The End

Journal entry 9/24/18

I needed to be alone. Maybe a walk down the beach or a drive somewhere with the windows down would help clear my mind. How long, Lord? How much more can I endure? When will this nightmare end? I made a promise to myself that after today, after this last time prophecy had come and gone unnoticed and unfulfilled, I was done.

Nine AM and the morning crept by as it always did at our fledgling newspaper. All was quiet. I checked the news headlines again, scrolled through the tired political controversies that never found resolve and finally clicked on some entertainment news that vaguely piqued my interest. “Nothing’s going to happen,” I thought, “and if it does, well, then I’ll know.”

The last three years of my life had finally taken their toll. I couldn’t fake my way through it anymore. Each new day piled up behind me like the mounting chaos of a hoarder’s two-car garage. No outlet, no escape, no end – I needed an end. “I’ll hang on for one more day, Lord, and then, I’m letting go.” It was too much for even me to endure. Me, the science fiction novelist/conspiracy theorist who was open and apt to believe in the most farfetched and outrageous of claims, but this took the cake. It was nothing I could speak aloud to friends or family or coworkers. It was nothing I could adequately explain or even fully wrap my head around. It was, quite possibly, the biggest mystery, the biggest controversy ever to befall mankind and who was I in the grand scheme of things?

Monday morning dragged by uneventfully as conversations and office chatter grated on my nerves. Ringing bells, passing trains, throats clearing over and over and over again – I supposed a big part of me wanted the dam to break. Everything fell into synch again like those first nightmarish days three years ago when this thing overtook my life. I had come full circle, hadn’t I? Had I miscalculated again? Maybe another two months, maybe three, end of the year, maybe come this time next year It’ll be over? Maybe not? Maybe another two years, minus three days, account for leap year, subtract another thirty-three seconds and add fifty minutes for good measure? Enough. I wanted the waters to spill out over the whole earth if it meant just a little peace of mind.     

Fifteen past noon and my stomach pleaded for a lunch I had no desire to eat. “If this thing happens,” I thought, “it’ll be tonight.” I pulled up a moon phase calendar for September 24, 2018 and checked to see if it would be full tonight – yup. A full moon on Moonday, a perfect day for the sky to fall. My prayer the night before was a simple one, “please deliver me from this, Lord. Please, scatter my enemies and deliver me from this thing.” Through countless days and nights of searching scripture and praying for guidance, I was led to believe (either by God or by my own folly) that something significant would occur on this date. I’d become one of those lunatics, but my prophecy didn’t include the end of the world or the return of Jesus Christ. My prophecy would mark the end of my world (my nightmare) with the return of a dead movie star.

The three o’clock hour rolled around as Monday afternoon crawled toward evening. I sat behind my outdated computer at my outdated job and contemplated the dream I had all those years ago. It all fit together so perfectly in that moment. Halloween Town, the death of River Phoenix, the blinking lights on the alarm clock – wake up, wake up, wake up. It was all quite clear to me in that moment.