The Man Who Watched The World End

by Dietzel, Chris

  “You poor thing,” I said to one of the bodies.

  But when I took that step forward I must have stepped on the edge of the sheet because it tugged slightly against the body underneath it. I bumped against the bed frame. In the short moment it had taken me to forget I was an old, bumbling man, I quickly remembered. The Block’s head was jostled toward me when I bumped against the mattress and frame, causing it to turn to the side as if it were going to look at me. The momentum carried it even further, though, and before I knew what was happening, the head slid completely off the edge of the pillow and fell to the floor. It thudded against the hardwood like a coconut. I’m not even sure which curse words I yelled. The head ended up on its side, staring blankly at the wall across the room.

  Everything made sense: the table in the garage with the bloody sheets, the knives in the kitchen sink, the note. I pulled the sheet away from the body to make sure. The girl was cut into pieces: foot to knee, knee to hip, torso, arms, head. Something must have made the Johnsons decide to move to one of the group communities. Maybe the Blocks were already sick at that point and the Johnsons didn’t know how to take care of them. Perhaps they didn’t want their Block sisters to suffer. One of the Block sisters could have already passed away and yelled, “April Fool!”

  Whatever it was that happened, the Johnsons thought their Block sisters would be better off with a quiet death rather than struggling to continue. Once the decision was made, they must have thought it would give their sisters a more dignified burial if they could sleep in their beds one last time. But how to get the bodies up the steps? Mark and Mindy were as old as I am. They would never, even as a team, be able carry the sisters up the steps. They had long since gotten into the habit of keeping their Block sisters downstairs on the sofas the same way I did with Andrew. One of them must have come up with the idea to cut the bodies into smaller pieces that could be carried more easily. Maybe the Blocks were already dead when they were cut to pieces, but maybe they were still alive, unable to cry out or ask why their brother and sister were doing this to them. Once upstairs, the bodies were reassembled. It would be important to Mark and Mindy to see their Block sisters look peaceful one last time. The look of serenity as the sisters lay on their own beds would give the Johnsons a sense of comfort.

  Luggage and clothes must have been filling the backseat of their SUV as they drove away that night, not bodies. My mind saw whatever it had hoped to see.

  I threw up then. The urge came over me before I had a chance to take off the breathing mask. The cotton protector around my nose and mouth filled with vomit before the rubber band broke. The mask, along with my throw-up, splashed all over the floor like a carelessly tied water balloon. Vomit covered my face, making me want to throw up again. I wiped it away with my hand, but chunks were still in my mouth and nose.

  The Block sister’s head was at my feet. It too was now covered in my puke. I gagged on my way down the steps and out the front door. I stumbled and choked the entire way back to my house, not a single thought given to being attacked by animals.

  The first thing I did was get myself cleaned up. Without the smell of vomit following me everywhere, I went and sat next to Andrew. I stayed by his side the entire night. All night, there was only one thought that circled in my head—what could make them decide that was their best course of action? Until then they had been no different than me. Every time we sat down for a dinner together they understood my goals and the things that worried me. I understood the same things about them. And yet, when the time came, they gave up and decided enough was enough. Neither of them had ever made the slightest comment, even a joke in passing, to hint this might happen. There was never a Freudian slip or a troubled look to tell me they were capable of killing their Block sisters and leaving the neighborhood.

  I thought about going back down the street, picking the head off the bedroom floor, and putting it back on the mattress where it belonged, but I couldn’t bring myself toq. aof leave my house again that day. It was sunny and bright outside the following day. The light was rude; anything other than rain clouds seemed inappropriate. I couldn’t bring myself to open my front door that day either. When I did eventually go outside it was only to walk around my lawn in circles. The smell, even though it had to be out there still, no longer registered with me, and I wondered how much of it had been real and how much my mind had exaggerated.

  January 31How did the Johnsons come to their decision? How can I ensure I don’t go down a path that leads to the same conclusion? I’m a normal guy. They were normal people. Will illogical thoughts start creeping in until I pay them too much attention and end up doing something I would never have thought possible? Is this what happens when you’re isolated from other people for too long?

  My goal is to go back down the street and burn the entire house down. I’m rational enough to realize the wind could catch the flames and set the next house on fire, and then the next house, and then the next, until suddenly my home is on fire too. Andrew would be burned alive. If that happened, I would be okay with it because I would be there next to him. At least I would be with my brother at the end. At least Andrew would have me sitting on the sofa with my arm around him.

  It didn’t dawn on me earlier, when I had these thoughts, that this line of thinking could have been exactly how the Johnsons morphed from normal people to monsters.

  February 1I made my way down the street again today, this time to do what the Johnsons should have done. The jug of gasoline in the wheel barrel was part of my final reserves from the days when I thought I might still leave Camelot. It sloshed the entire way down the street as if complaining that it didn’t want to be used for this purpose. A book of matches was kept safe in my pocket. If the animals decided to attack me, my only defense would be splashing gas in their general direction. A large dog watched me from down the street. It must have sensed I was on a mission because it seemed nervous and chose not to approach.

  I only managed to circle the garage, front porch, and the side of the house before the gas was gone. I left the plastic container on the ground where some of the gasoline had pooled. The book of matches gave a scratch when I rubbed one of the sticks against it'aspsp es side. A small flame appeared. Then the line of gasoline burst into flames. The fire, unlike everything I had seen in movies, was slow to spread. At first I thought it might put itself out. Hollywood had taught me the house would explode into a ball of fire with me ducking for cover.

  I knew I could have burned the house down more easily if I went inside and poured the gas there, but nothing could have made me go inside again. Eventually, the flames got bigger, crawled up the side of the house. Happy with my work, I walked back down the street, to my home and to Andrew. From my porch, I watched the fire spread. It only took a couple of minutes before the house was completely engulfed in flames. After half an hour it burned to the ground. The other nearby houses never caught fire. No sirens sounded. No fire trucks arrived. No other neighbors came out of their houses to see what was happening. I went back inside after the house collapsed on itself. The fire kept burning for another three hours after that. It is still smoldering.

  February 2As happens so frequently these days, the Labrador arrived on my patio again this afternoon. It sat on the other side of the door as though expecting to be let inside. Its scarred flanks, a reminder of what it does when it isn’t relaxing on my deck, were highlighted pink under the sunlight. As I stood by the glass door the dog panted and stared at me the same way Oscar used to when he had finished doing his business and wanted to come back inside. My initial reaction was to do just that, to open the door and let it in. Anything else seemed neglectful of the dog’s wellbeing.

  I’m not sure why I feel like its health should fall on my shoulders. Minus the scars on its side, it looks like an animal I would take for walks, let sleep at the foot of my bed. But it comes from the forest, a grey wolf stuck in the adorable yellow costume of man’s best friend.

  “What’s it like out there
in the woods?” I asked it. I gave a pause for a response that would never come. “Do you run into a lot of bears out there?” Another brief pause, another non-response. “If I didn’t think you’d bite me, you could come inside and get some food.”

  It drank from the bowl until there was no water left. It did seem like a happy animal. A pleasant vision—the dog becoming the third member of our family—often makes me smile, as it did at that moment. It would be a perfect pet. I was broken out of my fantasy when the dog growled at a noise coming from the woods. The true scenario, if this animal were let into our home, would be discovered the next morning: I would wake up with a justly deserved premonition of violence, go out to the living roomqte I sp to check on Andrew, and find him in the middle of the floor with the dog on top of him. The animal would be feasting on my brother’s intestines after tearing open his stomach. Andrew would still be alive, just barely, while all of this was happening. He would never be able to scream.

  “You almost tricked me,” I said to the dog, the closed patio door still between us.

  A noise must have sounded that the animal could hear but that I could not because its head bolted upright and its nose pointed toward the forest wall. It stayed perfectly still for a second, then jumped over the patio railing and disappeared into the trees. A moment later, from a different corner of the yard, a brown bear lumbered out of the woods. It walked across my lawn until it was in the middle of my backyard. The bear looked at me, then at the forest, curious as to which way the dog had vanished. I got the feeling the bear was reminding the nearby animals that it could go where ever it wanted. It was nobody’s servant. I opened the patio door just far enough to bring the water dish back inside. It was important to make sure nothing outside would entice the bear to stay any longer than it already wanted. The last thing I needed was a pet bear in addition to my new Labrador.

  I turned toward Andrew. “He seems like he would make a nice pet, don’t you think?”

  Andrew stared straight ahead. I’m not too senile yet to forget the Labrador will do whatever he needs in order to survive. Sure, he would probably rather be sitting in the air-conditioned comfort of my home, eating processed food and enjoying the protection that the walls and roof provide, but he obviously has the skills to survive however he needs. I like to think my new friend is civilized, but I wouldn’t be shocked if he came to my patio door tomorrow with another animal’s blood plastered to his fur. If that’s what the dog has to do to survive, then more power to him.

  The dog is undoubtedly doing a better job of surviving out in the wild than its old masters would have. Throw me out in the woods and see how long I last. Even if I had a backpack filled with flint, beans, a tent, and a blanket I still wouldn’t last longer than a week. Give me an additional assortment of survival tools—a knife, a compass, a canteen—and I might last a month. Every predatory animal would laugh hysterically at my attempts to pitch a tent or catch food once my can of beans ran out. It would be funny enough for them that every enemy would put down arms for an hour, a sixty-minute truce, in order to enjoy my performance. A fox would sit next to a pit-bull. On its other side would be a pack of cats. Then a bear. All of them would be united by this ridiculous newcomer, grey-haired and wrinkly, that snores during the night, whose tent falls over when the wind brushes against it, whose knife sits unused. The poor old guy would have no chance at all.

  This animal, whose great, great grandparents used to lie on someone’s living room carpet and sleep all day, has only itself and other 'on. other like-minded dogs to rely on, and yet they thrive in the woods as though the bears and wolves should have taken them more seriously all along.

  February 4

  Of all the times people looked to religion for support, none was more important than when the Blocks started appearing: humanity’s future was in doubt. Instead of giving a unified message of comfort, though, each religion stumbled. Some ministers stuck to the same stories they always told, saying it had to be part of God’s greater plan. No one wanted to hear that. Some rabbis continued saying the Lord works in mysterious ways and who were we to question his will? People groaned when they heard this. Some priests told their followers not to question how God works. This brought another round of sighs.

  The most common reaction was for church, mosque, and temple leaders to throw their hands in the air with exasperation. What kind of joke was being played on them where the end wasn’t approaching with horns sounding from the heavens but with the birth of people who couldn’t hear or say prayers, couldn’t attend church services, couldn’t pass church doctrine to another generation? What were the clergymen supposed to do with these people—they were still God’s children after all. The Blocks didn’t attend mass, they didn’t read the Bible or Koran, they didn’t attend Sunday school. How were the churches supposed to accept the Blocks if they preached that regular people were supposed to do all of those things, all the while knowing Blocks couldn’t do any of them? Some leaders from each religion modified their teachings to accommodate the Blocks, but mostly the religions turned their backs on these people. The Blocks were left to find salvation for themselves.

  A few clergymen, not satisfied with the speed of their congregation’s discontent, took a proactive approach to alienating themselves from their followers. Some said stupid things (that Blocks didn’t have souls) that enraged every family with a Block child. Seeing as how a hundred percent of the children were Blocks when this outrage was spoken, huge portions of each congregation stopped going to church, quit volunteering their time, and withheld donating a portion of their income.

  There were people, however, who didn’t care what negative things were said about the Blocks, they simply cared about getting their own ticket to heaven. Other people, people like myself and my parents, saw how concocted these holy men were and stopped paying attention to them. Attendance at churches and temples plummeted. People stopped praying for something to save them or to changeq normal about ve been their circumstances. Religion went from being the second most important social influence in the world (nothing could ever topple the family unit as the most important), to becoming completely irrelevant.

  I think about how I reacted in those days and about how the people around me reacted. We could have given up and started feeling sorry for ourselves, it would have been understandable to do so—there was a noticeable spike in suicides—but most people, myself included, accepted what was happening and continued on. I played on the neighborhood baseball team until we didn’t have enough players to play anymore. I went on with my life as I would have if there were still kids in the neighborhood. I acted like Andrew would answer me when I asked him questions.

  Nothing changed just because the minister down the road was one of the first people to leave Camelot in favor of New Orleans. The rest of the neighborhood woke up the next day and continued with their lives just as they had the previous day and just as they would until they passed away or joined the minister at the group community. That was all.

  A year after the minister left, a family from Michigan moved into his old house, took down the few religious relics that had been left behind, and made it their own home. Life went on.

  I wish the Johnsons could have remembered that.

  February 6Without a hope of someone new coming to the neighborhood, I catch myself creating imaginary friends much the way I did when I was four years old.

  I could go online right now and chat with someone from San Francisco or Dallas, inquire about how they’re doing. Do I really need to see and hear other people going through the same thing, develop a bond with a random someone on a random Saturday, get to know their life and their struggles, just to have them pass away days or weeks later?

  So I create people that will never have to die. Most of the time these friends are newcomers to Camelot who saw the lines of empty homes on their way to one of the final communities, thought the area looked nice, and decided they would stay for a while. I imagine them being happy to listen to my stori
es while I prepare dinner. There’s more to making a good meal than pressing a button on the food processor; you still have to get the a nice, quiet neighborhoode about ve been seasoning right and serve it with a nice wine. When I venture down to the basement, these new visitors provide an extra set of eyes to look out for bugs. I prepare a list of things to tell them about while they sort through random boxes like curious kids.

  “That box? That’s filled with notes I passed my girlfriend in class when we were seniors… That picture? My mom painted it… She was quite the artist. I wish I had more of her paintings.”

  I don’t actually say these things out loud. When I imagine friends spending the day with me, I think about the conversations we would have but I keep the actual words to myself. If he was alert and could hear my voice, not even Andrew would know I was spending my day talking to people who aren’t there. I do talk to myself as much as I ever have, I can’t help that—I even find myself mumbling these words out loud as I type them—but when I talk to myself, it’s more about acknowledging my thoughts than it is speaking to someone who isn’t really there.

  I’m left wondering why I would create additional make-believe people in my life, none of whom can talk or provide me with feedback, when I already have Andrew in the other room. Here I am with a brother who’s alive and breathing, has been with me through the worst times, and I could talk to him from the moment I wake up until the moment I go to sleep. I don’t, though. He would never get bored with me or yawn and tell me to give it a rest. Maybe it’s because Andrew already knows all the things that worry me, has already heard all my stories.

  Looking back, that moment when I went from sharing all my daily concerns with him, to protecting him from them, was the point when I went from feeling like Andrew was helping me carry the hardships to feeling absolutely and completely alone in a wilderness that had grown up around me.