~ a short story
The last man opened his weary lids and light filtered to his latest reality. His head hurt from the wood on the park bench which just served as his splintery pillow for the night. He faced directly up into the sky above. Slowly he jostled from horizontal to vertical. Wrestled with soreness all over. The sun peaked through the branches of a tree.
The man’s first conscious thought: Not every day the first thing you see is high noon.
Clever. It was, however, the first such instance in the man’s life. Oddly curious; he couldn’t dwell on it.
He fully sat up, too quickly, and lost his sight in a blanket of whiteness. The blood in his brain reoriented. Staring blankly into the empty park scene before him, the man thought of why he’d be here.
Spending the night on the park bench, I am better than this. What was I doing last night?
Thinking himself perhaps rip roaring drunk just hours previous, he was surprised to realize his head hardly hurt. Other than the grogginess from new consciousness, and the bright midday sun booming onto his scalp, he felt quite good.
The man focused on remembering. Just nothing there. There’s so much empty space inside his conscious mind regarding this specific attempt at memory, it became refreshing to wade through. Like reaching into a bag expecting something physical and heavy and realizing there’s in fact nothing within. A shock at first, but then you realize you don’t have to expend any energy bringing the thing forth and dealing with it.
The man stood, coming to terms instantly with a clean and simple break from the previous night. No tittering half-remembered embarrassment or pulse-pounding headache from poison which had strained the moments from his brain. Just a bit of nothing. Feeling good about it, he walked away from his makeshift bed towards his day, whatever it might entail.
Glancing around the larger area, to the horizons of the park and the inner city proper, much finally registered regarding the currency of the moment.
All around him was devastation. Stopped cars, doors left open. Shattered windows. Torrid flames growing higher. Skyscrapers crumbling and felled. Debris enveloping the grass and the concrete alike. No bodies, nobody else around. Living or dead. But there was an emptiness. A silence. He became aware of the heat, acrid scents. A ghastly stillness permeated all.
His eyes returned to the sky.
Was it that red before?
The sun was shrouded by cumulus crimson oblivion.
Is this hell? wonders the man. Am I there, or do demons deliver?
But where were the demons? Might he be the only man not raptured up into the great white light? He walked on, staggering as he did. More red clouds crowded the farscapes of the sky. Bloody streaks lashed between them in deathly silence; lightning without thunder. His mind dulled, the day darkened. Nothing from any nightmare he ever had. This was all brand new, original material playing out in real-time. It all resembled the phase shift of a video game.
Sky filled with blood; Earth is dead and so is everyone else except for me.
Not a very fun game. Feeling faint, he heard a small rustling. It sourced from just ahead, within the brush of the sidewalk. He approached with caution and breath held.
A dog scampered out, with mirrored reservations. Brown fur, focused eyes. Snout flaring. Dog and man stopped to study their counterparts. The man met the creature’s eyes without expression. An honest co-equal assessment ensued. Not a large dog. Long wolfen ears pointed forth. Tail flared up but not wagging. No sign of teeth. Lot of fear in the gaze.
Immobilized yet, the dog’s attention remained fixed. A moment later, the beast approached the man’s sneakers and pant leg, sniffing studiously at point blank range.
The dog looked up at him, sat down on his haunches, and unleashed that familiar dog smile. Small pants of breath and reluctant zeal.
The man exhaled every tension and kneeled down to pat the dog on the head.
Face to face with the creature, he stared into the dog’s deep brown eyes. Like two hidden wells of wisdom, the strange attention returned memories from last night: Out for a brisk walk. De-stressing, cooling off mentally. Why? An argument with Ly. What was it about? Things weren’t gonna be the same, he was “throwing it all away.” He’d quit. Right at the deadline, left everyone in a lurch. More sleepless nights were on the way. Like he cared anyway; he hated the job, the project, the firm. He was only exercising what little freedom he had left as a sovereign human being. He’d always assumed Ly would have left him by now anyway…I guess that little prophecy fulfilled itself.
“I need to get more sleep,” the man said aloud.
All his thoughts soon dissipated, every transformation stalled or completed.
The man snapped back to reality as the world rumbled around him. Leaves from the tree overhead fell onto his jacket. A distant building falls. The dog whipped his head around frantically, trying to understand the source of the sudden quaking. The man stared out into the landscape at nothing in particular, taking in more useless memories and then casting them away in disgust.
This is really what it had all amounted to? This is what fate I was raging against? This is what it always led to. Crouching here in the park with a mutt in the midst of fresh apocalypse. What were my dreams but dreams? Now I am awakened, and it is hell. My hell. Just me and the mutt.
Bringing his hands to his head, the man covers his face and starts to smile underneath. The dog looks up at him, confused. He steps back and begins to shake, with laughter. It starts as a chuckle and escalates into something closer to a scream. He shakes his head in his hands; his muffled hysterical laughter resounds throughout the wooded passages of the small park. The dog barks, back fur arching into distressing heights. The creature staggers facing the man, tail between legs, snarling in ambivalence. The man now lies on his back and rolls to and fro on the ground, still crowing. He partially covers his mouth but constantly moves his hands, clawing at his hair, slapping his face. The sound of his cries drone onward and the dog keeps barking. A plane falls out of the sky in the distance. Another building falls in flames. In the fires of his madness, the man feels the silence of the absences violently. He skirmishes with the earth and the air, flailing and yelling until he doesn’t have anything left to say.
The man flips over and gets on all fours. Shaking his head, he opens his eyes to the dog and gets the mutt’s attention by barking himself. He then transitions to howling like a wolf, poorly but with severely conscious determination to raise his volume louder and louder. He keeps doing it until the dog joins in. They both howl with forlorn and deathly intention into the bleeding sky. He gathers himself, rushing up to the dog and grabs him by the ears. He brings his own countenance to stare deeply into the dog’s soul once more. The dog’s eyes widen. He sits up straight with the obedience of a training he cannot forget. He keeps staring. The man gazes, unblinking, for minutes into those dark wells.
He continues to stare into the dog’s eyes until he sees something.
“C’mon! Let’s go!” he shouts suddenly into the dog’s face, finally taking a breath.
Tail wags uncontrollably.
He pats the pup and grins wider than he ever has. The man stands with resolution and begins to walk another way. The dog joins him, expeditiously walking by his side into the new wilderness. ~
Thresholds of Transformation 