Mixtape for the Apocalypse

by Jemiah Jefferson

  Never mind cereal or chips. The voices are happening again—different voices, drowning out the continuous kiddy laughter. Along with this is a gentle rushing sound full of words I can’t make out. And I don’t even have the Eyes open. They’re asleep. They are coming from somewhere else.

  I hate milk and chips and everything of the kind. It made me fall asleep. At the kitchen table, even. I won’t sleep anymore, I’ve decided. Too much can happen when I’m asleep. I might get that final ultimate message from Mac about the end coming (it’s almost the 23rd!) and if I were asleep, I’d go up with the rest of these goons. I have to be vigilant and alert and on my toes at all times. Never mind the green circles or the exploding pain in my nasal sinus passages—I must listen, listen, listen.

  9:15 p.m. says my digital watch.

  I don’t hear you, lalalalalala.

  I am not listening.

  You can’t see me, so I don’t exist. Go away. Go back to work, since you love it so much. Go back to your bond and toner and Pronto yellow and leave me alone. I’m fine in here. Let me be. I was almost perfect—I was almost at the point at which all things were going to be revealed to me, I was listening between the beats and between the words, and then YOU come home, you shatter everything precious, you’re worried about your stupid boom box which isn’t that good anyway but does me a lot of good. Don’t you worry your pretty little head, Miss Ballard. You’ll do fine with just your TV pumping you full of lies and when the time comes you can go with everyone else and I’ll walk away from the wreckage. You missed your chance. Go. Away. Go Away Now.

  Your stupid clothes are outside. I didn’t hurt them. They’re right in front of you. Just open your fucking eyes.

  Louder, Mac, Will, Les, Pete. Louder.

  Yes. (“Won’t you come on down to my rescue?” Won’t you please, won’t you please.)

  Yes.

  Yes.

  No?

  No.

  Don’t end. Don’t leave me alone.

  18 December and I don’t care what time it is.

  De Freitas is not dead. This is endless and eternal as long as I am here to hear it, as long as I contain soul to be moved by it. There is no Echo.

  19 December, is it?

  Water? Christ, no! what have I been doing to myself? Water! Water! I haven’t been boiling or distilling my water, so God knows what I’ve been feeding myself—sleep drugs, fluoride, truth potions, drugs to make me humiliate myself in public. No more coffee, then. Shit. No more coffee and no more showers. The only two things that were lifelines between myself and it. No more. No more.

  I’m kidding. But seriously. The water tastes awful and I haven’t been filtering it and I have no fucking idea what’s in it, but I haven’t been sleeping lately.

  It’s five in the morning; I looked at the microwave. Or that’s what it said. I don’t think I believe it. Whatever! It’s dark but for the piss yellow glow of the Leatherworks sign. Whatever time. Winter is darker gray and lighter gray. A sleeping body on the futon, as if it grew there like a fungus. I get up and the fungus is gone, but when I go to drain the snake, it’s there again. It is confusing.

  Hopefully I’ll piss less when I stop drinking water and coffee and milk. Ideally I won’t excrete anything at all. There isn’t time for it. I have only four more days to get the message and I can’t miss a single second. I’ve listened to “Rescue” 24 hours a day for the last two days and I’ve missed a couple of moments because I fell asleep. It won’t happen again. I got the coffee beans. They’re in here with me now. My friends.

  Man, are they all gonna be surprised when they see what happens. I almost can’t wait except that it means the end of everything, and I already miss my mom and Lise so much that it makes breathing difficult.

  December sometime

  I don’t know the day or the time. If I were still clinging to nonsense I’d say it’s the twentieth, but how am I ever to tell? It could be the next millennium or the next eon outside, for all I know, but why should I care? I have everything I need in here. My planet sweet on a silver salver, my walls coated with silver, beautiful . . . and even better, it keeps the faces from coming out of the plaster and talking to me. I can’t listen to the voice of the static or the plaster or the between-molecules-of-air because they are telling me lies. They are telling me to sleep and I must not ever listen to them even a little bit because I’m listening to the true message 24 hours a day until the right message comes to me. The metal-reinforced walls will protect me from orbital satellites or static people or the mailman or Marion or the long dresses or the leopard’s spots and cowl me in silver and here I will transcend. I will pass beyond this.

  Crisps. Fuck this place.

  I puked up the coffee beans. There were a lot of them. Now the closet is half its former size. It was the last of the evil in me. Clean now. The last of it is now out of me and now I can focus on my spiritual quest.

  If I said I’d lost my way, would you—could you sympathize?

  Nothing else. Nothing else. Listen. Listen. Listen. Art and feeling and beauty in the lettering. Immortality. We will survive this apocalypse together.

  I have the watch. It is 3:18 p.m. The apartment outside is so bright it sickens me. I wish I’d never heard of it. It hurts and my stomach is roiling. But I can hang on. I’m still here.

  4:00 p.m.

  Still here.

  4:30 p.m.

  Still here. Still awake. I have to piss, but that’s too bad.

  5:00 p.m.

  I’m OK.

  5:30 p.m.

  I had to leave the closet to urinate and shit. Now I’m shaking, no matter how loud I have the track turned up, no matter how I wrap myself in the blanket. But I’m still here, by God. The mailmen have come and gone without hurting me. Only a little while longer to go. Please, don’t let the phone ring. Please, have mercy.

  6:03 p.m.

  I must hang on.

  6:39 p.m.

  Still here. Feeling better. The pile of black vomit is merely interesting to me now.

  7:00 p.m.

  Got it on the tick. Still here. Apocalypse hasn’t started yet, but I’m ready. Voices coming from outside. Ignore them

  7:30 p.m.

  On the tick again. On the second. I’m ready. The voice hurts. But I’m okay.

  8:00:00:00:00 p.m.

  Still here.

  11:18 p.m.!!! CRAP

  Shit, shitfire, fuck, I slipped, and I listened to the voices and let the last traces of water in my body tell me to sleep. And I was too weak. I woke up when the front door opened and I heard Lise cursing. I turned on the Song again and listened to it three or four times and now I feel like I can perhaps breathe again. The headache is terrible. I almost wish it would just end, be over, let me die and let them have me. Why am I hanging on?

  11:30:00 p.m.

  Still here. Still awake. Never again.

  “What happened to my aluminum foil?” Oh, for Mac’s sake, shut up.

  12:00:00:00:00:00

  All is silent. I’ve let the Song lapse. I want to see if the voices have ceased. Seems they have, for now. I wonder if it’s safe to sleep.

  No, no, no, whatever I can do to hang in there, whatever I can do, it’s good enough, it’s worth it, it’s worth it, I can do it, I can do it. It’s only a little while longer. Let me find the play button—my booklight is very faint now, the batteries running down. It really can’t be helped.

  12:30:00 a.m.

  Still here.

  1:00 a.m.

  Thirteen o’clock. The witching hour. One of many. I stretch my eyes open with my fingers. But I’m still here and it hasn’t started yet. Or at least it’s not here yet. It might be just down the street. I am listening for it; the sound of sidewalks and streets and buildings ripped and crushed into nothingness, a vicious smiting from a vengeful . . . I don’t know. That’s the scariest part; I don’t even know what’s behind this. I just know it’s coming. Today’s the day.

  1:15

&nbs
p; Oh fuck Christ oh God help!

  1:30

  I’m still here. I hear the voices, but I’m shutting them out.

  2:00:00 a.m.

  Second wind! I’ve taken to scribbling warning evocations into the aluminum foil walls themselves—I am surrounded by protective incantations. Why didn’t I think of this before? Words from heaven, from beyond, the sacred text, the sacred song. Holy, holy, holy, better than anything ever created before. I have worked my way around the wainscotting and am now working my way up. This is so awesome. But back to work!

  2:30 a.m.

  I am about an inch up the walls now. My heartbeat is the same beat as the song, my headache thrumming twice as fast. There’s blood under the fingernails of my right hand (why hadn’t I been left-handed! Then I would have been known as sinister from a young age and they would have left me out to the wolves, the leopards, the elements!) and my hair stings when it flops into my eyes. There’s sick on the knees of my jeans and it’s cold and sticky and it smells—well, it smelled like vomited coffee beans. I wonder if I could sell this on the gourmet coffee black market? If they sell coffee bean animal shit, surely they can sell coffee-bean vomit?

  3: 00 am

  Can’t write no more. My hand is killing me. Apologies Sensei. I will sit still and listen and wait for the message, or the destruction, to come. Either one would be welcome. I just want this to be over. I’m so sorry for everything I’ve done. I don’t want to hurt anybody else; just take me. Please.

  3:15 a.m.

  help

  3:30 a.m.

  help

  3:45 a.m.

  help

  4:00 a.m.

  HELP!! Goddamn it, why aren’t you listening? Do I need to sing the Beatles? Do I need to speak aloud? Help me, help me, help help help.

  Before it’s too late.

  It is too late.

  I’m screaming and no one hears it. They don’t get it. Help help help. Help. Fuck. I have to get this out of my head.

  I have to get this out of my head

  I have to get this out of my head

  I have to get this OUT of my HEAD

  I have to get them out of my head

  I have to get it out

  I have to get it out

  I have to get it out

  I have to get it out

  I have to

  have to

  have to

  rescue

  5:00:00 a.m. on the tick

  No, I’m all right. I’m fine now. I’m back to writing in the silver. Bailed on my worst fear. No no no no no wrong song. FUCK. I screwed it up. Now I have to start over from the beginning.

  5:30

  My head. Oh, God. No water in me to come out of my eyes. Maybe I’m close. I hope I drop dead soon.

  Six!

  I smell bleach! And ozone! I particularly smell ozone. It’s a good smell. A real smell. A machine smell It’s covering up the coffee smell of vomit. I have a groove in my forehead worn from pressing my face into the stereo speakers. I am covered with a film of Echo and the Bunnymen that will never be washed away, no matter how much poisoned water they sluice over me.

  I hear the streets crumbling. It’s here. IT’S HERE.

  Nine something in the morning—I don’t have time to look—but there they are, I can hear them outside. I can hear them doing something to the doorknob, trying to get through the paper I’ve jammed into the lock. Heh! I hear voices, I hear a name, I hear—

  NO! They took it! There’s no more music! You won’t get me, goddamn it, you won’t get ME—

  Even dead my soul will live on in these pages and in the soul of this song—

  you can’t get me m___

  otherfucker you cant get

  The last couple of pages in the notebook are reduced to shreds shrinking into the binding, as if trying to hide. There are tiny brown spots on the inside back cover that are almost definitely specks of blood. I don’t remember their source.

  AFTER

  A big, dark, immobile gap that I don’t remember. I might not ever.

  I do remember someone cutting my fingernails. Someone moved my face from side to side and touched me with little spines that stung. My neck felt like all the bones had been removed. I wanted to go back to sleep, and I said so.

  After a gray, dizzy, not-sleep space, I opened my eyes to an unfamiliar room, about forty feet by twenty, with six beds in it, three on each side. Each bed contained a man. I walked past each bed, silently, and looked at the men in the beds. Some of them had grey hair and some had no hair and some had blond or brown hair and beards. The two men on the side where I was had their eyes closed, one with black skin and one with white skin and two dark marks on either side of his nose. He was snoring. His lips were dry and scaly and he had a tooth missing in the front. On the other side, there was one man with his face jammed into the pillow, one man on his back, eyes open, staring up at the ceiling, and one man on his side, wearing glasses, his eyes also open, looking at the squares of blue milky light, crisscrossed with thick wires.

  I stopped in my tracks and looked at the guy in glasses. He looked at me. “What are you doing up, kid?” he asked me, his voice a whisper.

  I asked him if I was dreaming, but he didn’t seem to hear me. I went over to the first man with his eyes open, and I watched a hand appear and poke him in the shoulder—a long, white hand, glowing in the milky blue light. He was not staring at the ceiling, but at the square of light, where the other man was looking.

  The man in glasses laughed and spoke again. “You get up because of the moonlight?” he said. “It’s sure keeping Harris awake. Look at ‘im. God knows what’s going on inside his head, huh? I know I can’t sleep when there’s a full moon outside. I can hear it. I can hear it in my sleep, I don’t care how many pills they give me, I can always hear it.” He began to shout. “I can hear it!”

  The man staring at the window didn’t so much as flinch.

  The black man began to groan. “Shuddup, Lewis,” he groaned.

  The man in glasses raised his arms, rose out of the bed, and went to the square of light, looked out, and kept on shouting, a long wordless howl that ended in laughing.

  “Go to fuckin’ sleep, Lewis,” said the black man.

  The snoring man didn’t stir.

  “You’re gonna get all of us in trouble, Lewis.”

  Yellow light burst and spilled into the room. A man came through the yellow light—a very big man in a yellow shirt and green sweatpants. “You cats go to sleep now, hear?” he said. He came in and poked the man in glasses back towards his bed; the man in glasses stopped his laughing and yelling and quietly got back into bed and pulled the blanket over him. He did not, however, take off his glasses. The black man thanked the big man in the sweatpants and covered himself up.

  Not sweatpants; scrubs.

  “What’s up with you, little dude? Go back to bed. Don’t let Lewis bother you. You having trouble sleeping?” The big man came over to me and put his thick, warm hand on my shoulder. He turned me around until all I could see was the bed. I sat on it, then drew my knees up to my chest. My heartbeat roared in my ears. The big man fished in a pocket of his scrubs, drew out a bottle, tapped a small blue pill into his palm, and handed it to me. Automatically, like I’d been trained since birth, I took the pill, and a cup of water, and swallowed. “That’s the ticket. Now, try to get back to sleep. You don’t have to sleep if you don’t want to, but you’ll feel a lot better if you sleep.”

  I looked at the edge of my blanket, watching the yellow light shrink and die away, leaving only the cold blue light. The man with glasses laughed softly to himself, then started snoring. A circle edged into the square of light—white, glowing, like tooth. I lay back on my bed and looked at the white circle, noting the grey stains on its surface, watching it smear slowly across the sky.

  After another blank, I was brought to see Shandy.

  The corners of her mouth were drawn up and pinched together, making little pockets,
pouches of smooth skin, slightly rough around the different skin of the lips. There was a little pimple inside my mouth that I bit into until I tasted just a trace of blood. I was dressed in soft, faded plaid flannel. Pajamas from a thrift store, I could tell.

  “Good morning, Michael.”

  Her hands were folded together in her lap on a smooth plane of black fabric. She had a paler strip of skin on one of her fingers right as they folded into the palm part of the hand itself. Her hands were very smooth and pale, almost as pale as mine, and she had no paint on her fingernails.

  “My name is Shandy O’Grady. Is that funny? I notice you smiled.”

  I shook my head.

  “It is a funny name. I kind of like it. Please call me Shandy. I like your name too, actually—Michael Squire. Do you go by Mike, or Michael?”

  My feet were bare and bony, and the spaces between my toes were scrupulously clean. Even my toenails were clean, but kind of longer than I liked them. I began to worry at the keratin, tearing it off easily. Obviously I hadn’t been getting enough calcium.

  “Do you know where you are?”

  I ran my fingers through my hair, and looked at her desk. It was cheap school-issue, with some magazines on it, stacks of paper, a can of Coca-Cola, a stapler, a box of paper clips. The carpet was puce and grey and very short, with a kind of arrowhead pattern on it. This was not a nice place. Everything looked desperate and cheap.

  My hair felt rough and coarse. It didn’t want to stay off my face. I took off my glasses and wiped my face. My glasses were crudely repaired with black electrical tape on both earpieces.

  “Do you know what day it is?”

  I didn’t have any extra toenail left, and my fingernails were too short to chew. Instead I bit off the thick dead skin around the edges of my fingernails.

  “Michael, why don’t you say something?”