Rush Hour

October 20, 2015October 16, 2015 ~ Thomas Brown ~ 16 Comments

They say the apocalypse is coming. In five years, they estimate, a meteor will strike the earth and wipe it clean of life. Five years is not a long time, but it is long enough. It is long enough for weddings and funerals for those who cannot wait, for that walk down the beach, where he first holidayed with his family at St. Bees. It is long enough for work, long enough that the world still turns, for now at least. So he finds himself on a train platform each morning, stepping onto a carriage, staring through dirt-smeared windows as the world passes him by.

Sometimes he thinks he could sit there forever, watching the countryside slip past. Trees blur into fields, which seem to stretch, longer than any field should, until there are no boundaries, no roads, no thicket hedgerows, only a palette of greens and browns beneath blue shining skies. The carriage rocks beneath him, lulling him slowly in his seat, while far above cerulean clouds blossom with wind and rain. He has only eyes for their phosphorescence, their purple twilight tinge, and for the twenty minutes it takes him to reach the next station he is lost in their depths, rolling with them through the sky; a fish caught in their awesome ocean pull.

Then the train shudders, stops, expels its load, and he is back inside his business suit. His mouth sighs. His shoulders sag. The Underground drinks deeply of his soul.

People swarm up escalators, spilling out of the station into the road. Traffic screams after them; a chorus of sirens and sudden brakes. Women wobble past him on heels too high while men with faces shaven clean march briskly in their wake, and in between their legs dogs gambol, vagrants dance another day with life. He wonders when it began; when things first showed signs of ending up this way, then remembers he need not wonder about anything anymore, ever again, for more than the minute it takes to type as much online.

His offices are tall, grey things overlooking a grey Thames. His room is on the fifth floor, next to administration. At eight-fifty he takes the lift, in the foyer beside the stairwell. His shirt is hot and wet beneath his arms. Inside his office, he closes the door, sits at his chair, which sinks beneath his weight, and stares at the face reflected in the blank computer screen. Drawing a deep breath, he begins to type.

He does not know why administration is called administration, why it is singled out when they are all administrators; every man in his pin-stripe business skin, every woman with her pay-check pulse, record-keeping, number crunching, so that the world will keep on turning. He thinks about love, and what it might feel like. He thinks about death, and when it was that they all died. Sometimes he turns in his chair and stares at the plant in the corner with its plastic fronds, its sterile soil, its bright, synthetic stem, until it is all he can do not to close his eyes, ball his fists and scream at the top of his voice.

He does not remember weeks in terms of days. He does not remember working weeks at all. There is only one day repeated, in which he wakes up, travels by train, pushes through crowds, through streets made black with rainwater to stinking, sweaty offices built of old brick the colour of dried blood, peopled by corporate puppets in black suits with empty eyes and long thin fingers twitching by their sides.

They say the apocalypse is coming. In five years, they estimate, a meteor will strike the earth and wipe it clean of life. He wonders if it has not come already. Not by fire and smoke but a commuter contagion; this, the human condition, made better for a few minutes each morning by the birds in the sky, the distant glimpse of a dream in the clouds.

~ Thomas Brown

Helplessly Above It All

June 23, 2015June 23, 2015 ~ jonolsonauthor ~ 20 Comments

I’m fourteen days, three hours and twenty seconds into the mission. So far the spacecraft has performed flawlessly, surpassing all expectations. It’s been rather comfortable as the capsule was designed with more room for the occupant than previous spacecraft.

When I was selected to be the commander of this mission, my wife got the biggest kick out of watching me jump around our little apartment with a big shit eating grin on my face. She said that…

…she said… why am I even bothering to mention her?

She’s dead.

So is everybody else.

I should never have taken this assignment. Prior to the launch, the administrators had told me to say a proper goodbye to her as tensions were high with our rivals across the pond. The risk of nuclear exchange was at its greatest, even more so than during the Cuban crisis.

I didn’t take it seriously.

The officials were still going ahead with the launch and I treated it as business as usual. I cringe remembering my last words to her.

“Keep the steaks warm.”

I watched helplessly above it all as hundreds of nuclear missiles launched from their silos. Had it been a simulation, I would have described the mushroom clouds sprouting up from the impacts as mesmerizing; however, knowing each one signaled the eradication of civilization, I felt numb. My radio had gone silent after a partial scream was obliterated in a roar of static.

That all happened on the second day of the mission.

Through each window, I can see the planetoid carcass that was once Earth. It used to be a beautiful sight with shades of white, blue, green and brown; a source of wonder and full of life. Now it’s an inhospitable cancer, smothered with the unnatural, burning clouds.

I left my radio on over those twelve days but only empty static and the ghosts of my memories kept me company. I would have loved to hear another human voice – even if it had been the enemy.

Not anymore.

I’ve just initiated my reentry procedure. Within minutes, my ship will fire its rockets one final time, propelling me back towards the nuclear polluted earth. When the moment comes to deploy the parachutes, I will simply sit back and enjoy the ride. I’d rather die in an impact crater on the earth’s surface than orbiting above it.

They fire right on cue and I feel the ship slowly descending into the atmosphere.

“Can anybody… me?” The voice crackles through my headset. “My name is…” A burst of static hisses then fades. “If anyone can hear me, please acknowledge…”

I lean forward to reply then stop. There’s no way I can interrupt the reentry procedure. Even if I could, what would be the point? As the flames begin to engulf the outside of my ship, I turn the radio off and lean back into my seat. There’s no reason to give him a false sense of hope.

Sorry buddy. You’re on your own.

~ Jon Olson

Weeping Willow

December 3, 2013December 8, 2013 ~ Thomas Brown ~ 24 Comments

Beneath the leafy boughs, she waits. In one slender hand she clutches a white rose. The other grasps the branch of a tree, against which she slumps like a pregnant doe. The air is heavy with spring and anticipation. She stares vacantly into the forest.

Shadows dance beneath the trees. Her sisters assume female shapes as they converge on the copse. Skeletal ladies drift from between the trees, fine cheekbones pale in the dark. Long, fleshless legs carry them to the feast. Her sisters have not fed for many days.

Perching upright in the grass, they eat slowly. Pained smiles give their faces the likeness of skulls. The feast is bountiful but they do not gorge themselves. With terrible patience they pluck out delicacies from those arrayed in the grass and bring them to their broken lips. Burs cling to their cold breasts. Leaves flow from their waists like tattered dresses stitched from moss and mulch. Their scornful laughter fills the trees.

She does not dine with her sisters. She could scream, watching them pick like mice at their spoils. Her appetites are wilder. She craves contact, warmth, light against her skin and inside it – life in the dank wetness of her womb.

Where her sisters intend mockery, she sees only envy. Their fingers are green with it. She is sick of the forest, of her siblings, of the trees; so old, so uncompromising.

But what is a dryad without its parent tree? Should she move a dozen feet from her willow – its pale skin so much like bone – she would wither and die. Such is the fate of the dryad. Such is the link between body and soul. Her fingers curl around the rose, clench tight, tremble until viridian beads trickle down its stem. She will always suffer in darkness.

But she need not suffer alone.

He is coming. Over the wet sounds of her sisters’ chewing, she can hear the crack of the forest beneath his boots. She has grown gaunt with waiting, but he has kept true to his word, at least; that red-blooded man with heat in his hands and in his loins. How could he not return, after their last encounter, when he had feasted so hungrily on the ripe flesh of her fruit? She imitates the female form so well: nature personified; the spirit of the earth and the bark and the leaf, and all the appetites that come with it. Let her sisters find satisfaction in their own way, and she in hers.

She watches them eat until they cannot eat any more and fall back from the steaming bodies in their midst. Cavernous rib cages lie cracked, exposed to the beetles and the birds. Faces stripped of their flesh stare without seeing at the trees, and the ladies in their midst; skeletal no more but plump and soft like swollen fruit. Mockery abandoned, they sprawl in the darkness, and sleep, and grow roots into the damp earth.

In the darkness of the copse, far from the world of men, where the sun struggles to reach and the soil is always moist, she turns from her sisters and begins to weep. She weeps for the forest and for love and for the feel of sunlight on her face. Is that not what the willow does best?

~ Thomas Brown