Johnny had quit smoking so there was little to distract him from his nerves but to feed snus after snus against his engorged and throbbing gums. The tight, white bags of nicotine had inflamed the inside of his now humming mouth and he imagined it looked like grilled rashers of dry-cured back bacon; an angry, brown-red streak beside his teeth. There were thin crowds of people aimlessly bumping in scuttled lines - some hunched and up-looking, as though they might see the sky falling in - others in rabid bursts of speech that felt like a violence. Everything had changed at sunset. The announcement on the televisions and the radios and the social media and the rough-shod forums and the preached premonitions had made the world convulse and burp: a moon-jump that glittered out, white and shining, while we await an inevitable resumption of gravitic stasis; a plume of dust and then a TV dinner.
A falling sky would have been better. It would have removed an active agent; been accidental, almost. Whoops, somebody forgot to tie up the sky tight enough. But the fire that was circumnavigating the planet and propelling God-only-knows-what at a bajillion-miles-an-hour into their vague but very purposeful direction was very much of the active variety. A button had been pressed. The Button, as it had been dressed up and immortalised. A red, pulsing, 3D-printed pronouncement was prodded down into a smooth, silver surface, and a binary digit flipped to set into motion and begin what will inevitably be their end. Johnny breathed at the stars and considered it all for a moment. All the bustling nonsense of this reality that demands capitulation was the come to a grinding halt. Was it worth it?
The show must go on. Why not? Johnny wondered. Because what else is there to do with my time? Family were long dead, or had extricated themselves from his life with surgical precision; there were no lovers, they too had dwindled and paused open-mouthed, before turning and walking silently away in a haze of rolled-tobacco smoke; there were no friends, because a stand-up comic does not have time to socialise, and - Johnny had come around to realising - he was just not great company. Though, maybe a narcissistic, semi-successful comedian with no money and less empathy would be a perfect companion with whom to see in the end of the world: a fiery obliteration might just seem like an improvement on witnessing a man retell bad taste jokes in a variety of poorly handled accents while stealing your alcohol.
Oh, the patrons! These people had made a choice. At least for Johnny there was a lie to be told along the lines of “craft-honing” and “going out doing what I love” but for these poor people… Johnny would be the last thing they would witness, the last voice they would hear. It certainly raised the pressure a mote and made him fondle the tin in his pocket which housed his comfort-threatening snus. No more. He chided himself, an image of his teeth slipping free from his abused, raw gums and bouncing to the stage providing all the material necessary for a mind-change.
There was nobody checking for tickets. He breezed right on through, pushing away the thought that some in the crowd might have done the same tonight. It’s fine, isn’t it? What even is economics in an apocalypse? That feels like it might have legs for a joke, he thought with a smile and reached for his black notebook that was tucked into the back-pocket of his jeans before pausing and ceasing his walk through to the auditorium: there Johnny stood, considering the inevitable end of everything. Before it was everybody else’s threads that were being cut; slumping like puppets in the static white infinite beyond. But now… now it occurred to him that this was his end too and it piled up in front of him in a stack of futility and regret: the half-baked jokes; the unmade sourdough; the novel without a middle… or an end, really; the unplanted forget-me-nots from what’s-her-name’s funeral; the unpainted under-the-stairs; the Godfather parts two and three; a sensible edit of the first part of that novel. They were all flapping, frayed ends of threads that would never be tied into anything even slightly resembling a form. It pained him but it also offered a sense of relief. The ability to confront these ideas and ideals and to say out loud - in his head - “I no longer need to care about these things being left incomplete.” It just took the undoing of everything for him to realise it.
There was no compère either. Another person with a life worth seeing to a conclusive end, with other souls that cared, or with a final, active roll of the die: a blaze of glory; an unpunished score to settle; or a brown, cling-filmed clay and a syringe. Looks like I’m introducing myself then.
“Ladies and gentleman, and everybody in-between,” he wailed into the microphone, just off-stage, barely out of sight, “please welcome to the stage, Johnny “Greaseball” Jones!” Applause is a strong word, with all sorts of connotations, and embedded representations in one’s own mind. In the same way that there are a finite number of murders that make a killer “serial”, and there are a finite number of people at your house before it can be called a “party”, there must be a minimum number of people clapping before it can be called an applause. And this was not enough. Roughly a dozen hands were in play, colliding arrhythmically in a meat-muted percussion, as Johnny walked up onto the stage.
“Oh what a night!” Johnny said as he shuffled his hair, shook his shoulders deeper into his leather jacket, shuffled his jeans in a nervous two-step to settle his body into its final resting place. “Quite the crowd we have with us.” He said, shielding his eyes to the heavy spotlight and squinting at rows of empty seats and tables and a handful of baleful dishevelleds. “I guess I better make this good.”
“What a time to be alive!” He began, a creeping nervousness slowing him, making each syllable heavier, more leaden and viscous. His mouth was a moist vacuum that seemed to augment its outputs to a stunted reduction of themselves. Get a grip, Johnny, he thought, taking a breath and a gulp and a moment to flatten his shirt and address the crowd. “Anyone got anything nice planned for the holidays?” There was a titter, out to the left and Johnny couldn't help but turn to face it, making its distinction all the more obvious, all the more wretched. He cringed at his impulse, damned his reflexive arrogance to address a positive reaction to a tame gag. “It's fun, because now we can do whatever we like. Whatever happens in the next six hours or so... Nobody cares. But it's strange isn't it? You suddenly realise that there’s nothing really cool you've been missing out on. You've not really been held back all these years. You could have done whatever you wanted last week, and the apocalypse changes nothing. Take me, for example, I racked my brain as to what to do after the show, and I could only come up with one thing: cow tipping.” There was a chuckle in the half light and Johnny continued, unmoved through great restraint. “Thirty-four long years I've been on this Earth, and the only thing I can think to do when it's all drawing to a close, is push over an unsuspecting animal. Two weeks ago, the thought wouldn't have crossed my mind, now it is all I can think about.”
“I guess the afterlife is worth talking about, I mean it might be the next time we meet in the not-so-distant future, so it's probably wise to consider what it might be like so we’re not too surprised.” There was a mumble in the crowd, he paused to allow for a heckle that never came. He pressed on. “I’m not really a believer in God. I think there might be something, but it’s more likely we’re in a simulation than there be an actual deity, don’t you think? It will be a little galling when we find out that it’s not some old guy with a beard that’s full of love, but some nerd in his basement, full of Monster energy drinks.”
The silence in the room was not able to develop because a distant bang, a half-grumble, a stifled roar, made the building’s foundations shake. Johnny took a breath and popped in another snus. A silhouette in the crowd scampered away at pace.
Johnny departed into the cold night and blinked at the low cloud that reflected back the undeterred streetlights. It gave the impression that the evening was self-contained and he found it pleasant. He was encased; safe somehow. The street was quiet, perhaps unsurprisingly, but still the neon glow of advertising hoardings glittered along its edges. Even now, at the precipice of infinity, people are desperate to sell me a vape or a haircut. God knows I could use both. He smiled into the night, slightly regretting not having thought of that before his routine.
The view of the hills was romantic: backlit and flowing; red and orange and - in some places, inexplicably - florescent green. The moon was drowned out by the visual noise, as though happy to take a backseat and allow the events to just play out. Much like the rest of us. The seclusion Johnny had found was peaceful, in spite of everything. He was incongruous in his black leather jacket and sneakers that were now caked in mud. A swirling wind made him shiver. He turned to face the cow and smiled. Their eyes locked and they fixed each other with a stare. The breath of the beast was warm and Johnny could feel it on his face, smell its sweetness, its vital life. It was in the deep black reflection of the animal’s eyes he saw the world explode.