The end of the world would come in one week.

- - - - - - -

There were several people who were looking forward to the end of the world. Kirby Warner was one of these. It would seal his fate and ease his troubled mind. Besides, he wouldn’t have to show up to work any more.

Kirby worked as a clerk in a small, used bookstore in Seattle and was going nowhere. It’s not that it was the most horrible place in the world to be . . . it was that he constantly felt confined; and Kirby’s day dreaming mind could only take him so far.

- - - - - - -

A typical day in paradise went as such:

Kirby unlocks the door and enters the luke warm dustiness of the book store. He breathes deep, trying to discover the thing that brought him here in the first place. As his eyes adjust to the light, spines on shelves begin to protrude out of the duskiness (still, it was never really as poetic as that).

Kirby flips a switch and the lights hum to life. He makes a pot of coffee and puts the days change in the till. He unlocks the door and reluctantly invites the world inside. He puts some jazz (or blues) on (which has always been his favorite morning music) and he waits. He picks up the latest book he’s been reading (in this case William Burrough’s Cities Of the Red Night) and reads a few pages. He’s still waiting . . . and waiting. Nothing is happening, and it might not happen for a very long time . . . maybe centuries.

Kirby polishes off his first cup of coffee, and then his second. There is a shotgun blast going off somewhere in his brain, but he can’t quite hear it. The world is changing all around him, but he can’t hear that either. Kirby doesn’t want to be another bored-cynical young man (he’s twenty-nine), but sometimes he just can’t fucking help it.

‘Maybe you need a girlfriend,’ his mother tells him. She says the same things; has the same concerns.

Maybe I should stick a shotgun in my mouth and shatter my skull to kingdom come, he wants to tell her . . . but he knows it would only upset her. She could always take more Prozac, but that would just mean more oblivion . . . not that we are adverse to such things.

It’s not that Kirby would actually kill himself. The idea is nearly as boring as his job.

And finally, the first customer of the day wanders in . . . some yuppie fuck who has taken an early lunch. This one, like most of his ilk, doesn’t even bother to get lost in the stacks. They come right up to the counter.

Kirby is playfully ignoring yuppie fuck.

"Excuse me?"

Kirby’s eyes grow out the top of Cities Of the Red Night.

"Where do you keep . . ?"

Kirby sets the book down, spine up. He hasn’t even really had time to get into it just yet.

Yoga books, mediation, Celestine Prophecy, thrillers, John Grisham, the lastest Oprah pick (even though that’s ususally the yuppie fuck women), Tom Clancy . . . and if they are really adventurous: Books on film, avante garde fiction of any kind, and gregariously preferred cook books. But that’s just being cynical, and that’s not what this tale is really about.

Once a while Kirby thinks about killing them, but it’s more of a comedy in his mind then anything. If he actually did kill yuppie fuck would it really be worth it?

" . . . David James Duncan?"

The River Why? or Brothers K . . . literature for the sensitive yuppie fuck.

"I’m looking for The River Why? I want to buy it for a friend."

"We’re all out," Kirby assures him. He doesn’t even need to look.

- - - - - - -

Several months ago terroists flew airplanes into the twin towers, but in one week from today things were going to get worse.

And there wasn’t a flag big enough to hide behind.

Kirby would be at work when it happened.

An elderly lady was standing at the counter with a stack of Agatha Christie mysteries in her withered arms when it happened.

"Do you hear that?" She asked.

Of course Kirby did. It was guttural rumbling. At first he thought that the sound was coming from inside the store, or inside of himself. A couple of the regulars, Wade and Hunter, looked up from a game of chess and grimaced. "What the fuck?!" Said Wade, too loudly. Hunter stood up nervously and rushed to the window.

Kirby looked too.

There were people gathered in the street, pointing up into the sky. Kirby felt a shudder move up his spine, but he wasn’t certain what that meant . . . not yet anyway.

Hunter went outside. Wade and Kirby followed. The old woman didn’t move, but Kirby, before leaving the store, saw the tears glinting in her eyes. He wanted to say something reassuring, but he wasn’t quite sure of what that might be. His heart hammered in his chest, but he wasn’t sure of anything.

Kirby stood beside Wade in the street. The traffic had stopped and, save for the rumbling, the world was silent. Wade pointed in the sky and said "look" under his breath.

Kirby looked, and what he saw was both hauntingly beautiful and terrifying. They sky was blue, but there were huge stars glinting in it. They looked like the Star Of David, but there must of been hundreds of them. It was like looking deep into an ancient tide pool.

Still, the rumbling grew nearer, and that moment of unified silence was quickly nullified.

There was a terrible weeping coming from everywhere, but nobody could hear it. The faces of people lined against the little, neighborhood business district were aghast. Tears flooded their eyes and tumbled down their cheeks.

RUUUMMMMMBBBBBBLLLE!!!

Kirby’s cheeks were wet too.

RUUUMMMMMBBBBBBLLLE!!!

People embraced strangers and waited for anything to happen. Their minds were a cacophony of metaphors and revelations.

And in the distance, hanging against the sky (or rising out of it?) and swallowing a landscape of hills and trees and buildings and ego came their greatest, unconscious fear. It was the most unnatural thing any of them had ever seen, yet they were witnessing it at the same time. It rose unglued from the future myths of mankind and settled itself on their paltry souls.

The end was near.

RUUUMMMMMBBBBBBLLLE!!!

The wave came, but it was still hard to fathom that they were going to die; and even though their hearts were filling with human suffering they still couldn’t believe their eyes.

Kirby felt a shudder of excitement, and then dread. He realized, and suddenly, that he had wasted his short life. There were so many things he wanted to do yet. No, the end was not a good idea . . . the end was not a good idea at all.

I could have made a change on my own, he thought. I didn’t need this.

Kirby looked around him.

None of them did.

But the wave was awsome, and it was impossible to get past that fact.

It must be a mile high, thought Kirby . . . a mile of glistening wave; a wall of water that would hit them like concrete. And as the rumbling neared the thing grew in size . . . and it touched the sky like nothing else could. Kirby imagined that he could see Christ riding that wave into the epoch of time . . . his thin, bedraggled god-body hanging ten over the great divide.

Kirby wanted to laugh at the image, but, under the circumstances, he didn’t think that that was possible.

And then Hunter grabbed Wade and Kirby and dragged them back into the book store. He closed the door behind them and locked it. They all three rushed past the elderly woman who had pissed herself. A shallow pool of urine cooled at her feet.

"Oh fuck!" Screamed Wade, tumbling onto the couch.

And they all three tumble together, and waited.

RUUUMMMMMBBBBBBLLLE!!!

"Our father, who art in Heaven . . ." Wade clutched tightly to Kirby who clutched tightly to both of them, and a thousand individual thoughts were coursing through each of their brains.

And underneath that rumble the world as they knew it was sinking.

But that wouldn’t be for another week.

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