Page 81 of The End of the World As We Know It

Silvia jolts at the memory of Helena’s voice. She’s been puzzling again, not paying attention to whatever Angel’s in the middle of saying.

“—underestimating the power of the human mind. But you can’t see the forest for the trees.”

Silvia can’t even see her hand in front of her face, let alone the trees outside. Certainly not Angel if she’s moving in the dark. A black hole has swallowed their world.

Silvia slides against her sleeping bag like it can hide her from this waking nightmare. “I don’t have to see death to know it’s real. And I didn’t imagine Captain Trips.”

Garbage and branches swat the windows as the storm chews onthe gas station, drowning out whatever Angel says next. Shadows haunt the lightning. The debris hopefully won’t smash through the windows or blow up the pumps and set fire to the place in the night.

Lost in another puzzle?

Silvia starts again. Drifting into her head used to make enduring children’s birthday parties easier, but it’s less helpful for surviving the night, let alone the apocalypse. Reminiscing about Helena might be disastrous.

Is that what Captain Trips really wants? Not enough for him to drag Helena into a vicious, shaking, drowning death, but he has to use her to catch Silvia, too.

Even the part locked in Silvia’s head.

“I know real Death,” Helena said, and the way she wheezed that last word gave it the authority of a person’s name. “What everyone’s forgotten. Way back, Death was just another animal. Everyone lived forever unless Death caught you. And they’d chant and light fires and bang drums to scare away that beast. But then Death got smart. He started scavenging from the old, and then he learned how to make everyone sick. We developed medicines and vaccines, but it’s been a mortality arms race. Eventually, we had to lose.”

Silvia sat on the bed’s edge, holding Helena’s hand, wiping mucus from around her lips. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten. She’d only kept bringing tea and soup to Helena, who could barely manage a spoonful before coughing her lungs out.

She laid her head back with a rough swallow. “?‘O Captain, my Captain, our fearful trip is done.’ Walt Whitman.”

“Is that where it comes from?” Silvia asked. “Captain Trips?”

“Walt Whitman didn’t kill the world,” Helena said, patronizing, as if speaking to a kindergartner. “Oh, the name? I don’t know. I never really knew anything. But it felt good to pretend I did.” Her voice cracked then. “And I’m never going to learn anything else. I’ll neversee them find a cure for AIDS. Or cancer. I’ll never learn German. I’m never going to find out who fucking killed Laura Palmer.”

Silvia forced a tearful smile. She didn’t know what else to do.

Helena’s fingers tensed, but they couldn’t squeeze anymore. “And I won’t find out how you’re going to look when you get old.”

Her words turned to mumbling, then fragmented syllables against coughing, and then she dropped into a ragged sleep. Silvia stayed holding her hand another moment, in case she woke up. Sometimes she came and went in fits and starts.

But Helena slept, and Silvia let go, easing off the bed to keep it from creaking. Would Helena remember this conversation when she woke up? Or would her mind drift to another time, another world? Silvia couldn’t know, but she wanted to do one last thing for Helena.

For that smile.

She headed into the bathroom and plucked up her costume makeup. Cakey foundation paled her skin. Some blue for veins, gray to deepen the bags beneath her eyes. A finger dabbed at contouring powder and drew thick lines along her forehead, cheeks, jaw, and neck. She then patted the makeup into a mimicry of crevices and canyons for wrinkles, and she puffed powder across her hair, tracing gray strands through her auburn locks.

This was too much effort for an ordinary gag, but to get one last smile? She would be the world’s finest clown. Even its final clown.

“Helena?” Silvia called in a cartoonish old lady voice. “You whippersnapper, lollygagging in bed all day. Young lady, you’d better pop those peepers and look at me, or I’ll give you the business, you’ll see!”

She paced the bed using the lavender umbrella for a cane, back and forth, spitting out any elderly-isms she could summon from the weekends she used to spend with her grandparents. Anything so that Helena would wake up in the middle of this little show.

It took six minutes of playing the clown before Silvia leaned overthe bed and noticed the stillness in Helena’s chest. The smell sliding off of her, beneath the odor of sickness.

And Silvia realized there would be no smile ever again. Death had finished his hunt.

She only realizes she’s dreaming when memories of Helena fade into a grim silhouette. That figure, the one Angel calls the Man, reaches for her.

Captain Trips is hungry again. If only he would devour Silvia’s recollection of Helena, then everything could become that much sadder, yet that much easier. Silvia would never know her life used to be better than this.

Something shifts beside her, fully waking her from the miserable dream. She opens her eyes.

The pitch-black world has her in its jaws, a sudden tightness squeezing her sleeping bag around her as if she’s caught in the coils of a powerful snake.

“Oh, no you don’t.”