The End/The Beginning

For a while now, I’ve known death was coming for me. In a thousand lifetimes, I’ve contracted a thousand terminal illnesses. You start to recognize the signs early: weight loss, fatigue, pain, sallow skin. Even just a Bad Feeling, like something isn’t going right anymore. A lot of people think that’s just what getting old feels like. They’re right, but they’re wrong, too; that’s what the start of dying feels like. The beginning of the end. 

I’m trying the chemotherapy. I hate it, and some lives are so shitty to begin with, it’s a relief to get sick and move on to the next one. But I’m going through with it this lifetime, because, hell, I’m only thirty-six, and I love my wife. I’m not ready to not wake up next to her anymore. Maybe if I put up a fight, I’ll actually beat it. Stranger things have happened to me. 

But I still have that Bad Feeling. Christmas Eve is in two days, and the grocery store should be crawling with people. People buying hams, people buying last-minute presents, people buying ugly Christmas sweaters, you know, whatever. But there’s none of that. A totally empty store. I think I saw an employee when I came in, but it might’ve been a moving LED screen. My vision isn’t so good these days—the Bad Feeling. 

I pull the grocery list out of my pocket, scanning it for stuffing, pudding, maybe chestnuts-roasting-on-an-open-fire. I had a family once that had cheese fondue every Christmas—that’s got to be a favorite Christmas tradition for me. Who doesn’t like dipping apple slices and bread into cheese? Alice and I usually stick to stuffing, collard greens, and pork roast, though. That’s what we like to make. 

I grab a cart and push it down the lonely aisles. Everything is so easy now, with all the world’s foods a twenty-minute drive from home. Sometimes I think about a life way, way back, when every Christmas dinner with ham meant someone had to go out and kill one of the squealing pigs in the yard. For many years, that person was me, and it didn’t bother me then, but I think about the blood now and shudder... I’ve gotten soft. It’s so simple, now—you buy your meat plastic-wrapped and guilt-free. Fish don’t even need to have bones. You can have any kind of berry or fruit, no matter the season. Where did it come from? How did it get here? Who knows, who cares? Eat up!

I’m trying not to view civilization’s growth cynically. Really, things are better than they were: it’s December and I’m passing a display of ripe peaches; I don’t have to shit in holes or haunted outhouses anymore; I can text or call my wonderful wife from nearly anywhere in the world; I can download movies to watch at home in my pajamas. It’s just definitely true that the night sky used to have more stars, and people used to read more. 

I’m stewing about all this in Publix while looking for stuffing. Maybe if there were actually other people in here, I wouldn’t be so deep in my own head. When I get alone, I start thinking about my past lives. It’s snowing outside—maybe everyone else is shackled up at home waiting out the storm. They’re calling it a blizzard on the news… but I’ve seen real blizzards and I don’t know that this one qualifies. You should’ve seen the Armistice Day Blizzard—that was a blizzard. The ‘40s were a trip. 

I’m considering bailing, stuffing or no, when the yearly recycled Christmas ballads over the intercom are unceremoniously pierced by infantile wailing. That’s when I know. That’s when I always know. It’s like this, every lifetime: I notice the Bad Feeling; the end is near. Then one unlucky day, I’m caught totally alone, and I hear a baby crying. I used to try and stave off death by never being alone, but it’s nearly impossible to do when the Fates will it to be so. Better I just follow along with the cosmic plan, and no one gets hurt (except me). 

I always picture the Fates like lynchmen with their red thread noose, itching to get it tight around my throat, choke this life out of me, and evict me on to the next one. And it does hurt. I’ve been awake for every one of my deaths yet, and it always sucks, but I bet it’s not like how other people die. Because of the damn baby. 

I hear it crying—I know it’s there, somewhere at the end of the aisle, around a corner, just out of sight. Like always. 

“Not yet,” I mutter, slipping my hand into my coat pocket. “Not yet.”

I dig out my phone and call my wife. It rings three times, and I’m panicking because the baby is getting louder and I’m running out of time, when she finally picks up. 

“Hey,” she says. Her voice is tinny through the phone. “Did you forget the list?” 

“No, I’ve got it.” 

“Okay…” She waits for me to explain myself. I can hear her favorite Billy Joel album in the background. I squeeze my eyes shut. This is the worst part.

I gave up a long time ago trying to explain what happens to me. Every lifetime, new parents, a new lover... I don’t try to explain. Because to them, nothing happens. 

Tomorrow, Alice will wake up alone, but she won’t know that she hasn’t always been that way. The picture frames on her bedside table will still be there, but I won’t be in them because I’ll have never been in them—someone else will be, maybe. My razor by the sink will simply never have been put there. Her pearl necklace, an anniversary gift from me, will now be a graduation present from her father, or something. My clothes? Never purchased. My paintings, signed by someone else. I’ll be erased from her, and she’ll never know the difference. It’s like that, every time, and because it’s like that every time, I try not to look back.

“Did you say something, babe? The storm—bad connection,” she says. I just want to hear her voice forever.

“Yeah…” I try to think of something to say. “I said, maybe we should do Christmas with Meg this year.”

“Why? Is there nothing good left at the store? Oh, I told you to go earlier—I told you—” 

I laugh, because I’m going to miss this. The crying down the aisle evolves into screaming. “No, I just think we should catch up with her, and the kids. Family, you know? What’s Carl up to?”

“What, baby? You’re breaking up—the good stuffing.”

“Yeah. Alright, I’ll get it.” I scratch my head. “I love you.”

“I love you, too. Come home.” She hangs up. It’s not enough.

I pocket my phone, but it doesn’t really matter if I lose it; everything I’ve ever owned is about to disappear. I look at my hands as I walk, because I’m not ready to part with them. My ring is there—eventually most of the things I’ve owned, I forget about. They don’t matter. I don’t want to forget about this ring; this one matters. I don’t want to forget Alice; I know I won’t for a long time. 

The baby is there. Of course it is, it always is. It’s white this time, a naked, pink, fat ball of flesh lying straight on the floor. It stops crying as I come close, it’s blue eyes fixed on me. I’m never sure, but I think the babies know what’s about to happen. I like to think that I get the Bad Feeling because a part of me has already left to go be a baby, or a fetus, or an idea that will grow up to be the baby that grows up to be me. 

“It’s time again, huh?” I say to it. It just stares at me, expectant. “Are you a boy or a girl?” 

The baby, of course, says nothing. I sigh and kneel down to it. My knees pop on the way down. I hope this new life is as good as the last one. I place my hand squarely on the baby’s chest, everything goes white, and I begin again.