Final Interlude

The walls are coming down all around us. All our lives, we've been raised to know that the end of the world will come with explosive fire, razing everything, scorching the earth so nothing grows again. This same heat will melt the very flesh off of our bones like tallow around the wick of a candle. Even if it is instantaneous, we still feel the agonizing torment of knowing that after this, there shall be nothing.

Yet this is not the case if our entire world lies within the confines of four walls or just one building. The end is much less dramatic. A slow, low rumbling crumble. We have not seen the sky in such a long time, some of us for years. Others of us have not felt the stroking rays of sunlight for decades. Such things are as easy to forget as names and dates. Perhaps the roof will open up and before crushing all beneath it and burying us once and for all, we will get a taste of that simple joy once more. As far as heat to burn off our flesh, that won't happen. For one thing, it feels just as cold and nothing-like as it ever did in here. Also, it's hard to sear the flesh off our bones if none of us have any flesh or bone to speak of whatsoever.

Perhaps this is more florid and ornate than necessary, especially compared to before. Then again, it is easy to get a bit melodramatic at the end of everything. Allow me to clarify, I use the collective "we" in the sense that we are all finally aware of each other as opposed to the usual fleeting glimpses. There is a woman dancing in the balcony, her long skirt whipping up around her legs and her arms waving in the air. I now know her to be Olivia, and myself to be Jack, after all of this time, I have found her. I suppose it makes sense that I'd finally find her just as everything is about to be completed into nothing, much as it was before.


And I see the man with his broom and the girl with her broom. I know the man to be Jack, but I do not know the girl. I probably wouldn't have noticed them at all if I hadn't stopped dancing. I used to love it so, but now my feet hurt, or as close to feeling pain as someone in my position could feel. Perhaps I do it because I cannot sing anymore. For decades, I had no voice, always feeling the twist of the rope around my throat, each sinew tightening, digging into my flesh. I was always dancing, whether at the end of that rope or in the balcony itself, completely aware of nothing. As far as I was concerned, the rest of the world simply did not exist. Maybe I needed it to be that way, but now I understand how foolish the whole thing was. I only hope that Jack has forgiven me for my part in all of it. From the creases around his eyes to his smile, I know that he has. Even after all this time, he still looks at me with that same look of longing, as if he couldn't simply walk up to the balcony to reach me. Perhaps it is not love that I feel for him, even after all this time in isolation, but something else they haven't any words for, or at least they didn't have words for it in my own time.


I notice the girl down in the aisles with me using a broom very much like my own. She still seems lost in her own world, listening to her loud music. I do not know her name. Even after observing her interacting with others, even with ones outside of her own time, I still do not know her name. And as the earth beneath our feet continues rumbling, it hits me, just as the first few points of light come through the cracks in the roof sting my eyes or whatever method I use to somehow experience vision. She does not belong here. She never did. She may as well have not been here at all, but at the same time, I know that she exists as she should somewhere else. She is exactly as she was meant to be just as I am as I was meant to be. Yet this is impossible. Yet by all rights, this entire situation should be entirely impossible. Yet it only makes sense that at the end of all things, at least for us, all those rules and barriers should fall like so many bricks and pieces of timber and clay around us.

It was strange that even if we managed to transcend the barriers of our bodies, we paid for it by having to remain in the confines of the Phoenix. Of course, I highly doubt that transcending our bodies was what any of us had originally set out to do. We all wanted to find something, someone here, but couldn't seem to.

I remember the woman, the living one who had come here searching for her brother. It seems like yesterday that she came here, although for all I could know, it really was yesterday. For once, I can safely say that he was not and never was here. Even after all this time, I am not entirely sure how the rules work. It's not like I would be able to tell her that, but I still feel a bit better knowing what she probably spent her life searching for. She could be just as dead as me for all I know.


This place used to be beautiful to me once, an oasis of culture in the middle of nowhere, a legitimate job compared to just completely giving up and going home. Instead of paint on the walls, now I see blood. It is not merely a layer of cobwebs and dust I see settled over the furniture, but rather, the entire building was held up for so long merely by all this rot. I do not know what is causing all of this destruction. All I know is that this end is as welcome to me as the beginning once was, when Peter first took me in as a chorus girl after my bus broke down halfway to the city. Of course, it was this initially kind act which doomed me to remain here forever, just as Jack's misguided love doomed me here. Maybe I'm just laying the blame on everyone, but some part of me knows that I deserved to die here, even if I still can't quite accept it.

I am no longer dancing on the balcony, but dangled from the rope again. As the balcony caves in, I am finally able to come down, the rope snapping beneath the crushing and grinding of everything above falling. Yet I only find myself trapped once again, next to Jack. He looks at me, the same lingering, longing look and then reaches out. The light hurts our eyes, but we can tell that there are people watching this grand, albeit horrific spectacle. If I were standing, I would take a bow. I never really had a chance to bow at my first "final" curtain call, and it looks like I won't be able to take one for this second one.

"Olivia?" He takes my hand. It feels oddly warm, but for all I know, I am just imagining it.

"Yes?"

"I am so very sorry that I could not find you sooner."

"It doesn't matter." It really didn't. I wasn't looking for him, although I wonder if I did, all this would have just come to an end much sooner.



If I could have caught her, I would have. I was distracted by the edges of our times completely blurring. I could see the men in their dark fornication, expressions glazed over by pale grey light, experiencing the same hollow pleasure in death as they did in their lives, if one could call what they had life. I could see the girl sweeping around, occasionally talking to people who actually paid attention to her. It only took a second for that rope to snap and the balcony to collapse along with the roof to completely cave in. For a moment, it seemed like I had a body again, yet of course, this meant I had the same limitations as before. Even if I was a whole, complete man, I would have never been able to move fast enough. It was like I had failed her once again. Why was this happening?

I pulled myself through all the rubble to be at her side. She looked out into the light. Maybe she was realizing that she had spent most of her limited time living in the dark, with only the artificial glow of spotlights and house lights to warm her. Maybe that was what drew me to her, despite her obvious coldness toward me.

"Olivia?"

For the first time, for pretty much ever, I reached out and touched her hand, taking it in mine. If the world was ending, then at least I could be with her as I wished. Her hands were cold and much smaller than I remembered. I looked around for a moment and realized that everyone else was gone. She and I were finally alone.


"Yes?" She looks at me, almost sadly. Was she looking for me all this time as well? I highly doubt that though. If anything, I think that she's just tired.

I completely forgot what I was going to say. It probably wasn't that important anyway. "I am so very sorry that I could not find you sooner."

This probably sounded completely ridiculous, but for some reason, it felt necessary. After all, at the end of all things, it couldn't hurt.

"It doesn't matter."

I wanted to ask her why. As much as I wished for her to discover that her feelings really had changed over time, that she somehow realized that she was meant to be with me, I had been around long enough to know that could never be true. Most likely, she just meant that it didn't matter considering how all of our wasted time would just go back to nothing either way.

I wanted to ask her why, but the last wall completely came down over us before I could get any sound out at all.