The End of the World

The End of the World - By Andrew Biss


CHAPTER ONE



Cuckoos



I was in one of those perfect mental/physical states of not having anything to do and not wanting to do anything. It was heaven. Eden. As I lounged haphazardly across the sofa, I had somehow managed to bring myself to a state of being so perfect that it felt like nothingness. I was nothing and I was loving every single meaningless minute of it.

There I lay, splayed out on the cushions, ever so vaguely trying to think of something to think about, which in itself was a considerable effort, and even then only made due to a tiny little anxiety I felt prodding away in the back of my head that if I couldn’t actually think of anything to think about, then perhaps there was no credible justification for my existence in the first place…a question, incidentally, that had brought itself to my attention a not inconsequential number of times thus far in my adult life.

And it was then – just then – just at that critical, yet still somehow half-hearted, apathetic flashpoint in my existential crisis, that my mother entered the room…seeming unusually perturbed.

“Mother, you seem unusually perturbed. Has something happened?” I inquired.

“Happened? Yes, of course something has happened,” she snapped. “Something is always happening. Even when life appears to be grinding its gears it is always, regardless of perception, propelling itself forward.” She then aimed her authoritative, all-knowing right index finger directly at me and announced with great conviction, “Stasis is a lie of the mind!”

Her response to my question, though very out of step with her grey, middle-class upbringing, was nonetheless not entirely unexpected due to her nascent interest in the teachings of the prophet Buddha. Still, I had a nagging feeling that all was not as it should be.

“Yes, I know it is – you taught me that only last week. I just meant that you seem a little…preoccupied.”

“Oh, my dear! My poor, sweet dear, dear, Valentine!” she suddenly wailed. “Look at you – a perpetual victim of the adult thought process. Why must people have children? I ask you? Why must this vicious cycle of obligatory reproduction continue? It’s not as if you asked us to be born.” She then clutched her hands to her chest melodramatically, like the women I saw on the evening news at Benazir Bhutto’s funeral. “I’m sorry, my darling. I’m so, so sorry. I wish I’d never had you.”

This last statement, whilst perhaps sounding rather hurtful to some ears, was water off a duck’s back to me, and there were two very good reasons for this. Firstly, my mother’s penchant for histrionics and grand statements – made more for effect rather than any actual attempt to convey an idea or opinion – were an almost daily occurrence. And secondly, and perhaps more significantly, I myself had been harbouring very real doubts for some time now as to whether she actually had had me. The thought of my mother actually giving birth, let alone conceiving, seemed almost inconceivable. Had they adopted me? Purchased me? Stolen me? If they had stolen me that would certainly explain their insistence at home schooling me and keeping me confined to the house for almost my entire life. The neighbours thought us strange, but I liked it. It made for a quiet, sedentary existence of few concerns. Though if indeed my mother was a former baby-snatcher, that would certainly have qualified as one of them.

No matter. In the here and now she’d once again succeeded in throwing me off the scent of whatever was cooking in that strange, odd-logic mind of hers. So I persisted.

“But…in answer to my question?”

“What? Oh…well…”

“Well?”

“What?”

“What?”

“Oh, what. Well…”

All these “whats” and “wells” were making me increasingly nervous. Something told me that my tranquil existence was about to be thrown for a loop.

“Well…your father and I have decided that it’s high time that you…” She cleared her throat, clearly uncomfortable with what she was about to impart, and raised her head back, defensively. “That you went…outside.”

“Now?”

“Yes…I’m so sorry.”

“But I was outside only an hour ago.”

“I – we don’t mean outside as in outside – what you think of as outside. We mean – he means…outside…of here.”

“But, Mother, I was outside – I was just there. And I have no desire or need to be outside again until my next break, thank you all the same.”

“Valentine, this isn’t easy for me, so do try and pay attention. We – or rather, he doesn’t mean the back garden, or the front garden, for that matter. He means…out there.”

“There?”

“Yes.”

“You mean…past outside?”

“Yes, if you like – past outside. You’re to go…beyond.”

Beyond? Beyond could only mean one thing. The only thing that lay beyond that…the world. I’d always imagined I’d venture out there someday, of course, but someday being in the future…the future never being now. Had the future arrived at long last?

“Are you sure now is the time, Mother? Is this the future?”

“Yes, my dear, the future is now. Yesterday is tomorrow’s past. Today has, alas, come and gone, leaving nothing but the memory of the present in your future history. It is time that you embraced what hasn’t happened.”

At this point I was beginning to get a little confused, not to mention apprehensive. If venturing out into the world beyond my home and leaving behind everything I’d ever known was such a grand occasion, why was she so perplexed by discussing it? There was clearly more to this than met the eye.

“Valentine, you must understand, if there was any way that I could’ve…” Her voice trailed off, as if to suggest despair, but I had a sneaking suspicion that she simply couldn’t be bothered to finish her sentence.

“No, no, it’s not that I don’t want to necessarily, it’s just that I…I’m not sure I’m completely ready for it. I don’t know that I’m entirely…prepared.”

“Oh, don’t look at me in that way. Don’t blame me, please don’t blame me. It was your father’s decision – all his. I was powerless. I fought for you – my God, how I fought for you – but you know how he is: the bravado, the machismo, the domineering force of personality thrust upon him from generations of socio-political role-playing. This was all a matter of time, surely you can see that?”

Contrary to my mother’s depiction of my father as some sort of Home Counties version of Stanley Kowalski, he was in fact a very even-keeled, mild-mannered man of middle-age and middling interests. He worked a full-time job, though at what no one seemed to be quite sure. He would often intimate that it had something to do with government, sometimes hinting at high powered diplomacy, nuclear technology, and even spying. In truth, though, judging from the titles of some of the documents I’d occasionally spot poking out from his briefcase, I’m fairly certain he worked for a local, mid-tier accounting firm. But I never said anything.

“It’s just so unexpected,” I maintained. “I’d have liked some time to–”

“Fate is to blame! Fate and your father. My hands are free of blood. If you die out there I will be free of guilt and I will hold my head up high. It will be up to your father to identify your remains. His brutality must also be his calvary.”

Suddenly the future wasn’t looking so bright. Why had my remains entered the conversation? I was rapidly going off the idea.

“Must I really, Mother? Are you sure now is the right time?”

“Now? What is now?” she said, tersely. “Now already happened. I have no comprehension of now.”

“Because you told me all about now. You gave me lessons on the past, the future, and what I was given to understand to be the concept of now – the present. All I know is what you’ve taught me.”

“That was yesterday,” she shrugged.

“So today your lessons mean nothing?”

“What? How could you do this?” she said, her voice now raised in anger. “How can you turn my words against me? Are you really so hell bent on making it end this way?”

I was becoming more disconcerted by the minute. “What do you mean, ‘end’? And in what way?”

“This way. You are my life’s work. You are the product of my womb and my mind and you’ve always had the best of both. I have nurtured you, breast-fed you, schooled you–”

“You never breast-fed me,” I interrupted. “I was teat-fed with a plastic bottle until I was thirteen years old.”

“Don’t split hairs. I purchased those teats with love and I held that bottle to your mouth with love, and all that love came from my breast. The point is, I imbued you with my life experience, which, I might add, came at great personal cost, with your father undoubtedly being the most expensive item on that list. All of that I did for you, and this is what I get in return – a savaging of my tutelage?”

“Mother, I wasn’t trying to be contumacious – at least, not as defined in the Oxford English Dictionary Second Edition – I was merely seeking clarification of what now meant in this context. Am I to leave now – at this instant? Or do I have…until morning at least?”

“You’ll have to ask your father, my dear. We are but puppets in this unrelenting circus of cruelty he’s created. It is he that tugs our strings.”

In truth, the idea of beyond – the world outside – had captured my imagination quite some time ago, and the thought of discovering it for myself had already begun to arouse something within me. So my mother’s revelation, though something of a shock, wasn’t entirely unwelcome. At the same time, arousal was something that could be explored or ignored, depending on one’s mood, as my father had revealed to me during masturbation instruction. “Let your mind wander where it will and do just as it pleases,” he’d say, “because before you know it, it’ll all be over and all you’ll have left is hard reality, a soft penis, and the memory of what might’ve been.”

What I was now confronted with, however, was clearly not something I could banish to the recesses of my mind after a brief spell of self-pleasuring. This was real life. Was I really on the verge of living out a fantasy? Or was I, in actuality, teetering at the edge of a cataclysmic abyss? The suspense was killing me – and judging from my mother’s comments, my immediate future had every chance of doing just that. It was then that my father entered the room.

“Hello, my boy,” he said, in his usual jovial tone.

“Good evening, Father.”

“Has your mother given you the big news?”

“She has…yes.”

“And?”

“It’s…it’s quite a shock, I must admit.”

“But aren’t you excited?”

“Well…yes, sort of…and no,” I mumbled, trying to summon a little enthusiasm for something that was sounding increasingly perilous.

“No? Why ever not?”

“I don’t know, I…I’m just not sure how I feel about it.”

“You don’t have to feel anything about it, you can just be happy for us.”

“Oh, I am – for you. I just don’t know that I am for me. I haven’t had time to think it all through yet. I need time to digest it.”

“We’re not asking you to eat it, dear boy, just that you be happy that it’s on its way.”

“What’s on its way?” I asked, sensing a crossed line.

“I thought you said your mother told you?”

“She did.”

My mother then turned away awkwardly, a far off look in her eyes. “Oh…no, I didn’t. Not that,” she said, enigmatically.

“Not what?” I asked.

She then turned to face me with an expression of such eerily serene calm that I couldn’t quite distinguish whether it was genuine or contrived. “I’m pregnant,” she said, softly.

“What?” I cried, as people tend to do when they’ve heard exactly what’s been said but still ask anyway.

“I’m sorry, darling,” she whispered.

“Pregnant? But…how can you be? It’s not possible.”

“Everything is possible!” she declared, her mood suddenly switching back to the more strident end of her palette.

“Yes, but…why? How?”

“The why is not for me to say – this is far, far bigger than you or I. Frankly, I’m surprised that you have the gall to posit such a question. As for the how, I believe we went over that several times during reproduction instruction, but, to recap, it is the result of your father’s sex organ being repeatedly thrust into my genital canal, culminating in the release of vast quantities of sperm into my uterus, one or two of which leech onto one of my eggs that have made the journey down through my fallopian tube, propagating yet another…” She waved her hand dismissively in my direction. “One of you.”

“I remember the lessons, Mother, every one – by heart. What I mean is…well…surely you’re too old? Aren’t you?”

“Apparently not.”

“Which is why you must leave,” my father interjected.

“But isn’t it dangerous?” I asked, not knowing my mother’s true age – no one did, of course – but sure in the knowledge that she was well past what could be considered safe.

“Out there? Yes, extremely,” she countered.

“To make room for the new one,” my father interjected again, seemingly following his own personal line of conversation rather than the one we were engaged in.

“No, I mean for you – at your age?”

“Most likely,” she said, offhandedly. “But when viewed against the dangers awaiting you out there my risks pale by comparison.”

“It’s the cycle of life,” my father added.

“But why do you keep painting such a bleak picture of it, Mother?” I asked, a sense of dread beginning to creep upon me. “Haven’t you always told me what a beautiful place the world is? How full it is of extraordinary people and places and experiences?”

“Oh, it is, it is,” she said, her mood suddenly light and playful again. “It’s romantic and charming and dazzling and inspiring, full of wonder and astonishment. So many glorious sensations all waiting to course through your veins and make you feel what it truly means to be alive. It can be absolute heaven – as I very much hope you will soon discover.” Then her wistful smile dropped just as quickly as it had appeared and she fixed me with a steely gaze. “But it can also be the death of you,” she added, gravely.

I was becoming more uneasy with each passing moment. If, as now seemed apparent, I was to be forcibly pushed from the nest, I was determined it would not be without a fight. After all, according to my mother’s grim predictions, my life was already in the balance. I turned toward my father with a look of defiance.

“And what if I were to say no?” I asked, firmly.

“Then you’d have every right to,” he replied. “No one would stop you. It’s a word, nothing more. No one owns it.”

“Very well, then – no,” I declared.

“No what?” he said.

“No, I’m not going. I don’t want to. I suddenly find the prospect wholly unattractive and I refuse to go. No.”

“No?” my father repeated.

“Yes, no,”

“No?” my mother chimed in.

“No.”

My father scratched his chin and paused for a moment. “We hadn’t planned on no,” he said finally, seemingly thrown off-kilter by my sudden refusal to leave.

“Then re-plan,” I suggested.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Valentine,” my mother said, sailing across the room for no apparent reason. “You can’t alter the course of history on a whim.”

“History hasn’t happened yet. We’re talking about the future and I don’t want to go, so the answer is no.”

“I’m sorry, my boy, but the subject isn’t up for discussion,” my father asserted, suddenly sounding far more sure of himself. “Your leaving here isn’t an option, it’s a requirement. The matter is closed.”

“But you said I could say no if I wanted.”

“And so you did, exercising your right to free speech, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to listen. You cannot expect your mother and I to be held hostage to your every demand. Your words are non-binding. There is no contingency plan for this – it’s a fait accompli, I’m afraid.”

“I just want to stay here, that’s all,” I implored.

My mother suddenly swished herself across the room again, for reasons known only to her, and clutched at her abdomen. “Oh, Valentine, how can you be so selfish? Can’t you stop for one moment and think about my poor baby? This frail little partially formed human being? I am with child, for heavens sake! Why must everything always be about you?”

“Me? What happened to you all of a sudden? I thought you were the one pleading with father not to throw me into the path of imminent death?”

“Really? When was this?” my father asked, rubbing his chin again.

My mother simply rolled her eyes. “Oh, honestly, must you take everything at face value? Didn’t we teach you of the duplicity of human nature during ethics instruction?”

“Yes, but…but you’re my mother.”

“As if that had anything to do with anything. I’m your mother, yes, so of course I’m going to tell you such things. That’s what we do. We’re maternal and loving and protective, and at times like this we have an obligation to say the things our children want to hear. But it’s a role we play, that’s all.”

“That’s all?”

“Well…no, not all. But what a person says and what a person feels isn’t necessarily going to be the same thing. Sometimes people simply say things to make someone else feel better. It doesn’t make it true, it just makes it appropriate. Really, Valentine, you must try not to be quite so literal minded about it all. It’ll only end in tears.”

Strangely enough, just at that moment those were the very things I could feel welling up in my eyes. “So you…you don’t really…love me?”

“Oh, my darling, of course I love you – of course I do. Come here…come and let me give you an affectionate hug.”

Before I’d had a chance to move, my mother was already sailing towards me, her arms outstretched, and moving in a sort of slow motion, as if re-enacting a scene from a romantic film she’d once seen. She wrapped her arms around me and applied just enough pressure to suggest affection.

“There, you see – pure love.”

I felt consoled but not entirely convinced. And rightfully so, as her mood suddenly switched again as soon as she’d released me from her embrace.

“But I’m afraid the time has come for you to stop thinking of me as your mother,” she declared. “I’m so much more than that. I have a life beyond you – beyond all of this. I have dreams and aspirations of my own. Dreams you stole from me. I cannot remain tethered to you like some tired old workhorse. I need to run free, to gallop through fresh pastures, to feel the wind in my mane and the grass beneath my hooves.”

My mother’s equestrian petitions did little to assuage my feelings of abandonment.

“But you won’t be running free,” I argued. “You’ll be giving birth again. Anyway, why can’t I stay here with the baby? I’ll be no trouble – less trouble than the baby, I shouldn’t wonder.”

She swished away again, this time with attitude. “You’re all grown up – it’s time you moved on. You can’t keep moping about here all day. You need a job. You need a life.”

“Anyway, there’s no room for you,” my father added.

“But it’s a baby – how much room does it need?”

My father became adamant again. “It needs your bedroom. This isn’t a big house, Valentine, but it is all I can afford. Had I been more successful in life, financially speaking, then yes, we could’ve all been one big happy family. But I wasn’t, so feel free to point the finger of blame squarely at me when discussing your unhappy youth in later life. Either way, economic necessity requires you to leave us and make your own way in this world. I wish it were otherwise, but there you are.”

My mother then said something that threw me completely off my guard – as she was wont to do, of course.

“Your father’s right, darling,” she cooed, in an odd, girlish tone.

Had I just heard right? ‘Your father’s right, darling’? I’d never heard her utter such a thing in all my life. Where had it come from? It sounded like a meek response from an obedient housewife; like something she’d picked up from an old June Allyson film. The effects of pregnancy were clearly kicking in.

“What is he right about? Right about what?”

“Everything. All of it. It all makes sense…in the big picture.”

Oddly enough, just at that moment I actually was beginning to see the big picture. I realised that whatever I felt or said meant absolutely nothing. This was all a set-up concocted between the two of them, and no matter what, they wanted me out. Was my mother even pregnant? I decided, in desperation, to call a bluff that I already suspected would be futile and doomed to failure.

“All right…all right, if that is your wish, I will leave this place. But mark my words, no matter what you say, no matter how much you plead with me at the actual, painful, cord-cutting moment of departure, I shall remain steadfast and resolute. There will be no turning back. I will be leaving for good. You may never, ever see me again. Ever.”

I walked towards the living room door with as much gravitas as I could muster.

“Farewell…birth parents.”

“Bye, darling!” responded my mother, brightly.

“Goodbye, my boy,” my father added. “And don’t you worry – you’ll do just fine out there. We’ve schooled you well, taught you honesty and truth, and shielded you from life’s iniquities. A hale and hearty lad like you simply cannot fail.”

I stood in the doorway, sensing failure but clinging to hope.

“I mean it – I really mean it. This is it. Really it.”

“We know,” they replied in unison.

I stopped and stared at them for a moment. Could these really be the same two people who had always been so zealous in their private parenting? Could all those years of shielding, nurturing, protection and home schooling be tossed aside so readily, so casually? And all because of the intrusion of a little foetus that, medically speaking, had little chance of survival, and even then was certain to be plagued with horrendous birth defects. I felt like an endangered specie, injured and taken in by some well-meaning refuge, bottle-fed and brought back to health, only to be shoved back in the wild, domesticated and declawed.

Were my parents cuckoo? Or, more frighteningly, were they actually cuckoos? Whatever the case the game was up and I was being booted out. My bluff calling having failed, I made one last dramatic gesture in an attempt to get through to them. I remained eerily silent and slowly and quietly closed the door behind me, imagining the stricken cries of separation anxiety that would ensue as I did so. None came, so I leaned in closer, my ear next to the keyhole, and heard the voice of my father first.

“That was easy.”

“I can hardly believe it,” my mother responded.

“I’d imagined tears and scenes and all kinds of nonsense.”

“I did, too. I suppose we are doing the right thing, aren’t we?”

“Who’s to say, but it had to happen. It’s out of our hands now – we’ve done all humanly possible.”

“I do hope so. I’m just not sure that being raised by humans is quite enough these days.”

“Only time will tell,” my father affirmed.

“Yes. And he did seem to take it all in stride. Perhaps he really has grown up.”

“Well, if he hasn’t he’s about to – and bloody fast!”

“Yes, poor thing. He won’t know what’s hit him.”

“I’ll tell you what’ll hit him – Hurricane Life, that’s what. High winds and flood watches. He’d better batten down his hatches,” my father chuckled.

“And hold his nose!”

“And send up a few flares!”

“Or pray to God!” my mother added, with a shriek of laughter.

“Pray to God! Hah! Oh, very good, darling. You are wicked. Wickedly cruel. But then that’s why I love you.”

“And that’s why I put up with you.”

“Out of cruelty?”

“Probably. And because you still tell me you love me.”

Suddenly the room went silent. After a few moments, I slowly and ever so gently pushed the door ajar, sensing that perhaps the reality of what had just happened was finally sinking in and they’d been stunned into horrified silence. I suddenly became buoyed by the thought of the happiness and relief on their faces when they saw that I hadn’t in fact left yet. When the door was pushed open just enough for me to peek in, my heart sank. No relief. No happiness. At least, not in regard to me. My father was sitting on the sofa with his head laid back, his eyes closed, and a big smile of contentment spread across his face. My mother’s face was buried in his lap, her carefully coiffed hair bobbing up and down in rhythm. It was a strange sight and one that made me feel slightly uncomfortable, so I quietly closed the door behind me again.

I had no idea what it was they were doing in there, but if it was grieving it seemed to me a very odd way of expressing it.