The End of the World

Copyright © Andrew Biss 2011

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No part of this book may be stored, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without express written permission of the author.

Original cover photography by Anyaivanova

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.