An End Read online

  He was made to know what they knew. He wanted their knowledge, not their life. He wanted their facility coupled with what he called simple love. He didn’t want to want their happiness.

  Atop a rock, on a shoulder of a volcano, he looked out and remembered the new quiet line of man while his mother screamed on a table.

  He did not know what to do. The Others would know, he thought. His grandfathers would know, he thought. But he did not.

  He returned. His mother was relaxed, at peace, dead. Her legs laid flat, a clean sheet spread over her. Bloody bedding burned upwind. Joseph held a lump of flesh marred by the umbilical cord wrapped around its neck. A sheaf of red-wadded genealogy lay at Joseph’s feet. Joseph stared out with dead eyes though he was not dead. Matthew had seen the look before, on Mary. Mary was nowhere to be seen. Great-grandmother repeated in monotone, No matter, all love.

  ***

  There were six. Peter, without a mother to logic or love him otherwise, willed his lungs to stop. He had a strong will for a boy. Mary hung his hair, Joseph said a prayer, Matthew and John planted his remains, Great-grandmother chanted and chanted and chanted.

  ***

  There were five. Great-grandmother rocked. A creak forward, a crick back.

  Joseph could not be near Mary. He shuffled by Matthew each day on his way to the fields to cut cane with his machete. When the sun was at its highest, he shifted to digging in the graveyard, mawing short-hacked lengths of sugar cane between what remained of his teeth.

  Matthew could not be near Mary. In pursuit of the pure joys and love the Community was founded on, he began to make things. Remembering the colored sky swaths, he slathered vacant walls in fruit pigment. He was disgusted with the results. He was not displeased with his dissatisfaction, which he was able to use. He was displeased with his inability to render the most rudimentary designs he had seen in the commerce center. He knew that he lacked something more basic than technical ability. His imagination, his reason, and his awareness were all insufficient to making as the Others made. He was not as good as them.

  Still Mathew filled his time with making. He wove sugar cane in enormous interlocking rings he hung over ravines. He spouted words into the air in novel arrangements to create an image of Mary. He sang like a hummingbird; he spent a sun being a dog; he affixed a dead sloth in a eucalyptus tree and sewed flowers into its skin; he tried to make a cloud. Nothing he made equaled what was in his head, and nothing in his head approached what he knew to be possible. His makings did not make him happy, but in the making there was self-absence.

  John could not be near Mary, but he was. He whispered to her that Matthew was an Other bearing seeds of extinction. He whispered that Matthew was incapable of the love that was the principle of the Community. He whispered where Matthew could hear that he wished he needn’t say what he said. He touched her elbow as he walked by. He held her eyes too long. He rested a hand in the small of her back as she stood at the woodstove waiting for the rice and beans to cook.

  Mary could not be near herself. She no longer spoke. She completed her tasks, then retired to bed. She did not sleep. She got up and lay back down. She stood all night, hands at her sides. Her eyes never shut.

  One night, as she stood at the window watching the sky, Joseph came near. He ran his finger lightly along her jaw. He cupped her face. He held her. Then he kissed her forehead and walked away.

  The next morning, they followed the trail of blood. Joseph lay in a grave he had dug, one hand chopped off.

  ***

  There were four. Months passed, though they did not know it. One day Mary told Matthew she liked the things he made. Somehow they made the valley more than it was.

  —They are nothing compared to what I remember, he said.

  —Then forget, she said.

  —They are nothing compared to what I want.

  —What do you want?

  —I want to be the father of new humans.

  She squeezed his hand with hers, then cringed.

  Matthew made her a necklace of seeds. He whittled her a spoon and she said to him the story of the last night with Joseph. He taught her how to inventory the food stores on a sheet of dried bark. No one had taught him. Writing was believed to be a distraction and was reserved for the foremost father to keep the genealogy and the list of the dead, but he devised his own system of simple accounting from marks shown to him by the Others.

  The creak of Great-grandmother’s rocker set the rhythm of their thoughts. No matter, all love. John crushed macadamia and pressed oil to lubricate the rocker. He started her rocking again. But she gave none of the subtle shifts of body to perpetuate the movement. She was no longer there. She had not been for some time.

  ***

  There were three. Matthew would not leave Mary and John would not leave Matthew. John smashed each of Matthew’s makings. As it left his hand, or his mouth. He called them communication devices used to stream the Community’s extinction to the Others. John negated his own reason for the necessity of such implements by asserting that Matthew was connected to the Others in his head. Matthew recognized the inconsistency, but did not care. It was true that he was inspired by the Others, and he did not feel like lying. They made things he wished he could make.

  —What do they call themselves? John said.

  —They call themselves humans.

  —We are humans.

  —We were.

  —Humans are for love. What do they know of love?

  Matthew did not know. He could not say. John continued.

  —All day they sit before a glow, you say, redirecting charged invisibilities, imaginary particles, number thoughts. We are farmers, cooks, carpenters, herdsmen, seamstresses, and fishermen.

  —We are gravediggers, said Mary.

  John and Matthew looked at her, surprised at her voice.

  —We are all brothers and sisters here. Our babies will love like family and live authentically and enjoy like only we can with our own blood.

  —All I see are babies and blood.

  —No Mary, said John. We are the beginning. We will continue. We will wash the land of their farms. We will swamp them in babies.

  —We will live right, said Matthew, in love.

  —I don’t want to live like them, said Mary. I don’t want to.

  —We won’t, said Matthew.

  —Don’t trust him, Mary. He will make clones of you to make babies, then sell them as specimens to the Others.

  —We’ll make a baby, said Matthew.

  —And then? said John.

  —If all goes well, we’ll make another.

  —And then?

  He would not continue to argue for existence when existence was rife with pain and expulsion. He wanted to be alone with Mary. He picked up a sloth humerus. He had filed it down for a series of mobiles of bone and seed and feather and volcanic rock and balsa branches and pasaflor. The mobiles would hang from trees like a mating of bird and fruit and wind. Mary did not speak when he clubbed John in the side of the head. She turned her face to the valley, the empty space between the outstretched arms of the volcano.

  ***

  There were two. He made marks on the list to represent Great-grandmother and John. He made marks at the end for himself and Mary. He buried the list.

  She was silent. It was not how he wanted it to be.

  They watched the clouds fly. They cultivated bananas and coffee and macadamia and sugar cane. They planted and harvested and cooked and ate and washed and slept well. He made artifacts until his hands were no longer articulate. He thought less. He spoke simple aphorisms.

  Long after Matthew gave up on miracles, they had sex. They believed it was the last physical manifestation of love. They felt they could reach into each other’s minds. When no offspring came, they mourned.

  One day, after they had lived a long time, Matthew died. Mary sheared his gray hair and tied lock after lock to the hair tree. His last sensations were the sun on his face, a buzzing of insects
, her bony body wrapped around his. No matter, all love.

  ***

  END

  About Nick Stokes

  Nick Stokes writes fictions, plays, novels, nothings, arrangements, pieces of prose, and other undefinables. He lives mostly or mostly lives in Washington; he packs mules in the backcountry of Montana; he's been elsewhere. Among other explorations, circa 2014, he's working on an immersive (anti)-choose-your-own-adventure novel. His novel AFFAIR was recently serialized and released as an ebook by The Seattle Star. He's been a finalist for many awards; he's received a few. His other writings can be found in dark crannies, in magazines sometimes known as journals, and around the web for dirt cheap or less. For dissemination, refer to https://www.nickstokes.net.

  Other Titles by Nick Stokes

  Novels:

  Affair

  You Choose ... (forthcoming)

  Novelette:

  1 Day

  Stories:

  An End

  Rise, then Descend

  What Never Happened, an Observation

  (others forthcoming)

  Short, Flash, or Nothing Prose:

  (numerous but for the moment you must search the web and on occasion read paper)

  Connect with Nick Stokes

  Author Website:

  https://www.nickstokes.net/

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  An End was first published by Mixer Publishing (mixerpublishing.com).