Fractured: Tales of the Canadian Post-Apocalypse(76)

“Boarding all. All aboard. If you are boarding. Last man standing. No last man standing. No second man standing.”

I am the second man standing. The last man can’t see me. He is blind now. Temporarily, until he gets his speech back. Stammers. Now. Like a horse with hiccups. Neigh-i-neigh is what he sounds like with every word he thinks, and does not say, but thinks he does because he is stammering inside his head like he would if he could get his words out and his lips weren’t sealed.

Time does that. Is like that. After a disaster. Train wreck. Bus wreck. Plane wreck. Any wreck. And this is a disaster.

“Last man standing,” the conductor calls again. But the last man doesn’t hear. He is listening to himself stammer, and wondering where the stammer came from.

“Must be the train,” he mutters inside his head, stammering like always, now. Like now. Always. He’ll never speak write or type right again. Disasters are like that. Having trouble with my own words now. Stammering inside my fingers that used to no… know… which word I meant and how to spell it direct from my brain. Disasters are like that. Too. The way he speaks. And the way he writes. I write. Mixed that one up too.

It’s cold in here. I am going to turn up the heat. But I can’t find the thermometer thing. I go into the kitchen where the thermostat used to be. But there is nothing there but the train station. Now. The house moved and became a train station that looks like a subway because it is underground now. But the roof, a roof, came with it. Oddly. But this is the future. Toronto is gone. Buffalo slid over from texas where it went first. And there is no more TV reporting disasters. This is the last one even though I am the second-last man standing waiting to the last man standing to stand alone.

He wants to procreate one last time, but doesn’t realize there is no procreation to be had. All the test tubes are gone. “Why do they call test tubes test tubes?” I ask him. But he doesn’t answer. Can’t. His lips are sealed. Frustrated by time and space. Because they no longer exist. Only the future exists. The present is gone. Into the past. And the past never existed. Had to make room for the present going there. Time warp. Life warp. Some kind of warp this is I haven’t got a name for yet. And probably won’t if the last man standing becomes the last man standing, and I am gone.

That’s how it works. You have to wait for it. And not get on the train even if the conductor calls you. All the people on the train are sitting. So there are only two of us standing. I am disintegrating. Slowly. That’s how it works and how they said it would work.

The last man goes into a field looking for a cow to drink from the windmill first. The water. He is thirsty. But doesn’t know if the water is poisoned. Like everything else. That’s how they do it. Did it. Poison. And the waters tilted with the windmills and exploded taking fingers and time and chicken with it. Fingers. And Tim Hortons. And Kentucky Fried. Even if Texas got here. And Buffalo slid over. Without wings. And remorse. Or hockey. And Buffalo Sabres. They’ve got a new team in Phoenix, I hear. Heard. Before the last TtV went out. That was supposed to be TV but the room shook with the shaking of the train leaving. The trembling. Of the afterlife those on the trai n entered. Are entering. Now. In the field of dreams they wish they had played on instead of this one. Build it and they will come. Well, somebody built heave n and that is where they are going. The ground is shaking. Trembling. More than ever. Now. And I see the last man drinking from a cup. Sorry about that sign. Don’t know how it got there. These typewriters they left me are sucky. Half the keys don’t work. And the half that do have other symbols on them. Slid over from the shaking. And the melt. In the ice. After the pisen, poison, left. And there was oly only the two of us standing. Like that. I’ll go dslower. To make less mistakes. The trembling plus having to use two typewriters to get all the letters I need is slow enough.

I gotta make this short. Keep it short. Only 800 words left. That’s all they gave me. And I am done. Two thousand-ish, they said. So it is done. The last man is looking for that woman for a final procreation, but he doesn’t know that the future doesn’t know the difference between a man and a woman. The future has no procreation. There are only souls. Wasted. Or not. Used. Or not. Lost or not. Found or not. It doesn’t matter. Everything is the future now so we can go on living. The past is gone. The present is the past. And if the present existed we’d all be dead. So we have to go on in the future. Never getting there.

Toronto laughs at us. The last man stammers. Collapses. And becomes the last man kneeling. I think he is praying. Or catholic. Or something. But he is only dying.

I am disnintegrsting more. And the shaking is getting on me now. To me. The bus left before the train. And I wish I had taken it and not seen my future where I had to be the second-last man standning. I walk over to the last man and check to see how many words I have left. I take both typewriters so I can get all the words in without with as few mistakes as possible. It is hard writing this way.

“Get up,” I say to the last man standing, who is now kneeling, still, and blabbering about something he heard yesterday, but he doesn’t know yesterday is gone and only the present now, and this is the future and he better get up because he has to be the last man standing.

I walk to the foyer where texas used to be for awhile and see Floriada inching closer. You’ll have to translate. The typoes. One typwerwriter quit and now only one-winging it on one… and the last man stands so I can sit and follow my destiny into the future, which is now.