I Feel Fine

It's the end of the world as we know it

It's the end of the world as we know it

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

“It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)”

R.E.M.

T. S. Elliot was right; the world would end, not with a bang but rather with a whimper. I mean, the man wrote brilliant poetry, but he was a cad in real life. I want to use another word for his personality, but I am not the type of omniscient narrator that throws around the “f” word or the “g-d” word gratuitously.

ANYWAY…

He was absolutely right, figuratively and literally. The end of the world (as we know it) came to an end because of a whimper.

A whimper caused by a couple of bad oysters. Let me tell you how it happened.

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Mary Jane Copperton was a simple girl, but one with eclectic tastes. Unlike her on-again-off-again-and-ultimately-on-again-permanently-because-she-got-knocked-up boyfriend Conrad Doober. Give him a piece of red meat and some starchy shit and he was happy. Wash it all down with beer (Budweiser, if you have to know) and he was a very happy man. Mary Jane, was made of finer stuff, though, and she persuaded Conrad to take her to an oyster bar in the Deep Ellum part of Dallas. She wanted to try some raw seafood and a drink that wasn’t in a red and white can (and didn’t have a wild turkey festooning its bottle).

Conrad agreed, but not readily and not happily. Still, he was bright enough to know that the mother of his child (now three years old and showing signs of already being more intelligent than his dad) could make his life feel like an extended vacation in the more disreputable parts of hell. She was talented that way.

The 7:00 crowd had started rolling in to the oyster bar (herein unnamed because it is no longer in business, for obvious reasons) and grabbing barstools. The oyster shuckers went into hyper-drive, cracking open the mysterious entities at a speed that boggled the mind. Before Conrad could finish his first of many beers and before Mary Jane had a chance to get halfway through her green tea and peach julep, a large platter of shucked oysters was plonked down in front of them.

The couple stared at the unappetizing array of oysters in front of them. Mary Jane, though, was not to be denied. She watched as other people ate their oysters and mimicked their actions. Conrad soon followed (after a couple of beers) and the two dozen oysters soon found new homes in the bellies of an admittedly rural couple. Conrad had another couple of beers and ordered up some fried ribs for them, not wanting to let fate and fickle women decide whether or not he had had enough to eat.

The six ribs were washed down with another beer and another green tea and peach julep. And then another six ribs suffered the same fate as their compatriots. Conrad was feeling pretty good about all this. His woman would be pleased, and that always meant a good time tonight and a pleasant week or so with his woman. That good feeling, though, went the way of the dodo bird and My Space.

Queasy and unsettled, Conrad tried to alleviate the symptoms with a shot of Jack Daniel’s; the gastric foe, far from being vanquished, was given new strength. The food and drink roiled up in his stomach, causing him to make a mad, drunk, unsteady dash for the bathroom. And now we have the good news/bad news portion of the story.

The good news is that Conrad made it all the way into the bathroom. The bad news was two-fold. The bathroom he entered was the women’s bathroom, and he proceeded to toss up his cookies (a euphemism for the evil mixture playing WWII in his stomach) on Stephanie Bartkowski’s shoes.

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Stephanie Bartkowski was a working girl. This is another euphemism; she was a hooker. Even the descriptive word “hooker” is a euphemism, but let’s go with it. The sweet and purchasable Stephanie was busy snorting a couple of lines of coke when the incident occurred. Being a woman of action, she kicked off her shoes, washed them as well as a restroom washbasin would allow, and then put her stockinged foot on the back of the woozy and whimpering Conrad. She plucked out his wallet, took the $177 he had in there and kicked him rather severely in the ribs. Conrad whimpered again. Stephanie didn’t even give him a look as she left. She had $177 plus whatever she had earned earlier that night, so she went in search of more coke.

She crossed the street and headed down one of the more evil-looking alleys in Deep Ellum, searching for the lurking figure and the glow of a cigarette that would denote her plug (drug supplier, for those of you who don’t have cable TV). He wasn’t in his usual spot. Stephanie desperately needed to find him and spend her money responsibly, buying quality coke and not that shit that some of the other drug dealers sold.

Stephanie went down yet another alley but didn’t find her plug. Instead, she found a group of kids hanging out, looking for trouble. By now, Stephanie was in a mood. You know the kind.

The group of young hoodlums didn’t know this; they simply saw a good-looking woman and decided to hassle her. They abandoned this idea with alacrity when Stephanie a) kicked one of them in the groin and b) pulled out a pistol and started firing it at them. The young men would have impressed a track coach with their swiftness had a track coach been in the vicinity and had the young men been interested in going to college to lend their swiftness to the college, but there was neither a track coach nor the inclination by any of the young thugs to attend any educational institution, so the observation was a little moot, but it does indicate the speed that can be attained when faced with an angry hooker and a loaded gun.

Off they went, over hill and dale (really, over curbs and potholes), speeding along on young feet and souls full of fear. Randy, the weakest of the group, struggled to keep up. The angry hooker was still shooting at them so running was still the priority. The group ran up a small slope and crested at a street. Without pause, they ran across the street, not even minding the dictive that one should look to the left, then the right, then the left again, make sure that all was clear, and then cross.

This was unfortunate because the road wasn’t clear. Randy stumbled and fell just as Edith Steinmacher came roaring down the road at a good 25 m.p.h.

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Edith was coming from Synagogue and she felt peaceful. Ever since her husband had died two years ago, the synagogue had provided her with support, comfort, companionship, and healing. Murray, her late husband, had been a good and happy man without any of the vices that plague marriages. He had been a faithful husband who always wanted to do right by his wife and kids. It really didn’t matter that he was only 5’7” tall and was bald by the age of 45; he was a fair-haired giant in Edith’s eyes.

The road that Edith was on was darker than usual, she thought, so she slowed down a little. It twisted and curved as she matriculated over slight rises and dips, reminding her of the roads in upstate New York. But it was always hot here, she mused. Fifty weeks of summer and two weeks of late spring, as Murray used to say.

Suddenly, a man appeared in the road. He stumbled and fell. Oh dear, Edith thought. The man doesn’t have time to get out of the path of my car, so I must swerve to avoid him.

These thoughts flashed through Edith’s mind with quick rapidity, a testament to the power and sophistication of that gray matter that we all possess. Some people put Edith’s age somewhere between ancient and petrified, but her mind worked at the speed that God wanted it to work.

Edith’s Buick swerved wildly over the curb and bounced along a strip of grass before she entered a small park. She hit her head on the roof of the car as she went over the curb and it left her dizzy and disoriented; she didn’t know that she had a mild concussion from the event. This was what caused her to press on the accelerator instead of the brake, and the results were (and I have been and will use this word a lot) unfortunate. Edith and her Buick crashed into a telephone pole, toppling it over, thankfully, away from her.

The transformer on the telephone pole exploded, startling a dazed Edith. Immediately, the lights in the surrounding area went out and all was dark. Even the full moon failed to illuminate much at this time. Edith staggered out of the car.

She peered into the darkness and made out the dim outline of an apartment building a few yards away, on the other side of the street. The Renaissance Apartments. They didn’t look anything like Rennaissance work, Edith thought, and then promptly passed out on the sidewalk next to the apartment. It was here that Jerry Stillwater found her, and it was there that Jerry Stillwater left her.

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“Well, the electricity’s gonna be out for a week, so it don’t matter if you want me there or not. Mamma says it’s ok so I’m comin’,” Jerry said, slamming down the phone.

The electricity that Edith had knocked out had also suffered the further indignity of being maintained by a private contractor that believed in patience being a virtue. They promised that the electricity would be restored in three days; everyone knew that this meant at least a week. Jerry Stillwater wasn’t going to stay in a hot apartment for a week. His family lived southwest of Houston in a little town called Edna. They were close to the Gulf but far from the prying eyes of the law.

Jerry was not a likable man, and that’s being generous. He was an odious man who cared only for his needs and wants, at the expense of everyone else. Including family. It was he who persuaded his mom to set him up in business as a bar owner and it was he who lost the business in less than a year. It was he who scammed old people out of money with promises to fix their roofs during the last hailstorm, only to abscond with their funds and leave them with perforated houses. It was he who whined about the inequity of life when the truth was that life had been far too kind to him. So far.

His mom’s property outside of Edna had remained as it had been for four generations. The house and the barns were aging daily, looking to hit triple digits soon. Jerry threw down his bags in the spare bedroom and grimaced. He hated the country life. But maybe mom had some beer.

It was while Jerry was drinking the second of his mom’s beer that he spotted the reviled donkey. The donkey’s name was Hotay because mom thought it would be funny to say “donkey Hotay.”It was a filthy animal that brayed loudly too often, but the worst thing about Hotay was that he would bite. Jerry eyed the animal with animus as he quaffed another beer. He then went outside and let the infernal animal loose.

It was his fervent hope that Hotay would get hit by a truck, but that wasn’t going to happen. What happened was that Jerry’s mother’s neighbor, Lucas Springfield, spotted the animal.

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Lucas was notable for a couple of reasons: he was a weapons dealer who normally worked the illegal side of the trade, and he hated Hotay almost as much as Jerry hated Hotay. Unlike Jerry, though, Lucas was now willing to take an active approach to rid the world of this animal.

Pulling out his deer rifle, Lucas took dead aim at Hotay and shot. I suppose at this juncture that I should mention one other notable thing about Lucas Springfield. He couldn’t shoot worth a damn. This is significant, for though this trait spared Hotay’s life, it had the effect of several bullets passing by Hotay and lodging in a sheriff’s car parked nearby.

Sheriff John Bullard was one of those law enforcement types that believed in the pizza principle. Namely, that more is better. And he was a little paranoid ever since his wife tried to poison him one night (they are now happily divorced and Betty Lou is currently a resident of the state for 5 years – maybe less if she displays good behavior), so he called in as many of the local authorities as he could while crouched down behind the passenger side door of his cruiser. Within thirty minutes, a bevy of local, state, and federal officials with large guns had descended on Edna and were training those large guns on Lucas.

Lucas was unaware that he had peppered the sheriff’s car with several rounds of Hotay-intended lead. But, also being paranoid because of his associations with the wrong side of right, he suspected that the small army surrounding him was due to the fact that he had about a dozen rocket-propelled grenades (also known as RPGs) in his basement. This presented a problem, he thought. A federal offense type of problem that could see him spending a decade or so in prison.

He quickly called his comrades in illegal arms trading and bade them whisk away the offending items before justice descended on the house. He didn’t say it that way, though. He told them to get the *^%%$&^ RPGs outta the house before Johnny Law showed up, and make it right quick.

Which they did. Heck and Josh took the RPGs to the coast and shot them harmlessly into the Gulf, tossing the empty RPGs into the Gulf afterwards. A loss of income, sure, but a job well done, they thought. Until they heard the explosion.

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It wasn’t supposed to be there. The go-fast boat carrying 20 kilos of coke and 30 pounds of C-4. It was supposed to be seven miles to the east and heading for an intimate rendezvous with their buyer. It remains, however, that the boat carrying a payload of nose candy and boom putty was where it was, and that spot was quite close to an Exxon free-floating oil rig in the Gulf, a few miles from the Texas coast.

One of the off-loaders saw the rocket heading towards them, but before he could speak (or even figure out what was happening), the grenade hit the boat and exploded on impact. Along with the C-4, it created an explosive impact that was majestic in its power. The power was so great and so wide that the oil rig likewise went up in a fiery ball of smoke and explosions. This caused a crack to appear on the ocean floor. It was a small crack at first, but it widened.

The earth had been abused, ill-treated, and derided for over a century. It had been weakened by fracking, pollution, and rain forest obliteration. A few people have lately tried to heal it, but it was too little, too late. The crack grew. Within a few minutes, an underground volcano erupted, spewing molten lava into the water and breaching the water to send plumes of toxic smoke into the air.

This was the beginning of a chain reaction that sent the world into a tailspin. Tidal waves ravaged coasts. Hurricanes, tornadoes, and typhoons devastated the earth. Tornadoes and earthquakes wreaked havoc inland, and volcanoes around the world did their part in destroying humanity. The earth was fighting back; its counterpunch left humanity on the mat.

In less than 12 hours, 90% of the people on earth were dead. The remaining 10% were either hiding underground or were lucky enough to live in one of the few places not affected by the apocalyptic events. It is worth noting that Mary Jane Copperton and Conrad Doober, the instigators in this mess, lived.

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Mary Jane watched the news the next morning, hardly believing what she was seeing and hearing. The earth was on fire. The earth was drowning. The earth was exploding. She drank two cups of coffee before waking up Conrad.

“Wake up, Con. The mornin’s a wastin’,” Mary Jane said. She threw back the curtains to reveal a gray day. A light rain was falling, but it had a funny smell to it. Like the waste tank when it overflowed. Mary Jane wrinkled her nose and started putting on her makeup. The world was ending, but she saw no reason why she shouldn’t look presentable.

Conrad rolled over and sat up. He blinked and then went to the restroom, not bothering to close the door. He came out a couple of minutes later, blinking at the rain from the window.

“How ya feelin’, Con?” Mary Jane asked.

Conrad Doober, the unwitting and unaware instrument that started the earth’s destruction, rubbed his stomach and then patted it fondly.

“I feel fine.”