This is Not the End

by Jesse Jordan

  James could watch her talk until he died. Even when it was gossip, it never felt bitter or malicious, more like a child showing you all the cool features of their new toy. James wondered if one day she’d be a writer. He could see that: Dorian and him lost in their own worlds, sitting at back-to-back desks. He fantasized about bringing her coffee and rubbing her neck as she looked over her stories. (Though, admittedly, the fantasy then progressed to passionate, back-scratching Cinemax-level sex.)

  Dorian had moved on to talking about Gail Asbury, who she said was purposefully pressing her tits together and bending over in front of Mr. Llewellyn, hoping that teasing would lead to positive feelings, ipso ergo facto, a better biology grade. James watched her speak and found himself gripped in his belly by an urge to love and protect this girl, and in this swell of concern he said, “So, how are things?”

  There could be no mistaking his meaning, not with that inflection, not with his glimpse alighting over the thin scars on her wrists.

  Dorian’s face went around the world in an instant—pause, confusion, realization, shame, annoyance, stone. James knew immediately that it had been a catastrophic misstep.

  “I’m fine, James.”

  “Right. I mean, obviously.” He said nothing the rest of the block. The earlier, uncomfortable silence was back, but on steroids. He wanted to tell her he’d only said it out of a sense of concern, because he wanted to take care of her, but he could already sense the change. He remembered a drawing of mitosis on a chalkboard; from one into two. The connection was severed, and there was no way to bring it back.

  “I’m gonna stop in here,” she said, gesturing to the J&J Food Mart. “I’ll see you.”

  Dorian peeled off before he could say anything. “See ya,” he called to her back.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid! She obviously doesn’t want to talk about it. James let his feet carry him to the end of the block before he turned left, starting the large circle home. She doesn’t want to talk about it or remember it, and when you bring it up, you become a reminder of it. You become the symbol of the bad thing.

  That’s it, isn’t it? James realized—in an avalanche of intuition that he couldn’t quite follow—that this was the way things worked in life. He had saved her, hadn’t he? But that doesn’t matter. Not anymore. The initial thankfulness gives way to shame, and that same person who saved us becomes repellent to us.

  James’s breath stopped. The very idea was frightening enough to be paralytic, and he swore that moment he would never mention the Incident again.

  James turned left again, walking parallel to the train tracks along the road, and several blocks ahead he thought he saw—

  22. Even Dorian’s water bottle, if you believe it, held weight and meaning in James’s conception of her. It was a gray bottle with a worn, black-and-yellow bumblebee on it, along with the words The Hair Bee. That was the salon in town where Dorian got her hair done. To James it was a phantasmagoria of incalculable female power and sex. Dorian loved it there; loved sitting among the girls and women, perms cooking, nails buffing, scissors clipping as stories and laughter fought for audible supremacy. James walked by when a route took him near, and looked in as surreptitiously as possible, but the pure feminine gigantosaurus-dynamism of the place was just slightly more terrifying than appealing, so he kept his distance.

  23. The actual incident being referred to happened thirteen years earlier. The student in question was, in fact, Korean. Mr. Llewellyn failed her after repeatedly warning her about absences and missed assignments. She cried and pleaded and even screamed at him a little and kicked a desk over, but Mr. Llewellyn refused to reverse his decision. The student in question had a solid panic attack on the way home, because failing science would get her grounded, which would mean she wouldn’t get to go to Tampa with her best friend’s family. So when she got home she crushed up and snorted some of her brother’s asthma medication and proceeded to write a fake diary entry for an anonymous girl, claiming that Mr. Llewellyn had asked this girl to stay after school, at which point he kissed her and felt her breasts and put his finger inside her.

  She left the diary pages in the first-floor girls’ bathroom the next day, and when they were discovered, the school went crazy. Mr. Llewellyn was taken away by the police and the counselors were seeing kids one after the other, trying to ascertain whose diary this was and if perhaps there were others.

  Of course, the defining characteristic of most teenagers is their inability to keep a secret, and so it wasn’t long before the diary’s author shared hers with the aforementioned best friend, who in turn told someone who told someone, and within 24 hours Mr. Llewellyn was back in the bosom of his home and the student was expelled. Charges were of course never filed against Mr. Llewellyn, nor were they filed against the girl, though the newspaper ran stories about the whole affair and how the girl was in counseling now and attending an all-girls Catholic school, and six months later the family moved to Iowa.

  Still, every school has the perv teacher. The teacher that all the students agree is a creep. Usually they’re just socially inept, awkward fellas and gals, but sometimes, of course, they are actual creepazoids. Mr. Llewellyn was the former. He held eye contact a bit too long and had sinus problems that often caused him to breathe through his mouth in a lascivious manner. Then there was the combover. God, will these men never realize the effect those combovers have?

  6½1/2½. Interlude—The Incident24

  24. James was just discovering the works of Harvey Pekar and Art Spiegelman and Will Eisner and Chris Ware when the Incident—as he refers to it—happened. This all had the effect on him that one would expect with any young artist. He thought that perhaps instead of drawing superheroes and planet-swallowing alien hordes, he would be a cartoonist who chronicled the drama and beauty of real life. It was in this spirit that he created the attached cartoon.

  But as much as he wanted to feel fulfilled by it, the experience left him hungry. No one can choose what cranks their gears, and the rooting of his drawing in his own life seemed somehow to diminish and cheapen both.

  The next day he was working on a new supervillian: a mutated, genius silverback gorilla who could speak like a human but who commanded all of monkeyhood and longed for the extinction of man and primate dominion.

  25. James never finished the last frame of the comic. He felt as if there should be some revelation, some moment of wisdom there. But, unfortunately, he had nothing. He reached no realization—and so had no ending.

  6. The Homunculus (rejoin)

  —another black Escalade. James had begun to mellow out about the appearances of the black Escalades, as most turned out to be manned by moms and businessmen and guys who popped the collars on their polo shirts. This one was parked two blocks up, on the right side of the road, and though James had no reason to believe there was anything special about it, he felt his Spidey-sense tingling. No lights, no exhaust; it’s definitely off. James couldn’t see anyone sitting in the vehicle, but he felt certain that someone was.

  As he crossed the next street, he slowed, and all at once he knew he did not want to walk by that Escalade. It was a feeling he couldn’t explain—or rather, a certainty he couldn’t explain. He looked to his right and saw a small hole cut into the fence about ten yards up and sighed. What anorexic midget cuts a hole that small?

  James realized two things at the same instant: he had stopped walking, and he could hear an engine close behind. He turned, and it was as if a balloon of cold fear popped in his belly. A black Escalade sat there, maybe ten feet behind him, turned sideways and blocking the road. He felt his blood surge through his veins in thick, painful waves, and that’s when he heard the screaming engine to his right. James turned barely in time to see a third Escalade come flying around the corner, brakes squealing as the wheels turned and the black monster skidded to a stop, its right side only a foot or two from James.

  Run.

  The side doors flew open, and two men were out in a flash. One a tal
l, blond reed of focused movement, the other a muscular man with a brown flattop. They both rushed for him, reaching to grab him, and as they did their shoulders bumped, momentarily sending each slightly off course.

  Run!

  James turned and immediately felt a pull. Backpack! He let his arms go slack, the backpack slipped free, and he sprang forward. Behind him he heard the two men fall together, and his shoes scraped across asphalt as he ran for the opening in the fence. He heard them regaining their feet and starting after him, but he couldn’t look back, sure they’d be only a foot behind him and closing.

  Time and distance stretched—each step was a hundred yards and a solid hour—then he was at the fence, scrambling through the hole, throwing himself through, and the edges of the chain-link cut into his left shoulder and elbow, his right thigh. James was up again and running, his feet fighting for grip on the loose rocks around the tracks. He scrambled over the tracks to the decline on the other side before looking back. The Escalades that had been in front of and behind him were already driving away, while the one from which the two men had jumped remained. Flattop was climbing back into the passenger seat, but the blond man just stood there at the hole in the fence, holding the backpack at his side and staring at James.

  The blond man took off his sunglasses to reveal thin eyes whose light-blue irises barely stood out from the whites. His look was clinical, as if James was a specimen under glass. “Are you him?”

  James turned and ran. He ran with furious purpose, and twice on the way home, he hid in bushes and behind cars as he heard the approach of vehicles.

  James ran inside the house and spun on his heel, slamming the front door with two hands and all his weight. He flipped the knob lock, jammed home the dead bolt, and ran up to his room. He shoved that door shut and locked it as well. Hands up, barely breathing, James backed away as if they were right behind him, as if the door could burst open any second and the blond man would come rushing in. His hands shook, and his breath felt ragged in his throat.

  Help.

  Hot, itchy pre-tears filled his eyes, and he wished for someone—for help. What amazed him in that moment, though, was that it wasn’t Mom or Dad or even the police that he longed to see. It was Ezra.

  Three sharp knocks sounded off the door, and James’s breath stopped. His feet moved up and down automatically, but he went nowhere. He spun, searching, though whether he was looking for a weapon or an escape route, he couldn’t say. He pictured the blond man and his cohorts on the other side of the door, their ears pressed to the wood, listening, and he clapped his hand over his mouth to quiet his breathing.

  Get out of here. The window.

  They’ll have someone down there!

  Climb down to the living room!

  What? Why?

  What are you doing? Call the police!

  But just as James tore into his pocket to get at his phone—

  “It’s okay, James. It’s me.”

  Ezra. James couldn’t believe it. How . . . ? But he didn’t think; he snapped the lock free and swung the door open to find Ezra standing in his hallway, balancing a plate of chocolate chip cookies and two glasses of milk.

  “May I come in?”

  James moved out of his way without a word, and Ezra buzzed into the room.

  How . . . ?

  “Now,” Ezra said, “why did you want to see me?”

  “How did you know that I wanted to see you?”

  Ezra looked up, as if searching for the right words. “In time, questions like those will be obvious, but right now they may take more time than the answer is worth. Plus, it doesn’t answer my question to you. So for now let’s just say you’re putting out waves and I’m tuned to the frequency. Does that make sense?”

  “No.”

  Ezra smiled and it felt to James like a pat on the back. “It’s good to be honest. People who pretend to understand things they don’t just to avoid looking stupid often end up looking stupid at the worst possible moment. But don’t worry; in time this will all make sense.” Ezra took two cookies and a glass of milk for himself, placing the rest on the bedside table. He sat at James’s desk, careful to set the plate and glass where it wouldn’t disturb any of James’s work.

  James stood with his back to the wall. He looked at Ezra, half illuminated by the weak desk lamp. A part of James wanted to rush across the room and throw his arms around Ezra, and while he was pretty sure Ezra would hold him, some other part knew it wouldn’t satisfy the urge. As if Ezra’s hugs would be like a copy of an original.

  Ezra had a cookie only inches from his mouth when James said, “Those guys tried to grab me.”

  Ezra stopped. “The men in the Escalades?” James nodded, and Ezra set down his cookie. “Tell me everything.”

  James told him what had happened, and for once, Ezra’s cool deserted him. He stood and made as if to pace but settled by the window, his hands massaging each other as he looked out at the late afternoon. He asked for details, slowing James down twice as the story touched on the blond man.

  When Ezra turned back, his comforting smile had returned. Ezra went back for the cookies he’d left on the desk and pushed the rest toward James. “Eat, James. I have a lot to tell you, and everything goes down better with cookies and milk.”

  James and Ezra each took a bite of cookie, though James wasn’t hungry at all.

  “Hm, dry,” Ezra said. He dunked the remaining cookie in his glass of milk. “Easily remedied.” When Ezra had finished both cookies, he clapped the crumbs from his hands and stood, looking down at James. “The men who attempted to abduct you this afternoon are part of a Roman Catholic cabal, hundreds of years old and backed—at least financially—by the Vatican.” He paused, perhaps expecting some sort of reaction, but James remained quiet. James waited, tense and listening, and Ezra smiled, laying his hand on James’s shoulder. “You’re going to do very well, James.”

  Ezra once again sat at the desk, crossing his legs. He spoke slowly. “Everything’s backwards in this world. The sooner you realize that, the clearer your perceptions will become. For instance, this little event tonight. Now, it would seem that Catholics would be the natural enemy of the”—Ezra air-quotes—“Antichrist, right?”

  James nodded. He found that he couldn’t keep his gaze from rounding on the window. What’s out there? What’s coming? What was that sound?

  “But that’s wrong,” Ezra continued. “According to their books, the Antichrist is supposed to shepherd in the great end—the Rapture, the battle between heaven and hell, and the return of Jesus Christ to Earth. This is what they want. The Antichrist, in other words, is the rain that brings the rainbow. The thing is, a small cabal of Roman Catholics long ago had a different interpretation of their role in the Apocalypse. Some mixture of perverse humanism and to-the-letter Christian duty. This cabal—and this goes back to the late 1400s, you understand—they believe it’s their duty to keep the End at bay until they’ve converted the whole world. Do you see? The conclusion they’ve come to is that it’s every Christian’s duty not just to proselytize but to convert everyone. The Apocalypse is sort of like the final tally, and it’s their job to have everyone on the right side of the line by the time Dad gets home. I’m sorry, do you mind?” Ezra reached over and plucked another cookie from the plate. “It’s just that you haven’t even finished yours and, well, anyway . . . where was I? Ah, yes, who knows how many false Antichrists they’ve killed in their history—?”

  James’s eyes went wide, and his fists closed around the blanket. That word26 vibrated every minuscule tissue of his body. His mind recoiled, and he felt a childish urge to close his eyes, cover his ears, and scream. And then, in an instant that was over so fast he felt as if he’d missed it, James’s unlived life passed by. Dates and college and being a father and family vacations on Florida beaches with sandwiches in Tupperware while kids raged against the surf and being old and looking back and gone.

  “It’s okay, James.” Ezra caught his eye. “It�
��ll be alright. I promise.

  “I don’t know how they found you. They’re a closely guarded organization. I’ve heard that they believe in a mystical numerology, using some kind of mathematical soothsaying to reveal things which they take as divine messages. They apparently believe math is some form of communication with”—again the air quotes—“God.”

  “But I’m getting off on a tangent. Like I said before, you’re going to be just fine. This is not that big of a deal. They’re on to you? Fine. We’ll just get you some protection.” Ezra looked around the room and, apparently not finding what he was looking for, said, “Pardon me, James, but I believe I saw a potted plant in the hallway. Was it real?”

  “What?”

  “Is the plant real? Is the soil it sits in actual ground?”

  “Uh . . .” James felt unable to access the information Ezra wanted. His mind was drowning in the blond man, in a group of grown-ups who wanted to kill him, and he found it almost impossible to breach the surface back to this room, this now. “ . . . yeah.”

  “Wonderful. Would you please go and get me a handful of the soil?”

  James didn’t move.

  “Now, please.”

  James stood like a somnambulist and walked out.

  Ezra called after him. “You must steel yourself, James. You must marshal all that you have within. In time it will all be necessary.”

  James heard him crunch down on another cookie and speak through his mouthful. “Do you know what stands in your way? Fear. Fear is the mind-killer, as a great man27 once said.28 You need to address your fear, to address those things which create the fear.”

  James walked in thinking, Those things which create the fear? Oh, you mean THE PEOPLE WHO WANT TO KILL ME! How’s that, you asshole? He held a fistful of soil out to Ezra.