The Man Who Watched The World End

by Dietzel, Chris

  Of course, the things I say are to settle my own nerves too. More and more I find myself checking to make sure Andrew isn’t scared when the lights flicker or when a bear lumbers up to the patio and sniffs around. He has never been scared of these things, so my motive for checking must have more to do with me than with him. Still, I can’t help myself.

  The dog sat there for a while, resting on the warm wooden planks as though there weren’t predators all around. It tilted its head side to the side a couple of times, amused by my interest in it, before repositioning itself to watch me a giant brown bear lumber anything thoughsp through the glass. Other times, it had its back to me so it could watch the woods, make sure it wasn’t attacked.

  If it was domesticated—if there were still pets—I’m confident I could have brought it inside and it would have sat next to Andrew. It would protect my brother from anything that could cause him harm. I thought about leaving a bowl of water for it or using the food generator to make it something that resembled dog food, but when I came back from the kitchen it was gone. A while later I heard barking from the forest and found myself hoping it wasn’t that same dog because what ever dog was making the noises was soon yelping and crying before going silent. A pack of wolves howled then. I knew they had made a meal out of the unlucky animal. The only way I’ll know if it was that dog or a random Dalmatian or Pit-bull is if the yellow pup comes back to my patio again tomorrow or the next day. I have to admit, I hope it does. Having the dog around makes me feel like things could go back to normal if I could just get through this rough patch.

  I don’t like mentioning it, but I’m almost out of books to burn. After the books, there won’t be much of anything left to set on fire. I refuse to sit at the window all day with the hope that a truck will pull into our community. I do, though, find myself turning the TV’s volume lower just in case an engine announces our salvation.

  January 11Why do I sneak off after dinner each night to record my thoughts? Is it merely to keep track of them?

  There are probably thousands of similar diaries scattered around the country, in every abandoned little Midwest town, in every metropolitan area, and all the places in between. Before the Great De-evolution, diaries were passed down through the generations. Mine will stay here without anyone to inherit it. But mine is no different from thousands of others. There are forgotten pages all around the world, abandoned, each one containing stories of what their daily life was like, of dreams that were longed for, some achieved, others left to remain fleeting fantasies. All of them will go unread.

  How many other prized memories around the world are being forgotten on a daily basis? The last of my books are gone. My baseball cards and comics were already turned to ash in the fireplace. Is this what other diaries talk about?

  For the first time in three weeks, I didn’t start a fire in the chimney today. No one has driven past to investigate the home with two men still living in it. Other than the Johnsons’ SUV, I doubt a car has come within a hundred miles of our house in the time I’ve been setting fire to my old hobbies.

  I thought I heard an engine the other day, but when I opened my front door there was no noise and I realized the sound must have been my furnace. An hour later, I thought I heard an airplane flying overhead. From the low rumble, it sounded like a giant 747. Planes haven’t taken flight in years, though. Especially not something enormous like the one I thought I heard today. Even as I was listening to it, I knew it wasn’t really there, that the sky would be empty if I went outside and looked up at the clouds, that my ears were just transforming another noise from my house into something that might offer hope.

  I considered scavenging the house for other materials to burn, maybe blankets or boxes of Christmas ornaments, but even if someone did spot us, why would they do anything to help? Even if they did see the smoke in the distance, why would they risk going out of their way with the roads in their current condition? They would already have enough problems of their own. Everyone left is either living in one of the final group communities or they are like me: dispersed throughout once-bustling neighborhoods, taking care of their Block relatives and themselves as best as they can after everyone else has left. Why would they want the burden of taking Andrew and me in as well?

  For this reason, I’ve come to realize the option of leaving Camelot doesn’t exist for Andrew and me the way it used to. By watching movies with him I tried to make it seem like any other day, but I found myself thinking about what we would do tomorrow and the next day and the day after that instead of paying attention to what was on the TV. If I can act like it’s just another normal day, maybe I can start believing it.

  Even if I wanted to take Andrew away from our home to join one of the last communities, we would have a flat tire after a quarter mile. The last thing I would need is to get stuck out there. The bears would get me unless the dogs got me first. I like to imagine, if our car did break down, that I could throw Andrew on my shoulder and begin south as though the car was a luxury. The pair of shotguns I would be carrying would leave a trail of animal carnage hundreds of miles long. I would only stop long enough to reload new shells. And when the hike was completed, I would let Andrew gently slide from my shoulder into the waiting arms of caretakers who are ready to ensure he had the care and attention he would need if anything ever happens to me.

  Ha! Wishful thinking.qou do

  I return to the question of why I am driven to write down my thoughts and actions each day. Am I returning, in a way, to being an overwhelmed child, feeling the need to fill a page’s lines with my daily worries the way a lovesick elementary school girl might? Unlike my youth, when I simply felt like no one else understood the things that troubled me, I now only have the choice between confiding in my Block brother, who can never offer a reply, or confessing to a blank screen. Anything said to a Block, even my dear Andrew, is gone as soon as it leaves my lips. Things written down at least have a chance to leave a soft echo of what had been.

  January 12There’s no telling how old the current oldest living person is. I wonder how close I am to taking their spot on the podium. Maybe there’s a woman in Japan who has me beat by twenty years. There could be a man in India who makes me look like a youngster. But what happens when they both pass away? What happens when the oldest woman in Italy dies? All of it puts me one step closer.

  There used to be a website that tracked the oldest living person. It was intended to give people inspiration, the thought being that even if they felt old by the time they were seventy or eighty, there was always someone out there who was their senior; life wasn’t as close to ending as it sometimes seemed. One of the things no one thought of when the Blocks appeared and the last regular generation got a little older each year was the effect of only being around other old people. My grandfather, sent to an old age home by my father the year after I was born, is probably laughing his ass off right now. If all you see are old people, you feel older. Another person you know dies every day. Everyone around you is complaining of arthritis and talking about the good ol’ days. Sometimes they die of cancer. Sometimes they die of a heart attack. The end result is always the same. That was why the website tracking the oldest living person didn’t work: because it was one name one day and another name the next day. The following week there was yet another person listed. Each name change made everyone else feel like they were one step closer to the end. It was easier to grow old when the end wasn’t flaunted in your face. When it could be ignored.

  A similar website tracked the youngest regular person. It was even more of a disaster than the site for old people. The youngest boy was born in Sweden nearly six years after Andrew was born, when 99.999999% of children born were Blocks. His celebrity had nothing to do with hit songs or athletic accomplishments. He became a celebrity solely because he was the last normal person who would ever be born. That’s a lot of pressure—the children of celebrities had nothing on this kid. The boy had a difficult time adjusting to his fame because his stardom was a
reflection of manqci about ve been’s final hope for a normal life. In an interview on the evening news one night, the kid said he despised the stares he got everywhere he went. Senior citizens routinely asked for his autograph. By the time he was in middle school he was hooked on every kind of drug a Swedish boy could get his hands on. By the time he was in high school he had nearly died three different times from overdoses and was admitted to a drug rehab facility. Four years later, he was found in a bathtub with his wrists slit. A note on the bathroom floor didn’t try to apologize or explain: “Now you can find someone else to put your hopes on.”

  The website held a contest to find the next youngest person but no one cared. Everyone had bigger concerns at that point than if a woman in Moscow was a day younger than a woman in Panama City and three days younger than a man in Vietnam. People realized they didn’t want to see what was, essentially, a clock counting down humanity’s last days.

  It’s been forty years since I thought about the youngest living regular person or the oldest. But now I find myself wondering how many of the thousand or so people left are younger than I am and how many are older. Am I smack in the middle of the group or am I leaning closer to the oldest person than to the youngest? Does it really matter if I’m closer to one side than the other? Part of me feels it does. Or, at least, it should. I would like to think everyone remaining is older than I am. At least that will give Andrew time to pass on before me.

  January 13A crippling chest pain racked my lungs today, throwing me into another coughing fit. It was impossible not to think I might be having a heart attack. I’m not even sure what it actually feels like to have a heart attack. That said, at the time, I was sure I was having one. I grabbed my chest where the pain was. No matter how many times I tried to let new air fill my lungs I just couldn’t make it happen. The pain kept choking me. I went to the kitchen and got a glass of water. The pain faded a minute later. After it was gone I felt fine again. If the Johnsons were here and I told them about it, they probably would have joked that it was just indigestion.

  Andrew sat on the sofa the entire time I was grabbing my chest. He didn’t budge as I struggled to breathe. His eyes, closed, never once flickered. Out of instinct I called to him for help. Even in my pain I blushed from embarrassment after forgetting my predicament.

  The pain came back an hour later, even worse this time. Only when the pain subsided a third time did I realize it really was nothing more than a bad case of indigestion, or, at least, I startXe about ve beened to realize it was closer to the symptoms of indigestion than what I knew about heart attacks.

  There was a time, not long ago, when I could do sit-ups while telling jokes, or pushups while people sat on my back. Tonight I was almost crippled by indigestion. How painful it is to get older. Not just in my joints and my bad back, but in the knowledge of all the things I could once do that I no longer can.

  I never used to get headaches; now I get them all the time. Of course, I also never used to have chest pains, stomach pains, an aching back, knees that grind and feel like they’re going to explode when I crouch down, or a constant cough. Somewhere up there, every senior citizen I ever smirked at when I was a kid is returning my smug look now that I know what it’s like.

  At various times throughout the day, a wave of pain hits my heart, making it impossible to breathe. Each time this happens I feel like I’m one step closer to dying. It’s as though I have a limited number of times I can have that chest pain before I count down to zero and drop dead. Part of me wishes I knew what that magic number was so I could relax all the other times the pain comes. The other part of me is glad I don’t have a set amount of days to count down, to worry about what will happen to Andrew when my cold body starts rotting on the kitchen floor.

  Oh, what it was like to run sprints in high school and feel fine afterward, to play hide-and-go-seek and never get tired, to play capture the flag like it was guerilla warfare. As a kid, I used to scale fences, jump off rooftops, and swing from trees—all in the name of childhood fun—without a single worry given to my wellbeing. I remember one time after high school, I put Andrew on my bike and guided it back and forth across the driveway so he could experience what it was like. My mom watched from the living room window, one of the biggest smiles I’ve ever seen stretched across her face. There’s no way I could get Andrew on a bike these days, and absolutely no way I could keep him balanced on it. If we tried that again now he would fall on his side and break his hip. The effort might even give me the heart attack I fear is on the horizon.

  I was young once. I was invincible. I just need to keep reminding myself what it was like.

  After the pain had gone I went to the sofa and took a seat next to Andrew. His eyes were open again. I tried to make a joke out of it by telling him he slept through the whole thing. Even if he could have, I doubt he would have laughed.

  I do everything in my power to ensure he stays healthy and has a long life. But while I do this, I also don’t want him to outlive me. Even with lingering Xaredo fears of dying first, I can’t do anything other than take care of him as best as I can. Doing anything else would go against what my parents wanted. So I base my day around his needs. When he gets sick, I take care of him. When he has an accident, I clean him up. And I would gladly do more. If a bear got in the house I would stand between it and Andrew and fight it to the death in order to protect my brother. He doesn’t know what’s happening to him; he doesn’t know me from the Johnsons or anyone else; he doesn’t know anything. And yet I love him so much it hurts.

  It’s times like this, when I think about our eventual fates, that I can’t help but imagine us joining one of the communities. Andrew would have a support group in case I did pass away first. The worst part of Andrew’s lot is that his fortune is tied to mine. It seemed like the best course to stay where we were, to stick it out. Why pick up and move when we were in a familiar place, in a house we loved? Now, alone, all I can do is hope my decisions don’t cause Andrew undue pain, that if the end does come for him, it comes because it’s his time and not because I’m dead on the kitchen floor.

  He has never said or done anything hurtful toward anyone else. He has never neglected anyone. He has never done anything except grow older in peace and quiet. If there’s a better candidate for who deserves a long and healthy life, I don’t know who it could be.

  The role of caretaker is not one I fancied playing as a little boy. If you told me then that I would have to clean my brother’s ass each day, I would have laughed and yelled, “Gross!” the same way I did the first time an older kid from down the street said I should try to kiss Megan Simpleskin. Now, I don’t think twice when I wipe the crap off Andrew and get him cleaned up. There’s no grudge to hold with him for any of it. This goes beyond his being a Block; it’s just part of getting older to have to take care of someone that way.

  My mother once told me a story of a time when my dad was bedridden with the flu. They were newlyweds, still young and energetic. In the middle of the night, as he shivered in his sleep, he accidently soiled the sheets. My mother said she told him to stay under the warm blankets, moving him just enough so she could clean the dirty part of the bed and then also his dirty backside, and then she had him roll back over and go back to sleep. My father, she said, was in such a bad state that if she didn’t clean him, he would have lain in his own shit until the fever broke. She loved him, and that’s what loved ones have to do eventually. It took me a while to grow up, but I finally learned that for myself.

  Cleaning familial crap is one thing, but I still wonder what I would have done in our younger years if I was bathing Andrew one night and he got an involuntary erection. It wouldn’t be because of anything I was doing. He wouldn’t even have the where-with-allqrgedo to be embarrassed by the display. Maybe I would ignore it and finish shaving his chin as quickly as possible, another chore completed. Maybe I would leave the bathroom and come back when it was gone. How did the siblings of female Blocks handle it once a month when the
y also needed feminine caretaking? Thank God Andrew never had those problems.

  I only have one brother, yet I find myself exhausted each evening from taking care of him. I find myself bringing his toothbrush into the living room and brushing his teeth there. My shoulders ache from the simple act of keeping the electric shaver running back and forth over his cheeks. The days I skip shaving him he actually resembles a man going through the normal stages of life rather than someone drifting along for almost eighty years. When I was younger I could yank him up from the sofa and carry him in my arms to the bathroom. At the time, I liked thinking it must have resembled a scene from an old movie in which a firefighter was the protagonist. My mom used to laugh hysterically when I would carry Andrew under my arm like he was a heavy suitcase. Now, though, on the few occasions when I still think it worthwhile to move him, it takes me the better part of an hour to keep repositioning him off the sofa and onto his wheelchair.

  Oscar, always more observant and passive-aggressive than we gave him credit for (he was, after all, the same dog that routinely crapped on the carpet if he felt slighted), would have been jealous of the treatment Andrew receives. The dog wasn’t allowed on the sofa, let alone allowed to sleep and crap on it.

  This just goes to show how my priorities change depending on my circumstances. Fifty years ago I wouldn’t let my dog jump up on the sofa because I didn’t want to get fur on the fabric. Now I let my own brother sit on the same sofa that he has shit on a hundred times over. If you had told me back then that this is how things would turn out I probably would have joined everyone else in New Orleans or Miami. It’s amazing how much one person can stand if there are only small changes from one day to the next. My circumstances here don’t seem too terrible today because I saw what it was like yesterday and the day before that. Changes to Andrew, to me, to our house, to the neighborhood, are all at a snail’s pace. If I could magically go from how life was forty years ago to how life is today, I would pack my things as quickly as possible and see if I could get to the settlement before the Johnsons.