It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over

by Anne de Marcken

When I was alive, I imagined something redemptive about the end of the world. I thought it would be a kind of purification. Or at least a simplification. Rectification through reduction. I could picture the empty cities, the reclaimed land. That was the future. This is now. The end of the world looks exactly the way you remember. Don’t try to picture the apocalypse. Everything is the same.

I was thinking about golems. I was thinking that I am like a golem. I feel more like earth now than like an animal. Mud and sticks and rags that look and act something like a live thing. And I thought: But really I’m more like an owl pellet. A boney, furry, coughed-up turd that walks and talks. But then it wasn’t just a joke to myself. It became an idea. A middle-of-the-night idea. All my ideas now are middle-of-the-night ideas. Perfectly lucid and perfectly flawed. I am having a very long sleepless night. Exactly the opposite of the endless sleep that is death. I had the idea that I’d make myself a new arm. An owl pellet arm. Mud and hair. I pretended to wake you up and tell you. I said out loud: “Don’t let me forget—owl pellets.”

I want to see what the produce section looks like, but I am afraid the vegetables will be rotten and disgusting. I go to the freezer aisle instead. You are there. You have a bag of frozen peas in each hand. You are disappointed when you see me. You were going to surprise me with the peas, but now I’ve spoiled it. I try to start over and turn down the candy aisle instead, but it doesn’t work.

Marguerite says, “I’m going to leave.” “Where will you go?” I say. “Home,” she says. “Where is home?” “Home is like the moon,” she says. “Filled with grief?” “Never where you expect it.”

I am the only ticket-holder at a suicide theme park. I