The Hauntings of Playing God (The Great De-Evolution)

by Chris Dietzel

  There is no point to visiting the administrative portion of the building, where the principal and vice principal would lecture misbehaving students on the importance of not having their bad behavior recorded on a make-believe “permanent record.” There is no telling what might lie in the janitor’s closet.

  For all she knows, every part of the school, save the gymnasium, might have already been turned back over to the wilderness the way the school’s parking lot has been. All it takes is one broken window and the weeds, dirt, grass, animals, and everything else that was supposed to be the outside world, quickly becomes part of the inside world.

  There are days she wishes a storm would just go ahead and end everything. On the days she is feeling sorry for herself, questioning if she can even provide adequate care to those who depend on her, she wishes it could all be taken out of her control. There is no chance she would end things herself, but if God was ready for her, she wouldn’t complain when she was called. A category-5 hurricane would certainly accomplish that.

  Other days, she is glad for the time she has, counts herself lucky to have a solid roof over her head and a purpose in her days. These are the times she prays for the storms to leave her alone. She is thankful, even if she is surrounded by people who can’t communicate with her, that she has time to think about not only her life, but all life.

  It’s impossible not to think about your place within the entirety of mankind when you are surrounded by sixty-four mouths that rely wholly and singly on you. She thinks of lions caring for their cubs. She thinks of early cavemen confronting the unknowns of the world as they tried to keep their children alive. And she even thinks of the Earth as a tiny speck in the galaxy, about how, in the end, the sun is not so different from a lioness or a scared man in a cave. Every part of the universe, she thinks, is dependent on something else. It is a beautiful, yet delicate framework. Just look at how quickly dinosaurs vanished from the earth. A single meteor! And look at how it only takes one lifetime for all of mankind to disappear from the planet. Indeed, life is delicate.

  When she thinks of her own place in the universe as one microscopic grain of life on one minuscule planet in one tiny solar system, she wonders if there is anything at all to learn from mankind’s existence or if the entire thing was nothing more than a cosmic coincidence that has run its course. If she knew for sure that there was a god watching out for her, she would know there were lessons she was supposed to gain from what has taken place during the span of her life. But knowing the great expanse that is out there—billions of stars, trillions of planets—she knows there is nothing truly significant about her place in the cosmos, even if there is a higher power.

  Maybe life is measured by the first time you question your place in the world and by the final answer you come up with.

  Amongst the rows of Blocks that she and Elaine assigned life stories to, there is a minister, a Zen master, a philosopher, and a therapist. Between the four of them, they should be able to provide some clarity. Instead, each one contradicts the others, leaving her more confused than before.

  The minister looks up at the stars and tells her, “Only God could create something so majestic and immense. Who are we to question his work?”

  The Zen master looks into the palm of his hand. “It is not only the universe that is infinite, it is each of us. We all have different realities regarding the same events. Your consciousness is timeless and spaceless, too!”

  The philosopher looks at one tiny piece of dirt on the floor and says, “That single little crumb is your life. Look at how tiny it is compared to the gymnasium. And think of everything that exists outside these doors.”

  The therapist frowns and says, “The room is only as big or small as it makes you feel. Oftentimes, a feeling of being overwhelmed during a crisis is due to abandonment issues.”

  “All four of you, please shut up.”

  “We’re only trying to help,” they say in unison.

  “Screw off,” she says, giving them the finger and walking to a different area of the group home.

  This is exactly why she doesn’t bother asking them the questions that are always bouncing around in her head; they don’t know any more than she does.

  10

  Denial does not work. Even as she tries to convince herself that he might have stopped checking his e-mail regularly, considering how long it took for her to reply, each passing day makes it a little tougher to hold out hope that Daniel will ever write her again. Time is denial’s mortal enemy and is always victorious against it. After a week, she no longer checks her e-mail every night. Another week after that, she forces herself to check but without any expectation of finding a new note. This silence is different from the one she put him through. Hers was vexing, inconsiderate. His, she fears, is permanent.

  She didn’t reply to his e-mail because she didn’t know what to say. How do you tell someone who is all alone that everything will be okay, especially if you aren’t sure that it will be? What words can comfort someone who realizes they are completely responsible for so many other lives?

  Only now, with Elaine gone, does she too have these fears. Now she understands what Daniel must have been going through when he wanted to hear from her. She still doesn’t have the words that could have reassured him, made him believe everything would be okay, but providing any reply at all would have been better than nothing. She knows this now.

  Now that it’s too late, she thinks, punishing herself.

  Getting through each day is a little tougher than it was the day before. Without Elaine, she not only has to take care of the Blocks in her charge, she has to take care of herself, do all of the cleaning, maintenance, everything. When the tasks were split between her and Elaine, they would each care for thirty-two Blocks and then divide the other chores. Morgan would clean their beds and wash the dishes while Elaine prepared meals and emptied any mousetraps. Every once in a while, just for variety, one of them would take care of all four quadrants of Blocks while the other person slept in, relaxed, and rested. This was a rarity, though. Like finding a dollar on the ground. Like seeing a beautiful rainbow. Both of them knew that caring for the entire gymnasium’s population wasn’t something their bodies could do for an extended period. They were simply too old.

  She could use a day of rest now. Each knuckle on every finger aches and, periodically through the day, locks in place until she rubs them loose again. Her legs feel like she has shin splints, the type she used to have after hour-long runs as a teenager, even though all she does now is shuffle from bed to bed. It takes a little longer each day to make it all the way through the rows of Blocks and get to bed. It takes a little more energy. It wears her out.

  “Buck up now,” Jimbo calls out. “If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.”

  “That doesn’t even make sense,” she replies. “No one else is around to do it. And, I might add, I wish it were easy.”

  All he can offer in return is a stubborn, “Whatever.”

  It’s only after she is sure she will never hear from Daniel that she allows herself to begin replaying her final days with Elaine.

  “Don’t do that,” Jimbo warns. “As soon as you start thinking about the past, old demons will haunt you. Trust me, after I caught the Block Slasher, I—“

  “Not now,” she says.

  “Whatever.”

  It has been two weeks since her friend passed away. Between looking forward to Daniel’s response and taking care of the Blocks from the moment she wakes to the time she goes to bed, she has been able to avoid thinking of the things Elaine said that final night.

  “Please… don’t let them get me,” her friend had whispered. The words echo in Morgan’s head as she tries to think of something or someone that may have plagued Elaine’s nightmares. Who would she have been afraid of? Who would she need protection from? Maybe her friend was simply an arachnophobe and had dreams of spiders crawling on her skin.

  “They come for me… at the end…”

&n
bsp; Did Elaine know she was going to die that night? Had she seen something to make her believe she was going to close her eyes and never open them again? Who was coming for her? How did she know it was her end?

  At the time, Morgan had discounted the words as the nonsense of someone with an incredibly high fever. Alone now, with nothing to do but replay the final statements, she can only take the words seriously and try to figure out what they might have meant.

  Even with these thoughts troubling her, she is so tired she can close her eyes and fall right away to asleep. Her legs buckle. She opens her eyes and catches herself before hitting the ground.

  Standing at the sixty-forth bed, she realizes she must have put her head down on the last Block and fallen asleep while still on her feet. She shuffles over to her own bed, gives a groan as she lowers herself onto the skinny mattress, and closes her eyes. The longer she stays up and dwells on whether Elaine’s remarks were due to fever-induced hallucinations or were the scared thoughts of a dying woman, the less time she has to rest her body before she must once again start making her way from cot to cot, body to body.

  11

  She cannot keep up. The first few days of taking care of all of the Blocks wasn’t too bad because the responsibility was still fresh and she was focused on Elaine’s health. The next week, as she waited for a reply from Daniel, she pushed through the chores just so she could finish the day by checking her e-mail. But even then, as she forced her way through each row of beds in anticipation of the little reward she allowed herself, she noticed the rounds taking a little longer each day. The change was almost imperceptible at first. She finished by eleven o’clock at night. The next day, ten minutes later. The day after that, eleven-twenty. By the end of the first week, she wasn’t finishing until midnight. After two weeks, she isn’t done cleaning and repositioning the final Block until one in the morning.

  When will it end?

  I can’t keep doing this, she thinks.

  But she persists. Another week goes by. She is tired before she even starts her rounds. It is two o’clock in the morning when she finishes. Exhausted, her attention to detail fades. Late at night, only three Blocks away from being done for the day, she looks back at the previous Block she has just finished caring for and realizes she forgot to screw the tube to the Block’s IV back into his nutrient bag. Without it, he would starve and quickly die.

  I must be getting tired. Where is my mind?

  Little mistakes keep occurring. In the middle of her rounds, she can’t remember which Block she has just finished cleaning and which was to be cared for next. She imagines herself, an old woman shuffling slowly around the room, being recorded on some security monitor in a back office. How absurd she would seem. How futile her task.

  I’m killing myself. I can’t take this much longer.

  She still gets up at six every morning. If she sleeps in after a long day, it just means she either finishes even later the next night, or some of the Blocks go uncared for.

  She has barely begun her chores the next day before the first mistake occurs. When she looks back at a Block she has just finished repositioning, she realizes she left the body facedown. The Blocks cannot do anything for themselves; a mouth and nose pressed into a pillow could very well lead to a slow suffocation for the poor man. She shuffles back to the bed, turns the man’s face to one side, then moves on to the next cot.

  I can’t keep doing this. I’m going to drop dead and then everyone here will die.

  She spills the contents of an entire nutrient bag on the floor. Clear plasma splashes on two beds, all over her feet, up her legs. Defeated, she walks across the gym and gets a mop. By the time she is done cleaning up the mess she has made in her drowsy, zombie-like stupor, she is an hour behind her already lagging schedule.

  I’m not going to get to bed until 4 o’clock. And then the thought: I can’t do this anymore. I just can’t.

  The situation does not seem fair. She has only gotten herself into this spot because she lived when everyone else passed away. It is a burden she was never ready for, does not think she could ever be suited for.

  She tries to think of a way to continue caring for each Block. Her predicament only exists because she can’t move fast enough to tend to so many people. Even though they are sixty-four people that require very little attention, a woman of her age was never meant to perform these chores at all, not to one person, let alone row after row of them. She changes their nutrient bags once a day. This gives them hydration and nutrition. She changes their Block diapers once a day. She washes their bodies every other day. They are repositioned twice a week. This is to prevent bedsores. They used to be moved more frequently, back when there were more care workers. She has given up on brushing their teeth. This was the first sacrifice that had to be made so their collective health was sustained.

  But even these simple, basic needs—food, cleanliness—have become too much for one person. Beginning her rounds as soon as she wakes up makes no difference. If she wakes at four in the morning, she starts her rounds. Her conscience does not let her go back to sleep because sleep means all of these people, people who are relying on her, are going without care longer than they should.

  There are no vacations. She cannot take days off. There is no one to alternate duties with. She no longer bothers to clean her dirty dishes. She pulls a filthy plate out of the sink and puts new food on it because that saves a couple of minutes.

  Naively, she once thought if she merely moved faster, she could still care for each person the way she used to when Elaine was here. There is no pace to quicken, though, when you are ninety-three years old.

  Maybe if I only clean them once every three days. Maybe if I only reposition them once a week.

  But this is desperation speaking. This line of thought is how the quality of life begins to diminish past the point anyone would consider acceptable. Bedsores will begin to develop if she only cleans them every three days, if she only adjusts their arms and legs a few times each month. Infections will spread. She won’t allow that to happen to her Blocks. She has already stopped shaving the men’s faces and combing the women’s hair. She no longer takes the time to offer a loving caress on each person’s hand or cheek. There is nothing else she can cut back on to help get through all the chores for every Block. Yet continuing with such little sleep is not realistic. It will kill her. If she dies, the people she is caring for will all die too.

  I can’t keep doing this.

  Only two thirds of the way through her chores, she is already so exhausted that she needs to put her head on the closest cot and regain her balance. The very real thought crosses her mind that she could crawl into bed next to the Block already positioned there and take a week-long nap. The Block does not move over to make room for her. He does not offer an encouraging smile.

  She thinks about lying down on the floor and sleeping there, even though her own bed is only a hundred feet away. Too far when she is this tired. Sleep beckons to her. But she is already struggling to finish her chores in one day; a nap would mean she wouldn’t finish until the next morning. And then, the following night, she wouldn’t be done until the next afternoon. Any semblance of a 24-hour schedule would be gone. She would find herself working through the night, through the mornings. Without a boundary of time, she would collapse.

  I can’t keep doing this.

  It’s not an option to stop at midnight and leave some of the people uncared for. Even if there were only two more Blocks left to be cleaned and fed, she couldn’t go to sleep knowing they have to wait for basic care that everyone else has already received. Her conscience wouldn’t let her sleep. She could walk back to her own cot, but a voice in the back of her head would keep reminding her of the people who were wearing shit-filled diapers. This thought would force her back out of bed. It’s a losing battle. She knows this.

  Some days, she thinks the entire group should band together and suffer equally, as long as it means everyone survives. This is how countries unit
e during wars. It’s how families come together after tragedies. But what is the point of sixty-five people (she includes herself, even though she is the caretaker and the only person in the building with a real voice) suffering each day? What is the point of anyone waking up just to be miserable, go about their business, and go to sleep? Just so they can say they got through another miserable day?

  The conclusion seems obvious. One should perish so that the rest can be healthy. That’s how animals in the wild ensure the highest number of their offspring end up living. It’s the foundation of the predator/prey relationship.

  She knows what she has to do, and yet she still has nine decades of worries keeping her stuck in inaction. What would her parents think of what she is going to do? What would Elaine say? What would God think? If the history of the world somehow continued after there was no one around to document it, would she be remembered as a savior to the remaining few, or as the world’s last murderer?

  She is standing over Justin’s bed. The very last Block of the night. Justin, who has never hurt anyone, neither physically nor emotionally. Justin, who from the first day of his existence to his last, has been quiet and motionless. Justin, who Elaine once said was a mountain climber, the final person ever to reach the summit of Mount Everest. He would have stayed on top of the mountain and looked down at the rest of the world for the remainder of his life if he could have. If the weather had allowed it. When you are on top of that mountain, looking out at the expanse of the world, the blur of black earth and white snow mixing everywhere, only the cold and the lack of oxygen can force you away.