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the end

Kevin Michael Vance

    Matthew Crane stepped off the curb and onto Bybee Street. The street itself was empty. There were no cars or trucks or SUVs parked on either side. No automobiles drove up and down the narrow lane, nor did any cross Bybee off Milwaukee avenue, following the stop light which hung, as it always had, above the intersection... its three lights dark.
    As he walked, Matthew’s new rain pants squeaked like tentative mice. When he swung his arms, the slick, rain-repellent material of his jacket made swooshing noises. The jacket and the pants were new: Columbia brand, straight off the rack from the outlet store on Tacoma. He had a brand new Kelty back pack, and shiny, new Danner boots from Al’s boot shop on eighty-second in southeast.
    Why not take them? he had thought. There’s no one to miss ‘em.
    A typical Pacific Northwest day greeted him. Gray, thin, wispy clouds covered the sky. The ambient light also gray, almost dingy, lending a sense of mustiness to everything. A spattering of rain, a mist, more of an annoyance than any real danger, kept Matthew moist but never really drenched him. He traveled down the middle of the empty asphalt road, listening to the sound of his boot heels echo back at him from the vacant restaurant buildings on either side.
    Matthew had never liked Portland, Oregon; always finding the city and its helplessly liberal denizens annoying at their best, downright irritating most of the time. The narrow streets, so European-like, were a hazard to maneuver a compact car through, and nothing short of fatal while riding a bicycle. A congested city in which you waited an hour for a ten-dollar plate of eggs and toast, paid three-dollars and fifty cents for a can of tasteless, organic, Vegan chili sold to you from a dubiously liberal grocery store, and purchased pints of IPA from any one of the many local microbreweries for upwards of seven to nine dollars.
    But that had been how things were a month ago. Now Portland was something different, something changed. He liked the city even less now that all the people were gone. Well, that wasn’t all together true, either.
    A sudden chilly gust of wind brought the sound of a crow sharpening its black beak against the rain gutter of a nearby bungalow, as well as the hushed slapping of larger droplets of rain.
    Matthew reached the intersection of Bybee and Milwaukee and stood beneath the inert stoplight. He heard nothing, nothing man-made at least, and beyond that, more of the same. The only sounds were the wind, the susurration of leaves, and the hushed drumming of rain.
    Milwaukee stretched away from him on his right and his left- heading north and south simultaneously. Matthew stood with his back to the bloated Willamette River. In front of him, Bybee dropped slightly past a US Bank depository, slid motionlessly over McLaughlin Boulevard, continued on past a verdant golf course, winding its way through a wealthy neighborhood until it finally reached Reed College, and the Woodstock neighborhood. On his immediate left, he witnessed a restaurant he had frequented for noodles called Stickers- Tangy Sesame Bangkok noodles with peanut sauce... the best in the city. The restaurants glass façade spattered with rain and reflecting the unlit darkness from within. Almost as dark as the stuffy restaurant and working class bar directly beside it. Beyond these, Matthew glimpsed an entrance that somehow still struck him as inviting, albeit its’ flashing neon and glittering lights were just as dead and dull as everything else.
    He smiled dismally under his rain hood. He had forgotten that not only did the Sellwood neighborhood have Stickers, but it also had a movie theatre.
    The Marquee read- Better Days. Try as he might, Matthew couldn’t recall the movie, but he found that his feet, seemingly of their own accord, were leading him closer to the glass doors. What looked to be a fleet of parked cars, possibly over a hundred- everything from caravans to wagons, hybrids to diesels, compacts to luxuries- stretched north down Milwaukee.
    ‘Least it’ll be out of the rain.
    Matthew stepped onto the curb, shuffled up to the door, and touched the handle.

#

    A little over a month ago, Matthew had been trapped, caught in a cage of his own making. How do you say goodbye to someone you love?
    Matthew reached for the door handle of the bedroom he shared with his wife.
    “I wanna know what the plan is. I wanna know that I’m not wasting my time... that you’re just as invested in this family as I am.”
    She wouldn’t let it go. She never let things go. She was like a whirlwind, a natural force that you did not enjoy or savor, but rather you survived and endured, clinging to any purchase of reality or rational thought as if it were a banister you clung to in a tornado. And they were fighting. They always fought. Sex had become a distant memory difficult to recall, intimacy, only the fleeting dream of pleasure, or maybe the dream of a rich and rewarding past life.
    Her name was Carol.
    “I need to know these things, Matt. It’s important to me. It should be important to you. I get scared. I get scared, because I feel like you’re not into this... as much as you should be. Like you regret... I da’know... us.”
    “I don’t.” Matthew heard himself say. However, far in the back of his head, where the darker thoughts roamed, the thoughts Carol would refer to- if she had the courage to voice them- as perverted, he did... he did regret. He regretted it all: the falling in love, the one night of drunken, unprotected sex, the announcement that “they” were having a child, her unflinching desire to somehow legitimize their relationship by getting legally married, and then finally, the whole, tortured ceremony.
    “Do you mean that?” she asked.
    “I do.”
    “Do you promise?”
    Matthew nodded.
    “Where are you going?”
    “I gotta pee.”
    Before Matthew could close the door on her, she said one more thing, “Make sure to close the lid on the toilet. You know how the cats drink out of the bowl, and when Horace gets into the flower bed I have to clean the damn thing before I can go.”
    Matthew ignored her, and shut the door quietly. As he moved to the top of the stairs, he glanced into their daughters’ room. Ella turned three next month, and thankfully slept soundly. He walked quietly down the stairs, flopped onto the couch, and turned on the television.
    The newscasters’ hair and suit looked “picture perfect”. And he smiled an incongruous smile as he spoke.
    “Some of the top minds from all over the world have called an international press conference, the first of its kind in recorded history. We’re now told that together, over three thousand scientists, physicists, chemists, geologists, biologists, astronomers... all the Noble laureates in science, even mathematicians and psychics and astrologers, from over seventy different countries have been sequestered away in a vacant Air Force barracks outside of Colorado Springs for well over a year now. They only recently emerged. And it’s being said that their findings are to be the most extraordinary and significant data of our time. As I speak, the elected delegate from the group, a one Hans Von Bender, is just now stepping up to the podium. This is, to say the least, unprecedented. I remind everyone that these men and women have been quoted as saying that they have new information that will irrevocably change the lives of every man, woman, and child on earth.”
    He quickly changed the channel.

#

    The door handle to the movie theatre felt cool to the touch. For two solid breaths, Matthew hesitated; anything could be in there, in the dark, cavernous space... anything at all. He took one last breath, swung open the door, and stepped into the foyer.
    The smells hit Matthew first: old popcorn, stale butter, mildew trapped for a month in the fibers of a damp carpet that had not been vacuumed for just as long, lingering mold building in unattended bathrooms and wash stations, and something worse... the undeniable reek of rotten eggs, the stench of methane and of hydrogen sulphide. Matthew knew what that meant even if he didn’t know the name; in any city, he imagined, in ever city, even one as laden with moisture as Portland, he had known, on some level just what he might find. Even in the beginning. After, it had all happened, and he had found himself totally, irretrievably alone, he had kept going inside, kept inspecting the buildings, exploring the interiors. Looking for something... someone, maybe. To be honest, Matthew never really knew. They were, the hollowed out insides of buildings, in fact, dark, terrifying places of sudden explosive, echoing noises- foundations shifting, boards creaking, steel moaning- places of heavy shadow, and deep wells of black unknown, all weighted down by a somehow vacant, moribund silence. But he felt compelled to look, to delve within.
    In all his wanderings and tentative searching, he had found nothing but death. Always death. Everywhere. Building after building, whether it be a high-rise, condo, business, restaurant, apartment or house, there were always people, all huddled together, all sharing the same fate... and all of them... rotting.
    Nowhere, had he found any semblance of human life. Plenty of flies, deer, and the random raccoon or rat yes, but nothing else.
    On some level, instinctively maybe, Matthew knew the theatre would be no different, but at the same time, possibly driven by the same instinct, he knew he could not turn away.
    Matthew’s new boots squeaked only a little as his feet drew him softly across the damp carpet. The concession stand was, of course, empty, movie posters of twenty-first century films Matthew had difficulty recalling were nailed to mustard yellow walls. As he slipped past the glass, rectangular, popcorn maker, he noticed two bathrooms to his right, one male, one female; to his left were two, arched door ways hung with heavy, maroon, velvet curtains, between these sat a wrought iron, park-like bench. He moved to the nearest doorway, pushed aside the bulky curtain, and immediately coughed violently as the wave of rotten egg smell spilled over him like liquid sewage.
    The theatre was draped in an inky black. If they had been watching a film- the people jammed into the theatre- then it had long ago run off its’ reel. Matthew sensed their combined mass more than seeing them, albeit he could see the first few rows from the gray light exuding through the front doors. He felt that in every last seat, sat a person; and that each one of these “persons” was dead, dead and putrid within the tepid, gas-choked theatre, and that many more lay draped over one another in the aisles; calf-high piles of corpses.
    He took off his new backpack, set it on the carpet (the carpet squelched moistly), unzipped a side pocket, reached inside, and brought out a Surefire flashlight (this also absconded from the Columbia outlet store).
    Covering his mouth, he flicked on the torch and took one step into the aisle.
    They were there, probably more than three hundred of them, their bodies already bloating and their skin turning a rancid green, clear, watery fluid leaked from their nostrils and mouths; this thrown into stark, jittery relief, by the shaking light of his torch. Agitated movement, a huge amorphous cloud of deeper black, rose sluggishly above the corpses’ heads and then descended, just as sluggishly, back into their midst.
    Flies, Matthew realized, those are flies.
    Slowly, he searched. Again, not knowing what he searched for, simply compelled to look. All he found was death. Here and there, Mothers embraced long-dead children seated on their laps. Lovers were locked in eternal kisses. Smokers- distinguished by the dry ends of filters still hanging limply from their distended lips- sat lazily, reclined stiffly, slumped in darkened corners. Sweethearts held hands. Drunkards grasped to the filthy necks of empty bottles. There were people with plates of moldy food on their laps; there were people wearing fancy suits and stupid hats. And they were dead, all of them. They sat or lay peacefully in quiet appreciation. They had made their decision, and they had died together. And everywhere, littered about the floor and the bodies and between the seats and the aisles, even clutched tightly within stiff, dead hands... the plastic, pill bottles.
    Matthew let out a retching gag. He pretended that the sudden, blinding, effusive tears were from the stink and the vision of gaping mouths stuffed with swollen, protruding, grayish tongues. However, he knew he was lying to himself. He lurched out of the theatres’ interior, grabbed his backpack, rushed past the concession stand, and burst out onto the silent, empty street.

#

    “But they’re saying,” Carol began and then slighted, paused.
    Matthew played with their daughter, while simultaneously, and without looking at his wife, shook his head disapprovingly.
    “They’re saying,” she continued, irritated, “it’s going to be catastrophic. They’re saying that all the findings point to... to... complete and total destruction.”
    “Do you believe everything ‘they’ say?” he queried.
    Ella sat beside him, a set of plastic teacups placed between them. She had been in the process of chastising Matthew for not sipping his tea properly when Carol started in on him. The three of them sat together on the top of Mount Tabor; lush, verdant trees and opulent homes lengthened away from them in a westerly direction. From their high vantage point, they could just glimpse the cramped downtown as well as the emerald green glow of the “west hills”. The sun, suspiciously out and radiating both warmth and light, sat low in the sky. The day was bright and clear and warm. Two couples and one family of six occupied the hilltop with them. All of them, including the Crane family, were strangely reserved, strangely quiet, a gentle hush moving imperceptibly between them.
    Carol and Matthew argued in muted tones.
    “So you don’t believe it?” Carol asked Matthew. “You think they’re wrong?”
    Matthew shrugged, “I don’t necessarily think they’re right.”
    “Are you a scientist? Are you an astrophysicist, or a biologist, or a... a... astronomer?”
    Matthew turned away from Ella and gave his wife a look.
    “Don’t give me that look,” she said to him.
    He stifled a humorless laugh.
    “It’s not fair,” she said.
    “What isn’t fair?”
    “How can you NOT believe? The whole world believes?”
    Again, he shrugged.
    “Aren’t you frightened? Aren’t you scared?”
    “Momma,” chimed Ella.
    “Quiet,” Matthew said sharply to Carol.
    “How can I be quiet?”
    A moustache wearing, twenty-something, skimmed quickly past the crest of the hill to their immediate horizon. Riding a bicycle, the youth rode dangerously fast across the striated black pavement that ringed mount tabor like a macabre barbers pole.
    Matthew watched him go and then turned to Carol. “Calm down.”
    “Calm down,” she retorted. “To hell with you and your calm.”
    “Mommy.”
    “Carol, you’re upsetting her. Stop it.”
    “I will not,” Carol intoned. “She needs to be upset. I mean, this whole thing is... is... upsetting.”
    “Daddy,” Ella intoned.
    Carol turned to Ella, “Daddy’s being stubborn, as usual. Something’s happening. Something big. Everyone in the world believes it. Everyone except daddy. Daddy has no reason to think he’s right and everyone else is wrong. But he does. So he sits there... like a jackass.”
    “Jesus, Carol.”
    “What’re we gonna do, Matt?”
    Matthew ignored her, running his fingers through his daughter’s hair.
    “We should try for the shelters.”
    “No,” said Matthew.
    “Why not?”
    “We’d never make it in time... or in the time they’re predicting. ‘Sides. I don’t wanna be trapped on the highway with a hundred thousand other people thinking the same thing. No way.”
    “You’re not suggesting,” Carol breathed deep, “the other plan.”
    “No way,” he repeated.
    “Great. Then what the hell are we gonna do?”
    “We’re gonna sit here,” said Matthew.
    “Great.”
    “We’re gonna sit here, and enjoy a rare and beautiful day in the middle of Feb’uary.”
    Carol made a decidedly condescending noise, something between a snort and a sneeze.
    “We’re gonna have tea... and enjoy the rest of the day.” Matthew tipped his teacup to his daughters. “World ain’t over yet. Eh baby?”
    While looking uncomfortably from one parent to the other, Ella tried to smile.

#

    It had stopped spitting rain, but the wind blew harder, shaking the sides of Matthew’s tent. The wind made a giant rustling noise like a blanket being shaken constantly, and the trees bent and groaned as the strength of its intangible power swayed them back and forth... back and forth. Every now and then something heavy, probably a pinecone, would fall from above, making a dead thumping sound on the soft ground below. Random pine needles from the Tamaracks surrounding him in the park where Matthew camped smacked the slick roof like rude fingers, a roof that reeked of new plastic and glue. He smelled the spice of the pine, the wet grass, the sodden earth, and a smoky quality he recognized as the storm. The park sat a few miles north of Sellwood, up a large hill, upon which ran Holgate Avenue. It had taken Matthew two hours to get there. Matthew preferred to walk. One of the rare things he had respected about Portland was its public transit system. After taking the bus for fifteen years, the thought of owning and operating a car, even now, idly struck him as disconcerting. It had been dark when he’d begun making camp, but he had wanted to get as far away from the movie theatre as possible.
    Every time he walked the vacant city streets an eerie sensation filled him, the only... real sound being the reverberated rhythm of his boot heels. Each time he saw very few cars, and if he did see one, inevitably, they were parked incongruously in the middle of the road, or driven violently into the entrance of a storefront. It was not, necessarily, the emptiness, which drove ragged spikes of unease and dread into Matthew’s addled brain. More so, it was the dead, the unseen, unheard mass of them... the mob of bodies on the very outskirts of his perception. He did not, on any level, relish being the last man on earth. It had been, and still remained a difficult fact knowing that he would never have another conversation with a living human being, that his own voice would be the single cadence to the tempo of his life, a life which he barely even recognized any longer as his own. He had been a fan of movies that dealt with the aftermath of one or another apocalypse, often filled with a sense of hope and an indescribable heroic yearning while watching some unlikely protagonist meander down empty city streets and past hollow buildings. But this felt different. This was his life, not some movie, and he had never known how lonely he could be until he was truly and completely... alone.
    Passing a Plaid Pantry, Matthew had quickly ducked in for supplies, grabbing a can of Ravioli, some pretzels, a box of Twinkies, and two six packs of Rogue breweries “Dead Guy” ale.
    In the tent, its’ almost translucent, dark blue siding lit brightly by a battery powered Coleman lantern, Matthew finished his fourth “Dead Guy”, threw it out in front of him, and opened a fifth. He sat staring past the unzipped, opening that led inside, out into a night blacker than any he’d ever experienced before. He could barely glimpse the playful wink of the empty, amber, beer bottles laying in the grass at his feet, however, overcast as Portland weather so often was, the trees, the edge of the park, and the street beyond it were completely indistinguishable.
    A dismal, choking laugh escaped him. He felt the pressure of the solitude surround him, and his breath came short, stagnant, and thin.
    Tilting his head back, taking a long, luxurious pull on the bitter and decadent ale, Matthew set the bottle next to his knee, and reached into the breast pocket of his new jacket. Withdrawing the plastic pill bottle in which lay one, innocuous white pill, Matthew shook it, and listened to it rattle.
    The sight of it brought sudden, effusive tears to his eyes. Matthew clutched the pill bottle tightly and began to sob.

#

    “I got them today,” said Carol.
    Matthew, drunk already, set down the amber bottle carefully and frowned at Carol.
    “I got three.”
    “Why?”
    “Well... considering you’re being about as stubborn as a man can be... considering we’re not trying for the shelters... considering they are NOT wrong.” She shrugged. “I got three.”

     “What if they’re wrong?”
    Tiredly, Carol said, “They aren’t.”
    “But how can they know what’s going to happen? How can anyone?”
    “Well... they’re a lot smarter than us.”
    “Fuck.”
    “I don’t want Ella to die like that.”
    “I don’t want Ella to die at all.”
    “When the time comes... I’ll give the pill to her first, then I’ll take mine. Yours is on the kitchen counter.”
    “I won’t let you do that.”
    “Matt. I’m not arguing about this.”
    “First time in your life.”
    Carol actually laughed.
    “You’re not giving Ella that pill.” He hesitated. “Where is it?”
    “I hid them.”
    “What? Where?”
    “I knew you would freak out. I know you don’t believe... but I do. I do believe. And I’m not going to watch my baby burn... or drown... or worse. I... I don’t think I can handle that.” She paused, stared down at the floor, and then lifted her gaze back to Matthew, sudden tears blooming in the corners of her eyes. “I don’t want to see the end of the world.”
    Matthew chuckled humorlessly.
    “It’s called a Coronal Ejection... Mass Ejection... or something. It’s... it’s going to destroy... it’s going to kill everything. They say it might happen all at once... depending on how close we are to the sun, or it might take months... months of storms, earthquakes, tidal waves, heat waves. Can you imagine — one hundred and seventy five degrees in Portland? A living hell.”
    “I am not taking the pill. You are not taking the pill. And I sure as hell am not gonna stand by while you give it to our daughter.”
    “I told you I’m not arguing with you.”
    “Fine. I’ll find ‘em.”
    “No. You won’t. I hid them good.”
    “Yes, I will.”
    “Ella’s asleep, Matt. We have one night left... just one.” She paused again. “Do you wanna make love?”
    “I want to find those fucking pills.”
    Carol sighed. “The world’s ending tomorrow and you wanna ransack the apartment?”
    “Exactly.”
    “I still love you, Matt. Even though you can be such a shit.”
    Matthew ignored her and kept searching.
    “I don’t regret anything. Well... some things maybe. Maybe a little.
    “Carol,” he said, “Where’re those pills?”

#

     Matthew had been searching for a while, how long he wasn’t sure. But when he emerged from his drunken stupor, the living room and kitchen were a mess: coffee table overturned, book shelves empty, books thrown carelessly to the floor, computer desk open, every cabinet in the kitchen flung wide and there continents scattered over countertop and floor. With a suddenness that made his shoulders spasm, he realized two things: he’d been at it for well over an hour, and that the apartment was still and silent.
    “No,” he whispered to himself, while at the same time rushing across the living room. He tripped over a book, scraped his knee against the edge of the wooden staircase, fell to his hands, righted himself quickly, and took the stairs two at a time.
    Matthew reached the landing and saw both doors closed; the one that lead into the bedroom he shared with Carol, and directly adjoining this, Ella’s bedroom.
    Frantically, he flung open Ella’s door, and quickly surmised the room was empty. Without thinking, Matthew turned to their bedroom door, reached for the handle, and froze.
    Silently he pushed the door inward.
    Carol held Ella in her arms on the bed. Matthew stood in the open doorway staring down at them. They didn’t move. They didn’t budge. The only thing that came from his wife and daughter was a rigid stillness, a terrifying stillness- no twitching feet, no scratching, no sniffling... nothing. Beside his girls, on the bedside table, propped up next to a half drunken glass of water, were two empty pill bottles. Never in all his life did Matthew think something as benign as a pill bottle could inspire such hatred and rage. He glanced from the bottles to his girls and back to the bottles again.
    Suddenly he turned, tears fogging his sight, mugging up his brain, and ran down the stairs. He felt his mind shut down, refusing to move, refusing to start, jammed like a bullet in the barrel of a gun, neither going forward or back, simply in a kind of stasis.
    When he reached the living room Matthew fell to his knees and vomited on the floor. Shaking, he pulled himself to his feet, and slouched over the couch. The dreary light of late morning cascaded in through the open window. A tiny, brown bird fluttered from naked branch to naked branch amidst the tangled mess of a dogwood tree, a few remaining flame-pink flowers clinging desperately, mournful and droopy with the weight of rain. He watched the bird until it left the tree and sped away over the varied rooftops, moving away from him and fading into the distance.
    The world remained. The sun still barely shined, as it always had in the Pacific Northwest. The birds still flapped and fluttered. A large, flying, green bug buzzed across the window, struck the pane with a hushed thump, did a loop in the air, and then descended out of sight.
    But what had happened to the world?
    That was the first time Matthew perceived the ubiquitous silence. It did not strike him like a slap. It was much subtler than that. The silence calmly and pervasively began to permeate his surroundings, as if the living room slowly flooded with cold, clear water. It became a force he would learn to recognize as his reality, something he had to mentally, emotionally, and physically push through, or squirm his way past. Gone was the vibrant hum of car tires rotating over highway, avenue, and lane. Gone was the gruff sputter of those same vehicles engines. There were no honking horns, no distant siren wails, no chop’a... chop’a... chop’a... of traffic helicopters. And the combined voices, layering everything like palpable frosting, of well over two million city dwellers, recognized or not, were also simply gone; in its place... the solid quality of emptiness.
    That is when he really understood things would never be the same again. That everything on earth had changed.
    Matthew crossed the living room, entered the kitchen, opened the back door, and froze. There on the white, Formica counter, next to the toaster and Espresso machine, untouched and unharmed, the pill bottle Carol had mentioned. He stared... for a long time he just stared. When he left, he didn’t take his keys or his wallet. He didn’t grab his coat. But he did softly grab the bottle and shove it into his pants pocket.

#

    Matthew hadn’t been back to the condo he had shared with Carol and Ella in over two weeks. Any reason to return overridden by what he knew he would find- pallid skin slowly turning green, bloated tongues, stink, and flies.
    He sat on a curb outside the Burgerville on Hawthorne Boulevard. Midday. Matthew missed the taste of grease and the sumptuous meal of a juicy hamburger, missed the smell that would exude from the place when they were grilling. In his right hand, he held the tiny bottle, inside of which lightly clattered the pill.
    He had left the tent in the park, and in one of his many drunken stupors walked some forty or fifty blocks, essentially passing out on the couch of a local coffee bar. After waking, groggy and incoherent, he had pillaged the place: two-week old scones- stale and dry, clean water in plastic jugs- tepid. The industrial drip coffee makers and espresso machine vividly mocked him, and all he could do was stare, and remember not-so-distant days of ease, where a hot, steaming cup of Joe was as quick and close as his neighborhood coffee shop. From that point on Matthew had simply begun to walk: from twentieth to Eighty Second, from Southeast to Southwest, then back to Southeast again. He had completed all of this in a daze, meandering aimlessly, searching for any sign of human life, and finding nothing but death and corpses.
    They all believed what they had been told, every last one of them. No one had questioned a word, or a thing, or anyone for that matter. All had blindly and dutifully done as they had been told to do. They had taken their pills, and they had died. Many of the faces Matthew could bare to stare into were smiling.
    As impossible as it may seem, and in all of Portland proper, he had found no holdouts, no rebels... nothing. He knew they had to be out there. But where were they? Where were the religious groups who considered suicide a sin? Where were the anarchists who yearned for the apacolypse? Where were the doubters... the questioners... the people just like him? Did the rest of them flee to the shelters? Or were they hiding somewhere in the city, waiting for the world to end in a fiery hell of destruction and retribution?
    Matthew knew there had to be others, but he also knew that deep down he lacked the courage to find them. And part of Matthew realized that he did not necessarily want to find them. Hard enough being in the world when there were people. Harder still living in some barely realized dead world, some science fiction writers “wet dream”. A twisted world without the love, companionship, and laughter of his two girls.
    A skittering sound brought his attention to the curb directly opposite him. There a gray and hazelnut-brown dog, raggedy and filthy, lightly trotted between a haphazard mess of rundown food carts, moving East up the gently sloping rise of Hawthorne Boulevard. The dog looked unconcerned, not so much as glancing at Matthew.

     Matthew opened the bottle and regarded the pill thoughtfully. So innocuous... so benign.
    “I miss you,” he said, the sound of his own voice amidst the heavy stillness, startling him to where he fumbled with the pill bottle, nearly dropping it in a puddle.
    He laughed, this time an offensive sound.
    “Why’d you leave,” said Matthew. “I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean those things I said. Those things I thought. Honest.”
    Matthew stared at the white pill, clean and bright, the hand holding the bottle filthy.
    “I’m all alone.”
    A single tear slid down his face as he brought the bottle to his lips.
    “I can’t do it by myself.”
    Matthew opened his mouth and hesitated. A bleak and cold future spread wide within his mind: scavenging for food scraps; making a camp fire (Matthew didn’t know the first thing about starting flame, and the prospect of doing so terrified him); sifting through the physical as well as mental detritus in a vain attempt to regain some lost part of his humanity and individual dignity; warring ceaselessly with persons reveling in the world they liked to refer to as “Judgment day”.
    “I can’t do it by myself,” he said again. Matthew let the pill drop into his mouth and he swallowed dryly.
    He tried to stop it because it felt weird, it felt somehow wrong, but he couldn’t... he could not stop the dismal grin which stretched across his face. It would soon all be over, all the pain, all the hurt, all the memories. Never before had he even contemplated suicide, but now, as he could literally feel the pill dissolving in his stomach, he wondered why not.
    A laugh like a bark escaped him. He took off his jacket, rolled it into a ball, set it beside him, and stretched out on his left side on the curb. His eyes felt heavy, and a great yawn took over his mouth.
    “Very soon now,” he whispered.
    At the edge of his hearing, something scratched, an annoyance: mice scrabbling inside invisible walls, the tick-tick-tick of an old time alarm clock. It kept the laden sleep, which seemed to fold over him like a comforter, at bay. He hated it, until he realized he heard a vehicle engine.
    A weak lassitude suffused Matthew’s muscles. So much so, that he could no longer raise his head as the brusque noise of the engine, and the heavy crunch of thick tires over coarse concrete, invaded his conscious world. Coming closer and closer, until finally it roared up to him like a steam engine. Tires squealed. Brakes squeaked. The hinge of a car door opening shrieked across the city, as did the resulting explosion of that same door slamming shut. Footsteps crunching across concrete brought a shadow over Matthew’s prone form. A second later someone knelt down beside him.
    He struggled to keep both eyes open.
    “Stupid fool,” said a woman’s voice.
    Feminine hands reached down, picked up the pill bottle, and then idly chucked it into the street.
    “We should have made love. I wanted to. I really did. But you... you were always so fucking stubborn.”
    Matthew tried to speak. He got his mouth open, but the only thing that came from it was a slender line of drool.
    “I didn’t mean to deceive you. It just... kind of happened. I was gonna do it, I really was. I had the bottles open and the pills in my hand. But I couldn’t.” A heavy sigh. “I Couldn’t bring myself to give our baby the pill. I threw ‘em in the trash, and we went to sleep. We were sleeping... that’s it. Just sleeping. I should’a known how you would react. I should’a said something before we went to bed... but I didn’t.” The woman sniffed loudly: tears maybe, more likely allergies. “When we woke you were gone. You never checked on us, did you? You never made sure we were dead. You just left.” Again, she sighed. “You were right not to trust them. An’ I was such a fool, we were both fools. Then it hit me, Matt- now Ella and I had a chance... a chance without you. I’m sorry. I really am.”
    Matthew couldn’t lift his head to look at her, he didn’t have the strength. Slowly his eyes began to close.a
    “I’m glad you were right this time. And... an’ I hope you find peace. I really do.”
    Soft fingertips brushed hair from his forehead, and she said, “Good bye, Matt.”
    She stood up, turned, and walked back towards the idling vehicle.
    The last thing Matthew heard before he died was the sound the car engine, fading into the distance.

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