MERCERfic

Slipped Away
By: Jennifer Mercer

The thunder came in short, muted bursts as a slight mist drizzled from the sky. As Jack Randle wandered through the dark and deserted streets of some strange, yet oddly familiar city, the only thing he could really think of was a phrase he'd once either heard or read: //This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but with a whimper.//

He couldn't remember why he knew that phrase, or from where, but its familiarity lingered on the tip of his tongue like a diver petrified of water. His eyes, now raging balls condensed with burning steam, blindly watched the blurry world beyond, a world which became more and more confusing with every careful, wary step.

The sky and the earth were now one, fused together by an apocalyptic fog that left Jack wondering whether or not he was even still alive. His heart pounded, tugging air into hard-working lungs once known to contain more nicotine than oxygen. But it was the beating of this heart and the uneasiness in his stomach that assured him that he was still living, still alive, still of this Earth.

He lifted his trembling wrist to his eye, struggled to read the face of whatever the thing was that was wrapped around it. //Two arrows, one pointing to a...a… something… A figure? A shape? What the hell were those things called, anyway?// He wondered. His chest pumped with frustration. //Anyway, one arrow points to one, the other points to another place in the circle, and there's another arrow just moving around and around like a countdown, like a deathwatch. What the hell is this thing called?//

Through the purplish haze of the storm, a flashing red streetlight caught his attention. He was drawn to it like a fly to a fluorescent bulb, and he stared at the hypnotic, controlled blinking, as if it were beckoning to him. The rain picked up. A few sharp flickers of lightning dotted the sky. Thunder proceeded, but Jack seemed to notice neither.

As his mind struggled to process the messages his eyes were sending, rogue memories came to him in drips and droves - A ship on a barren sea, nothing on the horizon except a huge crimson sunset framed by a violent burst of violet; a young man's finger, trembling with nerves, dressed in a handsome gold band; a child crying - the happiest cry he'd ever heard; a woman, blonde, young, adorable, smiling, as the rays of the sun poured through a crack in her lips; a wedding, the bride in which almost identical to the crying child, only older...

He struggled to produce a name, felt disturbed when he couldn't.

Careful to keep his balance, he tugged at his suspenders, took two steps with each foot, closer to the light.

Another memory came then, clear as a digital photo. A woman - not the smiling blonde, nor the young bride- another woman. A woman he //almost// remembered.

A brunette, she was. Thick wavy hair, long, tousled down around her smooth shoulders. Dark, mysterious green eyes; mirrors, in the reflection of which he could see a man… young, yet hauntingly familiar...

And with each flash of the furious amber light, the memory dimmed, brightened, dimmed again, a movie reel cut in random places, without rhyme or rhythm of plot.

But even when the pictures were gone, a voice spoke to him. Her voice. He could almost remember it. He didn't know how he knew, but he knew. //"This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but with a whimper."//

Her soft voice reverberated through his mind in sync with the pulsing light.

Another memory flared up - more of a flash than a memory really - of her profile; her endearing nose in perfect conjunction with her face, black eyelashes fluttering in a soft, summer wind, and smooth skin shinning with a setting sun.

Her accent loomed in his head, that Spanish accent...

//"This is the way the world ends..."//

"Maria." Jack heard himself say. He reached out, extended his hand toward the light and tried to grab it.

//"...The sun just doesn't come up."//

He came to a corner, where he collapsed onto the trunk of a Plymouth. His knee crashed against the metal wheel-well, and pain exploded through his aged body. But he couldn't process what the terrible sensation was, nor what to do with it. He wanted to curse, but couldn't remember how; wanted to raise his fist and pound on the wretched tin of the trunk, but didn't know why. The world had become a distorted blur, as seen through the eyes of his plagued, diseased, impaired mind.

Visions were just pictures now, images of forgotten lore, of places he'd been, people he'd once known, none of which made any sense to him anymore. The only thing he could really remember was that phrase, and now the mouth from which it came.

"Maria," He cried again,. "Maria, where are you? Come to me. Come out of the clouds. Stay until the rain stops..."

Thunder boomed in response, a subsonic whine that seemed to break the clouds open, dropping rain now from buckets instead of sheets. But now Jack liked the feeling. It was cool, refreshing, and...//wet; was that the word? Yes, wet.// And with the feeling of being immersed, his ailing brain lapsed back to the memory of the girl with the coconut skin and the long wavy hair and the Spanish accent; the girl with whom he'd spent hours on the beach with in the rain on a night when he was still young and free from the grip of his progressing disease.

"Don't go, Maria. Just stay...just stay until the rain stops. Stay until the sun comes up."

Another cluster of lightning shivers clung to the sky in the distance. Thunder commenced, and the rain began to fall heavier.

//"This is the way the world ends,"// Maria said, as he held her beneath a canopy that he'd fashioned out of two blankets and some milk crates from his boat. //"Not with a bang, but with a whimper."//

//"Do you really believe that?"// Jack asked. He clutched her small hands as if trying to draw strength from them.

//"T.S. Eliot."// She replied in broken English that sounded as poetically controlled as the verse itself. //"Have you read him?"

"No. I haven't, Maria."// Jack replied. Only now he was no longer within his vivid memory, but on the stormy corner, leaning sprawled against the trunk of the Plymouth, back to steel, arms outstretched. //"Tell me about him."//

An even heavier torrent pounded him, soaking through his plaid shirt and trousers, but in a flash of his rotting mind, he was once again back on the sodden beach, the raven-haired woman in his arms.

//"I don't know much about Eliot, but this poem is fascinating,"// said Maria amidst the pounding of the rain against the sea and sand.

The way she said the word, fascinating, the way she misconstrued the syllables, placing the emphasis on //nate//, instead of //in//, drove his heart crazy, and he found that he was laughing like he'd never laughed before - like he'd never laugh again - at the absurd cuteness of it.

//"So do you think the end of the world is coming?"//

//"They say."// Maria contemplated slowly, shortly. She gazed into the dark abyss of the ocean and pulled the salted air into her lungs before she spoke again. //"In Puerto Rico, we believe that Jesus is going to come before the end, to take the good and condemn the bad."//

Mildly fascinated by the conversation, Jack leaned into her, gazed into her eyes, behind which seemed to lie a depth a hundred times that of the ocean, and asked: //"What do you think is going to happen...at the end?"//

She hitched her lips up on one side in a small, crooked smile that could have spoke volumes without words. She squeezed his hands and rested the back of her head against his chin. He inhaled the sweetness of her shampoo, savored it with his eyes closed. //"La Muerte' del Sol,"// and even though Jack hadn't the faintest idea of what it meant, it sounded like the most powerful phrase he'd ever heard.

He tried to repeat it, fumbled over the words like an old man with Alzheimer's fumbling through a storm.

//"The sun just won't rise."// she repeated in a whisper, and squeezed his hands again. An assertive, assuring squeeze.

//"Just like that?"//

//"Not with a bang,"// she said. //"But with a whimper."//

Jack slipped on the slick metal and dropped onto his back, splashing into a puddle in the gutter. Paralyzed by the fall, he just lay there and looked up, facing the weeping sky. The rain pelted him, and even though he didn't know what to call it anymore, he knew it was the same stuff that blanketed him in his memory on the beach. Maria, her name was. He could remember that now. Couldn't remember the name of the blonde woman smiling sunlight rays, nor could he remember the name of that whining baby, or her adult counterpart in the bridal gown, but he remembered the name of Maria as if she were the most important aspect of his life. And just maybe she was. Maybe it was what she'd said...

//"This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but with a whimper...Maybe the sun just won't rise..."//

His wife never knew. His wife -whose name he still couldn't muster - never knew because he never spoke of Maria since that night on the Island.

The Island. He could remember the Island faintly now, still couldn't remember why he was there, only that...maybe he was stationed there...or...was he working there?

But that memory was fading, like the rest of them. Soon he wouldn't remember the island at all. Soon, he wouldn't remember Maria, either. That scared him. More than the idea that his mind was slipping away from him, consumed by an incurable disease that he couldn't even remember the name of. Soon he wouldn't remember Maria, nor would he remember himself. But, he guessed, that was the way the world ends. Not with a bang - no thunder or lightning, no explosions, no gunshots in the night - but with a whimper. The world would just fade away, just bow out of his memory...like a sunset.

He struggled for more memories because he wanted to remember, needed to remember, and when he couldn't find them, he broke. Tears forced his eyes into a swollen redness that the rain could not wash away. He cried, whimpering Maria's name over and over again, until he couldn't remember it anymore. Until it was no longer a memory, like the rest of his long, forgotten life.

He closed his eyes and allowed the storm to consume him. Maybe someone would find him, and maybe they wouldn't. Maybe he'd just fade away like a sunset. Maybe the sun just wouldn't rise.

   * Font variations used for shifting thoughts and memories. 