Only Me At The End (SHORT STORY)

Only Me at the End

It was damp outside when I stepped out onto my quiet, empty street. I stretched out my hand with the palm facing the sky and lifted it upwards to test for rain. None fell, so I continued my walk. My steps echoed in the silence as I moved steadily along the sidewalk. The slumping buildings to either side of me loomed like an elderly man clinging to his cane, watching, ready to fall and fade away. 

I could see Ma’s old bakery up ahead, a rickety out cement building that looked like a gravestone at the end of Reardon street. The abandoned bakery was covered in cracks and muck, vines crept up her sides like ropes attempting to tie her to the ground. 

The faded red letters of “Mary’s Bakery” dripped red paint down the side of the ugly cement wall making it look almost like a crime scene. The ‘B’ had fallen down and smashed on the ground into large wooden splinters, leaving a shadow of the letter on the rocky surface of the bakery. 

Ma typically had her bakery filled with customers lined down the block; they'd gather everyday to get her bread and pies to carry home to their various families in the Burrows. The street smelled of baked goods and sounds of laughter often floated through the air as friends would stop and share snacks in the road. The Burrows was a safe community, everyone knew each other so it was like a party every morning and evening.

Today, the street was vacant and the only smell in the air was the damp, musty smell that often came before a storm. 

I stretched my palm out again and tested for rain. None fell. I tilted my head, studying the large grey clouds above me as they swelled and rolled onwards above me. 

Past Ma’s bakery was Winston Street, where Ma Mary, her husband, and their four wild children lived in a two bedroom apartment on the third floor of the decrepit brick rathouse. Lionel, Mary’s husband, was a pious man who read sermons at the bright white church at the end of the block. 

He wasn’t pious in the way that he’d hate people for not loving God, but pious in the way a good christian should be. Lionel was the reason everyone came to church on Sundays in the Burrows, whether they were catholic or not. 

The church hall was filled with families of various ethnicities sitting and talking quietly as Lionel prepared to give his sermon and discuss weekly events and support groups that the church held. He was never invasive or harsh, just a gentle preacher reaching out to his community. 

The windows of their third story apartment were boarded shut, the windows having been shattered about two months ago. Jagged pieces of glass making the guarded window look like snarling jaws filled with sharp teeth. 

A tightness formed in my chest as I studied the long empty apartment. I willed Lionel to run out and wrap me up in a long and loving hug, chiding me for wandering outside so early in the morning- especially when it might rain. 

“You’d best get back home.” He’d smile and give my shoulder a gentle push in the direction of my apartment. Lionel would probably walk me back just to be sure I got home safe- and then we’d have tea on my couch and talk about the newest books hitting the shelves this week. 

“I’ll get you a copy of that one you were telling me about, but you gotta tell me all about it when you’re done!” He’d wink and I’d always agree and smile at him. 

But the apartment doors stayed shut and the boarded windows remained covered. Lionel didn’t come out to see me, nor his wife and kids. I could have sworn I felt a raindrop on my shoulder then- 

But when I lifted my hand to the sky, no rain came to greet it. I stopped again and stared at the humongous grey clouds, disturbed by the thunderstorms that must be brewing beneath their fluffy surfaces- possibly even a hurricane. 

I spread my fingers wider and let the breeze run through the gaps. All that I felt between my fingers was that breeze, there was no rain. I turned my head back to the street and looked towards the corner of the long road. 

Lionel’s church sat at the end of the block two streets over from where I stood at that moment. I could easily picture the quaint white church between the sunset coloured leaves that clung to the trees in the late autumn. 

Every fall, golden and auburn leaves would cover the lawn and parking lot of the church behind the large black metal gate which kept animals from scratching at the doors at night. And every fall, Bella, a high school drop-out who shaved her hair down to a simple stubble and dressed in bright pink, flowery outfits with dark makeup- would often come to the church in the early hours of the morning to capture the beauty of the sunrise behind the church, as the white siding glistened in the morning light with dew. 

Bella would take the church paintings to the market in town and sell them every Saturday with other watercolor paintings of churches and sunrises that sold like baked goods to the suburban moms who frequented the busy city square. She wasn’t a catholic like Lionel or his family but Lionel always sat with her on the bench outside the church and chatted with her as she painted. 

Lionel and Bella would debate religion, morality, and philosophy with no malice in their hearts although sometimes it would get a little heated and the two would break apart and then come back together within minutes to reevaluate their arguments. Onlookers in the parking lot would sit on the hoods of their cars and sip coffees as they listened to Lionel and Bella discuss whatever topics they had planned for the day. It was more truthful than watching the news. 

Bella’s apartment looked dark other than a flicker of light every few moments through the tiny basement windows that surely weren’t up to safety code. I stopped in front of her window and looked at the water that had filled the pits in front of her windows which slowly seeped through the cracks into her flooded basement. The dark green paint around the window frame had peeled, showing the moldy wood underneath. 

I knelt on my hands and knees and peered into the shattered windows to see if I saw anyone below the surface of the rat’s nest that Bella festered in for five long years after she left high school, saving her painting money for rent, food, and a plane ticket out of the Burrows. I didn’t talk to Bella as much as Lionel did but she was a sweet girl. She had a girlfriend in London that she wanted to go live with, but neither of them had the money to fly her out of here just yet.

None of the rain had fallen yet so I quit stopping to feel for it, assuming the sky was holding off for a larger storm later in the day. I passed the corner of Bella’s street and my eyes drift down the road to the pearly white church at the end of the way. It stood there, a final undisturbed object amongst the falling buildings around it. I walked forward like I was in a trance, smiling a little at the familiar, together sight. 

The white steeple stretched upwards, threatening to pierce the dimming clouds above it and part them so there would be no storm. Even if the white paint had been muddied and faded over the last few months without its usual upkeep, it looked mystical against the dark background of the sky.

I had to move quickly now, watching the church grow bigger as I approached. My footsteps lightened as I made a quiet trot towards the black metal gate, feeling for the knife in my back pocket. I didn’t take my eyes off the steeple, but I was aware of the sounds below it. 

The scratching.

 The moaning.

The crying. 

The rancid smell of blood and filth reached me but I did not take my eyes off the steeple. Finally, I pushed open the gate attached to the big black metal fence that guarded the front half of the church, wrapping around it to about the middle where it stopped and formed two more gates on either side of the church. I shut the gate behind me. The noise was louder now.

Screams and snarls surrounded me from all sides of the fence as I pushed forward towards the church, ignoring the blood that stained the bottom sidings of the building. I didn’t dare look around but I was quick to get away from the fence and dart towards the safety of the church. 

I stopped at the steps in front of the church and turned back towards the scenery before me. I sat. I watched. 

Lionel stood just outside the gates, his milky white eyes watching me like a predator watching its prey across the forest, no longer my friend from a few months prior to all of this. Lionel’s skin was dark grey and peeling from his face, leaving brown and yellow muscle tissue clinging to the visible yellowish bones on his once kind face. The pus had finally stopped oozing from the gashes in his face, it had dried into a brown and white foam near his jawline. 

All that remained on that kind face now was hunger and a gash along both sides of his mouth that made his lovely wide smile look like the mouth of a snake unhinging its jaws to bite an unsuspecting mouse. 

I sat upright to watch as he paced the length outside the fence, his gait was slow and awkward, his left leg mangled beyond belief by what had probably been a bat or weapon someone had used while trying to escape the Burrows. It didn’t take long for everyone to turn on each other and grow suspicious. 

Lionel was gone and was replaced with this husk that hovered outside the range of the fence around me. 

I could see his wife too, and his four children shifting idly from side to side near a sea of people just like him. Mary had slimmed down to nearly half her size, flaps of skin blueish grey skin hung by her knees from her abdomen, covered in welts and bruises. Her children snarled and reached for me through the bars, their small arms were raw with unhealed scabs and cuts.

 Their smell of decay swarmed me like a wave as a raindrop fell on my shoulder. 

I smiled and looked up at the sky to watch the heavens open and rain pour down upon the block of the Burrows. It splattered the weary, pulling my friends’ clothes tight to their emaciated bodies. Bella was standing near Lionel when she stopped to look up towards the sky. I tried to remind myself that the girl I knew wasn't there anymore, and all she was doing was reacting to the sound. But I wanted to hope…

The rain washed down my face, pushing the blood and dirt off me and onto the stone steps below me as I sat outside the church, watching with blissful agony as everyone I knew stood just beyond my reach wanting to do nothing but shred me and pull me into their cacophony of misery with them. 

I think I screamed then- curling in on myself pushing all the agony and sorrow out of me in one sharp wail- and my friends on the other side of the fence joined me. They shared my agony, wallowing with pitiful yowls and screams that climbed high towards the downpouring clouds above us. Their hands grasping through the bars of the gates towards me as their thin bodies just barely stopped them from squeezing through the gaps. 

In here I was safe.

In here I was alone. 

I cupped my hands and took a long drink of the rainwater that filled them. I could taste the salty sweat on my palms as the water slid past my dry tongue and I coughed. 

I gulped down handful after handful of water and cried it back out, shaking and sobbing against the large wooden doors to the church.

It wasn’t safe in there, it wasn’t safe anywhere really. Not the church, or the bakery, or the homes of my friends, or my home. The Burrows was haunted by something that would never let us rest unless we all gave into it.

And still the world went on.

And still I went on.

And still they watched me at the end of it all.