The Apocalypse Reader

by Justin Taylor (Editor)

  If you crawl out the hole in the back fence, right away you're on the road to town.

  "A pointless coming and going," they'll say, and I'll say, "That's exactly what I'm after."

  I've lived all this time a different kind of pointless coming and going: Concerts and plays and then reading all the books one should read-that everybody else was reading, so how could you not read them? But this will be a different kind of pointless. I don't care what they think.

  THEY!

  Why can't they just take me for granted like most children do? Being chased by your own children. How could that happen? Being followed and watched.

  I suppose to catch me out, non compos mentis. Mentos? If that's what it's called. Mentis sanos? If I can remember the words for it, how can it be true? Except I don't remember.

  THEY'LL SEE ME if I leave in the daytime.

  IT'S ONE OF those nights with a fingernail moon. It's one of those nights with a cold wind. Who'd expect Grandma to be out in this weather and at this hour? Who'd expect Grandma to be walking down the road to town, leaning against the wind. (It's been a long time since I was allowed to drive.)

  That's my son behind the arborvitae. My middle daughter by the carport. (Carport without a car.) I see her shadow. My oldest? I don't know where she is.

  "Mama, you're not as young as you think you are." (I am. I am. Exactly as young as I think I am. I'm maybe even a little more so.)

  I'll be set upon by this and that. Snarling dogs let free to roam at night. Maybe there's other snarling people like myself out here. Hard rain or hail. Smells that sting the nose. Sky, a preposterous overdose of stars. If I fall asleep behind a creosote bush, what will come get me?

  I suppose I ought to trust in some sort of god or other. There's one under every bush. At least I hope so. Feats of faith. I can do that.

  Here I am, gone. Forever. So far, forever. I regret my books. The children will keep all the wrong ones. The good ones will get thrown in the garbage. My best scarf-they'll think it's just any old scarf. They don't know I got it from my own grandma. I told them, but they forget.

  WHAT I'VE DONE for them! It was endless! Of course that was a long time ago.

  But after that, what I've done for my art! If that is art. I don't know what to call it. I could call it leisure time. My hard-working leisure time. Most of it spent looking out the window.

  But art is ... was my life. I mean looking out the window so as to think about it was.

  I always had plenty of ideas. I didn't exactly have them. They grewlittle by little, a half an idea at a time. First, part of a phrase and then a person to go with it. After a person, then a little corner of a place for the person to be in.

  CAN I MAKE it through town before morning? It's six miles to the other end of it. If I do, I might be able to get my usual nap. I could rest in the ditch by the side of the road.

  I've disguised myself. Big floppy hat, sand-colored bathrobe.... (I forgot not to wear my slippers.) I had a hard time deciding how I could be unobtrusive and yet not be like myself, because I've always tried to look unobtrusive. There's those earth colors which I always wear anyway.

  I already stay in the corners and the shadows. I already never look people in the eye. I already hunch over. Now I'm shuffling because my slippers keep falling off.

  I hear footsteps. When I stop to listen, they stop, too. I knew one of them would follow. I wonder which it is? You can't get rid of your children.

  "I'm laughing at you ... whoever you are. Ha, ha, ha. Hear that?"

  Well, I can't keep stopping and listening and laughing all the time. I'd never get anywhere. I have to keep going if I want to get somewhere or other in time for anything at A. It's bad enough when your slippers won't stay on.

  IF I HAD A diary, I'd write: Next Day, or, Day Two. (I'd have to write the days that way because I don't know the date, I hardly even know if spring or summer, but that's not a sign of non compose ... whatever ... because I never did pay attention to things like that.)

  I'd write: Had a nice nap by the side of the road, and that I don't know if long or short, but a nice one. (With my sand-colored bathrobe I'll bet I looked like a pinkish/tan rock.) I'd write how I must begin working on myself. They say writing things down is a good way to begin, so I'll do that. Or will when I get the diary.

  If I'd brought money I could have bought one in town. Except I went through town at about dawn and the stores were closed. (If I'd brought a watch I'd know when.)

  WHOEVER IS FOLLOWING me has not made themselves known except in rustlings and snappings and scuffling sounds. I have to admit I'm a little bit scared.

  LIVING IN A clearing in a forest might be nice. A mountain pass would be nice, too. I'd like a view. A view can make you happy. And with a view you'd be able to see who's creeping up on you.

  I've decided. I turn, sharp left, leave the road, and start straight up. It's hard going in these slippers but I have a purpose. I'm taking charge of my own life. I know exactly what I'm doing, and when, and how much and why, and the time, which is right now.

  IT's A CUTE ... you could call it a cute pass, up there where I'm heading. The cliff walls on each side hug a marshy spot. There's an overhang to sleep under. Old icy snow to chew on. Though it's high, it's sheltered enough for there to be fairly large trees. The ground glitters all over as if with tiny chunks of gold. (If it was gold, it would be gone.) There's things to eat. I'll nibble lambs quarters and purslane. Do they grow up there? I'm probably thinking of the olden days back East. Anyway, there's wild rose hips, so small I wonder that I've ever bothered eating them but I always do.

  EVEN FROM HERE, well below that pass, you can see fairly far. I study the landscape. The orange lichen that dots the boulders looks like something left in the refrigerator too long. The sky looks as if it's got the measles.

  I see movement on the hillside below me. For sure there's something down there. I catch glimpses from the corner of my eye.

  It's inevitable, your children will track you down. There they are. I didn't actually see them, but something is out there, I'm sure of it, creeping up on me. What do they want? What do they have in store for me? If they can catch me. Of course it is my birthday-or was, a couple of days ago. Perhaps they want to have a surprise party. Perhaps their arms are full of presents, paper hats, tape recorders for the music for dancing.... What if they're bringing champagne? What a lot to carry! No wonder they haven't been able to catch me.

  If they bring me sweets, they'll have forgotten I can't eat chocolate. If blouses, they'll be too big. (A mother is supposed to be bigger than the children, but they forget I'm the smallest now.) If paper hats, I suppose I'll have to put one on. If horns, I suppose I'll have to blow one.

  Maybe, if I can get far enough ahead, they'll give up. I try to hurry but it's getting steeper. At least, if they're carrying all those things, they're having a hard time, too. The champagne will be the heaviest. I suppose they'll have those plastic champagne glasses you have to put together, and I suppose they think that'll be a good job for Grandma. I won't do it. They can't make me.

  IF I DID have a diary, and if I did write anything in it, it would be misunderstood anyway, just like everything I say is, so the first thing I'd write (page one, January first) should be: That isn't what I mean at all.

  But I'd rather write about how my feet hurt and how it looks like rain.

  ONCE I GET up there, I may have to stay forever. I might not be able to climb down. A long time ago when I was still spry, I came up to that very spot to die, but I didn't die after all. I waited and waited but nothing happened except I had my usual dizzy spell. I had to climb back down, though I had to wait until the spell passed. Good I hadn't told anybody.

  THIS TIME I haven't thought (even at my age!) about what would be the best way to die. I know I should, but, after I didn't die back then at the top of my favorite pass, thinking about it began to seem a waste of valuable time. I was contemplating art. That seemed the important thing to do.

/>   But, from now on, what to hope for out of life (and art)? Or is it the art part that's done with? I'm still full of longing ... so much longing ... for.... I don't know what, but I'm breathless with it.

  I lie down with a rock for a pillow. I rest a long time. When I wake up, I think: Day two or day three or day four? Even if I had a diary I'd be all mixed up already.

  BUT NOW I'M THINKING perhaps my own attic is the best place to disappear into. I could go down to the kitchen any time I wanted. I could get clean underwear. They say, "East or West, home is best."

  I start back. It'll be easier going down because I won't keep stepping out of my slippers all the time.

  SOMETHING STREAKS BY. Lights up the whole sky. Dizzying, dazzling even in the daytime. (Talk about spots in front of your eyes!) Well now, there's something beautiful. One nice thing is happening on my birthday. (If it still is my birthday.)

  The ground shakes. Boulders come bounding down-whole sides of mountains....

  Who would have thought it, the end of the world as if just for me. Right on time, too, before my slippers give out entirely. We're all going together, the whole world and me. Isn't that nice! Best of all, I'm in at the end. I won't have to miss all the funny things that might have happened later had the world lasted beyond me. So, not such a bad birthday after all.

  SAVE ME FROM THE PIOUS

  AND THE VENGEFUL

  Lynne Tillman

  for Joe Wood 1965-1999

  OUT OF NOTHING comes language and out of language comes nothing and everything. Everything challenges the tenuous world order. Every emotion derails every other one. One rut is disrupted by the emergence of another. I like red wine, but began drinking white, with a sudden thirst, and now demand it at 6 P.M., exactly, as if my life depended upon it. That was a while ago.

  What does a life depend upon? And from whom do I beg forgiveness so quietly I'm never heard? With its remarkable colors and aftertastes, the wine, dry as wit, urges me to forgive myself. I try.

  Life's aim, Freud thought, was death. I can't know this, but maybe it's death I want, since living comes with its own exigencies, like terror. In dreams, nothing dies, but birth can't be trusted, either. I remember terrible dreams and not just my own. Memory is what everyone talks about these days. Will we remember, and what will we remember, who will be written out, ignored, or obliterated. Someone could say: They never existed. It's a singular terror.

  The names of the dead have to be repeated daily. To forget them has a meaning no one understands, but there comes a time when the fierce pain of their absence dulls and their voices become so faint they can't be heard.

  And then what do the living mean by being alive, how dare we? The year changes, the millennium, and from one day to the next, something must have been discarded, or neglected, something was abandoned, left to wither or ruin. You didn't decide to forget. People make lists, take vitamins, and they exercise. I bend over, over and over.

  I'm not good at being a pawn of history.

  The news reports that brain cells don't die. I never believed they did. The tenaciousness of memory, its viciousness really-witness the desire over history for revenge-has forever been a sign that the brain recovers. But it's unclear what it recovers.

  Try to hang on to what you can. It's all really going. So am I. Someone else's biography seems like my life. I read it and confuse it with my own. I watch a movie, convinced it happened to me. I suppose it did happen to me. I don't know what I think anymore. I don't know what I don't think. I'm someone who tells things.

  Once, I wanted to locate movie footage of tidal waves. They occurred in typical dreams. But an oceanographer told me that a tidal wave was a tsunami, it moved under the ocean and couldn't be seen. This bothered me for a long time. I wondered what it was that destroyed whole villages, just washed them away. In dreams, I'm forced to rescue myself. This morning's decision: let life rush over me. The recurring tidal wave is not about sexual thralldom, not the spectacular orgasm, not the threat of dissolution and loss of control through sex-that, too-but a wish to be overcome by life rather than to run it. To be overrun.

  I don't believe any response, like invention, is sad. The world is made up of imagining. I imagine this, too. Things circle, all is flutter. Things fall down and rise up. Hope and remorse, beauty and viciousness, and imagination, wherever it doggedly hides, unveil petulant realities. I live in my own mind, and I don't. There's scant privacy for bitterness or farting or the inexpressible; historically, there was an illusion of privacy. Illusions are necessary. The wretched inherit what no one wants.

  What separates me from the world? Secret thoughts?

  What Americans fear is the inability to have a world different from their fathers' and mothers'. That's why we move so much, to escape history.

  Margaret Fuller said: I accept the universe. I try to embrace it. But I leave it to others to imagine the world in ways I can't.

  I leave it to others.

  Out of nothing comes language and out of language comes nothing and everything. I know there will be stories. Certainly, there will always be stories.

  CONTRIBUTORS

  GRACE AGUILAP, (1816-1847) was the author of The Spirit of Judaism, The Women of Israel, and several other books of fiction and nonfiction, as well as poetry. Her novella The Perez Family was the first book about British Jews written by a Jew. "The Escape" was first published in the collection Records of Israel (1844).

  STEVE AYLETT is the author of Lint, Slaughtermatic, and a dozen other books. Though effectively about 9/11, "Gigantic" was first published in 1998.

  ROBERT BRADLEY is writing a novel in stories titled Invisible World. "Square of the Sun" is from this collection. He teaches the Alexander technique on Long Island and in NYC and works nights in a psych ward.

  DENNIS COOPER is the author of the novels God Jr. (Grove Press, 2005), The Sluts (Carroll & Graf, 2005), My Loose Thread (Canongate, 2002), and The George Miles Cycle, an interconnected sequence of five novels that comprises Closer (1989), Frisk (1991), Try (1994), Guide (1997), and Period (2000), all published by Grove Press. His books have been translated into sixteen languages. He's the editor of Little House on the Bowery, an imprint of Akashic Press. He currently lives in Paris and Los Angeles.

  LUCY CORIN's novel Everyday Psychokillers: A History for Girls was published by FC2 in 2004. Her stories appear in such publications as Ploughshares, Southern Review, Conjunctions, as Fiction International. She teaches fiction at the University of California, Davis.

  ELLIOTT DAVID is a writer and artist; he lives in New York. Contact: elliottwdavid@gmail.com.

  MATTHEW DERBY is the author of Super Flat Times. He lives in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

  CAROL EMSHWILLER's new novel, The Secret City, will be out in April 2007. Another short story collection will appear shortly after that.

  BRIAN EVENSON is the author of seven books of fiction, most recently The Open Curtain.

  NEIL GAIMAN is the critically acclaimed and award-winning creator of the Sandman series of graphic novels, and the author of several novels and children's books, the most recent of which include Anansi Boys and the short-story collection Fragile Things. Originally from England, Gaiman now lives in the United States.

  JEFF GOLDBERG is former vice president of a Fortune 500 insurance company. He lives in New York City. Contact: jeff@mixedmetaphors.net.

  THEODORA GOSS was born in Hungary. Although she grew up on the classics of English literature, her writing has been influenced by an Eastern European literary tradition in which the boundaries between the real and the fantastic are often ambiguous. She is currently completing a PhD in English literature at Boston University. Her first short-story collection, In the Forest of Forgetting, was published in 2006 by Wildside Press. Visit her at www.theodoragoss.com.

  NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (1804-1864) was the author of The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, and other classic works of American literature. "Earth's Holocaust" was first published in 1844 and then co
llected in Mosses from an Old Manse (1846).

  JARED HOHL was born and raised in southeastern Iowa. "Fraise, Menthe, et Poivre 1978" is his first published story.

  SHELLEY JACKSON is the author of Half Life, The Melancholy of Anatomy, hypertexts including the classic Patchwork Girl, several children's books, and "Skin," a story published in tattoos on the skin of 2,095 volunteers. She is cofounder of the Interstitial Library and headmistress of the Shelley Jackson Vocational School for Ghost Speakers and HearingMouth Children. She lives in Brooklyn and at www.ineradicablestain.com.

  URSULA K. LEGUIN is the internationally acclaimed author of twenty novels, ten collections of short stories, six volumes of poetry, four volumes of translation, thirteen books for children, and four collections of essays. She has three children and three grandchildren and lives in Oregon.

  STACEY LEVINE's books include My Horse and Other Stories and Dra-; her novel Frances Johnson was published last year by Clear Cut Press. She also wrote a libretto for a puppet opera about the Quileute tribes of Washington State. Formerly a creative writing instructor, she is now working on another book.

  TAO LIN is the author of the poetry collection you are a little bit happier than i am (Action Books, 2006) and the story collection Today the Sky Is Blue and White with Bright Blue Spots and a Small Pale Moon and I Will Destroy Our Relationship Today (Bear Parade, 2006). He earned an MFA in hamsters from The Pessoa Institute. His web site is http://reader-of- depressing-books.blogspot.com/.

  KELLY LINK is the author of two collections, Stranger Things Happen and Magic for Beginners. With her husband, Gavin J. Grant, she edits the fantasy half of The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror.

  H. P. LOVECRAFT (1890-1937) was the author of At the Mountains of Madness, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, and many other works of horror fiction, as well as Supernatural Horror in Literature, a nonfiction study of the genre. "Nyarlathotep" was first published in the November 1920 issue of the United Amateur.