.”
I looked around to see who was speaking and saw her immediately. The Ghost of Lifetimes Past was standing just outside the group, alone as usual, watching the people instead of the stars. She caught my eye before I could look away and put her fingertips to her mouth in a coy way, as if to stifle a discreet giggle. Then she turned and went up the promenade, tutu flouncing a little, as an orange starburst blossomed in the west.
If Jim had come out with me, I thought, weaving my way through the crowd, I probably wouldn’t have been doing something as stupid as following this obviously loony woman. But he had remained on the bed, unmoving, long after it had gotten dark, and I hadn’t disturbed him again. I had sat near the window with a book in my lap and told myself I was reading, not just staring until I got tired of seeing the same arrangement of words and turning a page, while I felt myself fade. It had been a very distinct sensation, what I might have felt if I had been awake when the world had ended.
The Ghost of Lifetimes Past didn’t look back once but I was sure she knew I was following her, just as I knew she had meant for me to follow her, all the way to the Kurhaus. Even from a distance, I could see that the lights were on. Another party; what was it about the end of the world that seemed to cry out for parties? Perhaps it was some kind of misplaced huddling instinct.
I passed a man sitting on a broken brick wall, boredly hammering four- inch nails into his chest, if we hung notes on them, I thought, and sent him strolling up and down the promenade, we could have a sort of postal service- cum-newspaper. Hear ye, hear ye, the world is still dead. Or undead. Nondead. Universe still unemployed after quitting old job. Or was it, really?
The Ghost flounced across the rear courtyard of the Kurhaus without pausing, her ballet shoes going scritch-scritch on the pavement. Light spilled out from the tall windows, making giant, elongated lozenges of brightness on the stone. One level up, I could see people peering out the galleria windows at the sky. When the sun went, I thought suddenly, would we all finally go with it, or would it just leave us to watch cosmic fireworks in endless night?
They made me think of birds on a nature preserve, the people wandering around in the lobby. Birds in their best plumage and their best wounds. A young, black-haired guy in a pricey designer gown moved across the scuffed dusty floor several yards ahead of me, the two chandelier crystals stuck into his forehead above the eyebrows, catching the light. Diaphanous scarves fluttered from holes in his shoulder blades. Trick or treat, I thought. Or maybe it was All Souls’ Day, every day.
At the bar island, someone had used the bottles on the surrounding shelves for target practice and the broken glass still lay everywhere like a scattering of jewels. I saw a woman idly pick up a shard lying on the bar and take a bite out of it, as if it were a potato chip. A man in white tie and tails was stretched out on the floor on his stomach, looking around and making notes on a stenographer’s pad. I wandered over to see what he was writing, but it was all unreadable symbols, part shorthand, part hieroglyphics.
There was a clatter behind me. Some people were righting one of the overturned cocktail tables and pulling up what undamaged chairs they could find. It was the group that had been sitting near me on the promenade that day, the man and his three women companions, all of them chattering away to each other as if nothing was out of the ordinary. They were still unmarked and seemed oblivious to the freak show going on around them—I half expected the man to go to the bar and try to order. Or maybe someone would sweep up some broken glass and bring it to them on a tray. Happy Hour is here, complimentary hors d’oeuvres.
The Ghost reappeared on the other side of the bar. She looked worse, if that were possible, as if walking through the place had depleted her. A tall man on her left was speaking to her as he ran a finger along the wasted line of her chin while a man on her right was displaying the filigree of cuts he’d made all over his stomach, pulling the skin out and displaying it like a lace bib. The skin was losing its elasticity; it sagged over the waistband of his white satin pajama pants. The layer of muscle underneath showed through in dark brown.
I turned back to the group I’d seen on the promenade, still in their invisible bubble of normalcy. The man caugh
t sight of me and smiled a greeting without a pause in what he was saying. Maybe I was supposed to choose, I thought suddenly; join the freaks or join the normalcy. And yet I had the feeling that if I chose the latter, I’d get wedged in among them somehow and never get back to Jim.
They were all staring at me questioningly now and something in those mild gazes made me think I was being measured. One of the women leaned into the group and said something; it was the signal for their intangible boundary to go back up again. Either I’d kept them waiting too long, or they didn’t like what they saw, but the rejection was as obvious as if there had been a sign over their heads.
I started for the side door, intending to get out as fast as I could, and stopped short. The boy standing near the entrance to the casino might have been the same one who’d had the boombox, or not—it was hard to tell, there were so many good-looking blond boys here—but the man he was talking to was unmistakably Jim. He hadn’t bothered to change his rumpled clothes or even to comb his hair, which was still flat on one side from the way he’d been lying on the bed.
Jim was doing most of the talking. The kid’s expression was all studied diffidence, but he was listening carefully all the same. Jim showed him his hand and the kid took it, touching the cuts and nodding. After a few moments, he put his arm around Jim’s shoulders and, still holding his hand, led him around the front of the closed, silent elevator doors to the stairs. I watched them go up together.
“Do you wonder what that was all about?”
I didn’t turn around to look at him. “Well. Sandor Whoever from Wherever. The man who can still raise the mercury on a thermometer while the rest of us have settled at room temperature. If you start talking about interesting things people are doing in the hospital, I might take a swing at you.”
He chuckled. “That’s the spirit. Next question: Do you wonder how they get the power on in some places when it won’t work in others?”