THE END OF EVERYTHING BLUES

I wake up this morning before my alarm because the local madman is back. He’s marching up and down our street screaming at the top of his lungs that the Old Ones have woken from their slumber and that the end of the world is nigh. As if anyone was unaware. As if the sky turning red wasn’t a constant reminder. As if slogging through three inches of ocean water this far inland wasn’t kind of a clue, or having to peel starfish off your mailbox to check for college acceptance letters didn’t set a general tone of impending doom. Like bitch, it is six in the goddamn morning, can you kindly and respectfully fuck off?

But no, everyone’s still gotta go through the motions.

Example: there is a distinct and inescapable air of optimism and cheer when I stumble downstairs. Dad’s cooking pancakes for breakfast, rocking out to 2000s pop and making intrigued grunts of interest every time a commercial says exciting new careers exist in the barnacle-scraping business. The calendar on the wall counts down the days till my graduation. A fridge magnet reads ALASKA in enormous blue-and-gold letters. Dad grins You’re up early like it’s some hilarious joke, like I had any choice in the matter. I swallow down the urge to say something scathingly sarcastic. The prophet of doom is still outside wailing. If nothing else, Dad says, which is how he’s been starting most of his sentences lately, If nothing else, it gets you up and facing the day. It’s so funny I could just about puke.

But when life gives you lemons, make lemonade, and when the universe brings the ocean to your door, learn how to cook paella. Don’t think about how the squid tastes rubbery. Don’t think about how you have nightmares about those little tentacles waking up inside your stomach, curling and uncurling and squirming around. Paella is fancy cuisine. Paella is cooked in Barcelona, which doesn’t exist anymore, so learn to appreciate it, for your dad’s sake, if nothing else, because he’s managed to get the bottom of the rice crispy and crunchy this time around and he’s so goddamn proud.

Dad holds the maple syrup lady hostage until I force a smile. Which isn’t him being a dick (not intentionally)—just him trying to be playful. My well-rehearsed grin would probably make a ventriloquist dummy shudder but I get the syrup all the same. On cue, Dad smiles gratefully back. Like I said: motions.

I eat the pancakes to make Dad happy. I bike to school to make Dad happy. I love him and it’s not his fault that the world’s like this. Not entirely, anyways. My spokes kick up a constant briny drizzle that soaks through my socks. Minnows dart out of the way as I zip along the sidewalk. At the corner, I pass the screaming man, who’s resting for a blessed fucking moment but pipes right back up when he sees me. Doom! He shouts, Calamity! Catastrophe! He’s howled his way halfway through the thesaurus by the time he’s finally out of earshot.

Another example of people going through the motions: I am accosted by a classmate outside of class. With the crazed desperation of a starving animal, she asks me if I have my part of the group project done and I’m like oh yeah, so that’s where I know her from. She’s “Nancy” or “Naomi” or something like that. She’s all what the hell, what the absolute titty-fucking fuck, she’s asked me before, I’m the only one who hasn’t submitted their share (probably a lie) and she’s already asked the teacher about an extension which will absolutely not be granted. Because she’s technically right about most of it, I let it wash over me, doing my stone Buddha impression, remaining utterly impassive and stoic until she’s said her fill. Then I just shrug my shoulders and say It’s not the end of the world and walk away before the screaming starts.

Lunch is fish sticks. They are cold and unpleasant. The tartar sauce they’re served with tastes like paste and makes me miss Dad’s pancakes. Halfway through, the cafeteria starts buzzing with some rumor that squirming things with crab carapaces and arachnid eyes have started crawling out of the Thames. Which leads to a schism, because some say it’s not the Thames where it’s happening, it’s that river in Paris, and still other people are saying it’s neither, it’s the Yellow River in China, which makes the Thames and Paris people accuse the Yellow River people of being not only wrong but racist. I refuse to take sides. This makes everyone upset. I decide to call it a day and head home early. A school employee yells after me as I push through the doors but doesn’t bother to follow.

The sky’s gone from popsicle red to old-scab black. It does that sometimes. It’s been doing that for years, even before the monsters woke up from their seafloor naps and decided to follow mammals onto land. Back then, we’d just get extra-pink dawns and dramatically vivid sunsets. Scientists admitted it was pretty but that it wasn’t supposed to be like that.

The guy at the store won’t let me buy an energy drink because I’m eighteen cents short. I thought I had the money but it turns out that one of the quarters in my pocket was a Canadian coin I’d somehow gotten ahold of. It’s probably worth way more than eighteen cents but the guy isn’t budging, like it actually matters, like the can I’m trying to buy doesn’t have limpets stuck all over it, like I won’t find a bunch of dead sand fleas inside, like what the fuck, I am not the unreasonable one.

Supreme Lord Fuckhead, by grace of the Old Gods, defender of the convenience store, doesn’t relent. I ride home dangerously uncaffeinated. I assume I’m having some sort of deficiency-driven hallucination when I get to my street and see my dad standing ankle-deep in what used to be our front lawn. He’s holding the prophet of doom by his collar and screaming at him. He’s going:

Would you shut up?

Would you just shut the fuck up for a goddamn minute?

Dad’s face has gone a distinct shade of dying-sun crimson. He’s trembling the way those volcanoes in Hawaii probably trembled before they popped like seismic whiteheads.

What the fuck… he says, releasing the scrawny prophet and letting him fall assflat in the murky water. Dad looms over him with arms spread wide, gesturing vaguely towards everything the universe. 

… What the fuck do you want me to do about any of it?

The prophet doesn’t say. Just scrambles backward then up to his feet, turning and sloshing away, leaving his cardboard-and-magic-marker REPENT sign floating by Dad’s feet. It soaks up the salt water. Slowly sinks out of view.

Dad looks up and sees me. Sees that I’ve seen the whole thing. Lets the rage drain out of him, replacing it with a weak grin and a helpless echo of the same shrug I gave my classmate earlier. I only get minimal shit for ditching school early. Dad digs some freezer-burned hamburger patties out of some secret place in the fridge and even a couple stale cigarettes from somewhere even more well-hidden. I don’t question any of it, in case he winds up changing his mind about how much trouble I’m supposed to be in, but there’s a way he lets his shoulders finally sag that suggests we might be past all that. Between long draws, Dad asks me how my day was.

Fucking sucked, I tell him, and to my unending surprise and joy he finally says:

Yeah. Mine fucking sucked as well.

Which made it the best day I’d had in a long, long while.