End Times

Charlotte
It is fall or rather autumn - in the Forest of Dean where we have come for a picnic and  to absorb the grave silence of old trees, just Alicia and me.  My head is in her lap and I’m watching the leafy canopy, through her auburn hair, against the pale sky. I admire her round creamy cheek and appreciate the peace; it’s been a breathless two years and it feels like we’ve come to rest, at least for a while.  I have the illusion that my body is sinking like a heavy stone in to the earth as a few dry leaves flutter down on us in the dying light. But in to this peace comes the nagging thought, which makes me so restless I have to get up and walk.
I go alone loving the crunch and rustle my feet make and the listening presence of the trees, passing under the shelter of branches, touching their trunks from time to time to feel the roughness or smoothness of the bark, the differences between one or another. Differences – this is what Mom and Dad have so much trouble with, their belief system doesn’t allow for difference and I’m different and they have passed this intolerance on to me like rotten fruit – that’s left a stain on my soul. It’s weird but I do believe I have a soul even though that seems dangerously close to acceptance of  those very beliefs I find so rotten. But I’m not like them, I have ‘reinvented’ myself haven’t I? Have I? I’ve certainly tried hard enough to. But I wonder how deep it goes.  'Hopeless sinner' they called me. Am I?
     I walk quickly back to Alicia and she touches my cheek briefly, gently and I remember when I was so afraid of her touch, so afraid of who and what I was. I see that she’s packed up all the picnic stuff and is ready to go. 
As we drive forwards in to the fading light I'm thrown backwards to the beginning when we met. This is a strange sensation which makes me feel suspended and still, as if I’m at some special median point.  I’m remembering her kissing my cheek and the implosion in my stomach which sent me running away in confusion. I ran to the cafe and sat with a cappuccino too terrified to move, too confused and too excited to think. Fragments of the lecture we had just been to came to my mind - 'the human infant needs to attach, where attachment to a significant other does not occur, problems will arise.'
 	Alicia drives fast to get home and I know she’s thinking about dinner, she loves to cook. She will pick vegetables out of the organic box that is delivered every Thursday and produce some amazingly delicious dish, no meat, no animal products. And sure enough when we get back she swishes off in to the kitchen, busy, purposeful. She is a big-boned, soft, golden woman with a mass of wavy auburn hair, creamy skin, freckles, health exuding from every pore. 
      We eat her delicious meal on the table by the window in the last of the sunshine. Her flat is big and airy with a view over Battersea Park, perfect for people watching. We get out to the woods as much as possible though, we’re both country lovers, our dream is to move to Scotland one day. She’s looking at me every now and again as she eats. She knows what’s troubling me and, bless her, doesn’t dare ask in case I snap at her again like I did last week. I reach over the table and take her hand,
       ‘It’s OK we can talk about it. I need to, I know that now. I’ve got to go and tell them, for my own sake not theirs.’ 
         This is what she called out to me last week in her wise way, as I stormed out of the room shouting, like the stormy, hormonal teenager I was a few years ago, that I didn’t need their fucking blessing.  She smiles and nods, waiting.
        ‘But I’m scared Liss, really scared. I can’t imagine the words coming out when I see them and I’m making it worse by putting it off. I dreamed about it last night.’ I shrug, ‘ but so what, I mean what can they do? Cast me out? Good if they do. And I have to go and see Zeb, he needs me I know it.’

Zeb
I wake up on Charlotte's sofa. Christ here I am again, like a baby always leaning on Charlotte like when we were kids, she always looked out for me. And I'd been dreaming about  the dugouts all around the perimeter of the compound, there was no overhead cover just some crappy partly collapsed brick wall. Nothing happened for a few days, it was too quiet, eerie. I could feel them waiting and watching out there, tough, tough guys, sneaky, fearless, not afraid to die in the dust, they don’t surrender, they either escape or die. Once one of them appeared  in the middle of a field and started firing at us, thirty of us, and there he was alone, no cover, in his baggy shalwar kameez shooting at us. Crazy guys, but you have to respect them in a way. Anyway that's what I dream about mainly, the waiting silence in our shallow dugouts behind sandbags, waiting in the quiet days. It’s not the killing I remember, not in that way anyway, not in the normal way you have memories. I never slept long there, none of us did, but when I did I dreamed of surfing, coming in on the cresting curl of the biggest, best wave and woke refreshed - for two seconds.  
When I came home in 2003, I vowed never to pray again. I saw too much that stamped out faith and I'm glad- that kind of faith is sick. That kind of faith is worse than war, nearly killed me, literally.  But I grew up in it, it's stuck inside me, I resist it every day, it's hard work. 
The summer I turned sixteen I left home, left that clean, clean town and our clean, clean family and went down to Maui. We had fires on the beach, there was loads of weed and good company. Surf is joy, exhilaration, riding the ocean. And in the philosophy of nature and freedom, faith isn't necessary, it's all there. I didn't need faith. But after a few weeks of it Dad contacted me to say that Mum was seriously ill and I went back. She had cancer – the Big C, she might've died. And I lost myself in fear and they pulled me back in. I'm the baby and they were all too much for me. Carrie, Tom, Dad but not Charlotte, she warned me but I took no notice, I fought her, screamed at her to leave me alone. Then I joined up and they were so proud, first time they'd ever been proud of me but not Charlotte, she gave me a look could of withered the flowers. I told her in the garden. 
You can lose yourself in the army in a good way, you have your buddies, you have your food, shelter and orders, you don't have to think too much. You do what has to be done, there's no real dilemma unless you're a captain, then you have to make hard decisions every day but as a common soldier, it's easy. It's harsh but easy if you're confused about life as I was, maybe as I am still. But I wouldn't go back, not now.  I'm for peace now, I think we've meddled enough, I'm even vegetarian now, that's Alicia's influence or maybe she just made me realise what was making me sick. I didn't realise that meat reminded me of killing, blood, arms and legs hanging off, death. Every time I ate I felt sick, didn't eat much anyway before but when I came back home, hardly at all. Yeah, sure, I was doing drugs and drinking too much but that wasn't why really.  It was the memory of glistening flesh torn through limbs, sinews and stuff – anything gooey in the food line reminded me.
I'm back now, back to some part of myself that feels like when we were kids, me and Charlotte, the black sheep. Carrie and Tom liked church and all that but me and Charlotte, we didn't, looking back we didn't know it then, but no we never liked it - always wondered about it but had no choice as kids. We used to snigger in to our hands when old Rev Grey got up on his hind legs and started to feel the holy spirit, started to prophesy and testify and I don't know what all. Old Rev Grey with his Hollywood trailer voice and his steely blue eyes, his perfect quiff.  Mom used to slap at us, not hard, just to shut us up, not hard, she loved us, yes she loved us then. Now she's hard, her eyes bug out, she’s obsessed, you can't reason with her. She 'cast us out' finally, me and Charlotte, and Dad went along with her but I could see pain in his eyes. He went along with her, didn’t want her getting upset in case the cancer came back. Maybe he thinks me and Charlotte, are sinners bound to die in the apocalypse too, going to be left behind after the 'rapture', but he gave me a survival manual and I keep it safe I'm ashamed to say, just in case they're right. I want to be like Charlotte and be easy in myself that it's all alot of bullshit but I'm not and I do pray every now and again, just in case - hate myself for doing it. I never prayed out there, figured it was the apocalypse, right there and then and  there was nothing I could do about it. 
Yeah, me and Charlotte, always called her Charlotte, never Charlie or Lottie, those names didn't suit her, she was serious, intense, you could feel heat rising from her skin when she was angry or excited. Dark, wiry, skinny, both of us - we’re more like twins - Tom and Carrie are blonde with well covered flesh and strong bones, real farm kids. We would roam, us two, the dark pair, far from home across the fields in to the woods. We lit fires with stolen matches and watched the birds and the animals. Charlotte said we were never to hurt anything, not even an insect. And we 'examined'  those insects, she said we should 'examine' them to see what made them work, leaves and plants too. We looked deep inside them at the mystery of them, looked right in to them at all their little parts. They used to send Tom to come and get us and he always looked at us like we were weird or like he was hurt or jealous, asked mockingly what we found to do in the woods, said one day we'd get lost like Hansel and Gretel. He'd laugh and run ahead, us trailing after him.

Charlotte
When he wakes in the morning he only wants to talk about how it was, just as I thought, how it was when we were kids in the woods, he loves those woods memories. It makes me realise that it really was a time of innocence, a cliché but true. And I see now how he was my responsibility because our parents did not understand us at all, we were, are a different breed, not believers. I don't know where we came from, the ‘devil's spawn’ maybe! I joke but I think Mum sees us as such now. It's the kind of language they use and she is like an older version of that woman in The Witches of Eastwick spitting feathers and nails, rubbish and bile coming out of her mouth. It makes me cry to think of it, I can't hate her, she's my mother but she is I think mentally as well as physically ill and after what she did to Jeb, well, I won't see her again. So we talk of the woods times, it calms him and me if I'm honest. We curl up on the sofa and indulge in them. 
Back then, the woods were deep and solemn. Sometimes Zeb would be spooked but mostly they were our playground, like a giant back garden.  Sometimes hikers would come through and we must have seemed like some wild species of backwoods kids to them, suckled by wolves or something because we'd always be in a mess covered in mud and crap. We’d wave at them and creep along behind them for a while and hope they’d give us sweets but they never did, they were too busy surviving the trail, some had walked for hundreds of miles. But they were from the outside world and fascinating to us. They were different and so we revered them. We made up stories about them and once a nice couple came through who sat for a while and talked to us about our lives in an interested way. They asked us real questions about the woods and the area as if we were experts. They nodded slowly at our answers and thanked us for being so helpful. We imagined that they adopted us and took us back to New York where they were from. There we lived a life of luxury and ease and became famous, me a writer and  Zeb a world-class surfer. The couple approved of us totally and regarded us as possessing genius. This fantasy lasted for months and I remember walking round in a haze of happiness as if a dream really had come true. Our real life didn’t register and I drove Mom wild because I never seemed to hear anything she said, was never up in time for the school bus and constantly forgot my lunchbox and my books. One day she got so mad at me that she locked me in my bedroom for two days with just water and some bread and peanut butter ‘until I came to my senses’. It worked but I never forgave her the loss of my liberty. Those two days were like weeks. I would stare out the window, longing to be in the woods, longing to be in New York City, anywhere but home. By the afternoon of the second day I hit on the idea of drawing plans for the little twig and leaf cities we used to build for the insects. We’d build these little towns and herd the insects in there as gently as we could. Then we would watch them and make up stories about them. Once we made the mistake of putting a big spider in with some ants and the spider ate them all. This was a disaster and I felt guilty for weeks. Zeb said I was being a wuss and that it was just the way nature was. He was right, of course, I see that now but then? No I didn’t I had the old time religious guilt and it weighed heavily on me. Now I see that I’d substituted that guilt for the real one which was that we shouldn’t be what we were, me and Zeb, black sheep who didn’t fit in and had made our own imaginary lives to get away from reality, the harsh reality of living in their world. It surprises me now that we found it so tough because we didn’t know any better. And Zeb followed me in this rebellion, or I took him with me and for that I felt guilty as well. I needed him to join me, needed the company but deep down I felt I was leading him astray. He never said it then or now and maybe I did him a favour, I don’t know. But then again if I hadn’t maybe what happened to him wouldn’t have happened and he would have stayed in the fold and had a peaceful life with the rest of the family. We’ll never know now. 
But I want to tell about me and Alicia and going home to my parents to tell them how it was. That was the worst thing I ever had to do; sure I’d rejected them and their values, I’d left and come to London, was studying psychology and sociology, both subjects seen as anti-religion and anti-American by them, in fact anything that questions beliefs or places the responsibility on the individual and not God is anathema to them, but still I was shitting myself, literally.  On the flight I was in the toilet more than anywhere else. I remember sitting next to two gap year girls, Brits, who prattled and gossiped all the way there about hair, boyfriends, movies and degrees of being pissed and wishing that I was like that – normal - while despising them for their shallowness.  And all the time I was thinking of them at the airport, waiting for me, in a group, Carrie, Mom, Dad maybe even Rev. Grey with his sculptured hairdo and his patronising smile. Mom would hold her arms out to me, Dad would be just behind her waiting for his chance to put his heavy arm round my shoulders and call me his funny little bunny. I was funny all right, soon, I thought, he’d know just how funny I really was. And Carrie. She’d be there as judge and jury with her thin-lipped smile and her eyes sweeping over me with only just disguised disdain. And I’d look her up and down thinking how dowdy she was in her big sweatshirts and long skirts. I have never met anyone as judgemental as Carrie but in there somewhere was a sister and I’ve never quite given up on her, after all she must have found growing up in our house a strain. I suppose her way of dealing with it was to join them wholesale, to embrace it all, take it on.  And maybe Zeb would be there. I hoped with all my heart he would be well enough to come and meet me. Mom had told me on the phone that he was ill and may be in hospital by the time I got there. He’d been injured in Afghanistan and had seemed to be doing well but something had gone wrong. If he was there I felt I’d be OK but I knew he wouldn’t be. Something was wrong with him, badly wrong, I could feel it like he was my twin.
I remember staring at the little flight path map on the screen in front of me watching the plane getting nearer and nearer. I tried to think of ways of telling them, when, where, all together or one at a time? But any combination I could come up with seemed equally impossible. I probably wouldn’t do it and the journey would be wasted. On the other hand why bother? Was I seeking their blessing, their absolution? I didn’t want it anyway.  It wouldn’t make any difference to me would it? But it was important, I couldn’t deny it, I just wasn’t sure why and a sort of numbness fogged my mind. I felt so doomed, I think, that my brain just cut out. I was clutching the rose quartz egg that Alicia had given me at the airport. She had kissed me and pressed it in to my hand and hurried away so I wouldn’t see her tears. As the plane began to descend I cupped it in my palm and stroked its’ smooth surface with my thumb until the egg was hot. Alicia would have said that the heat was healing energy, she thought I had it but I thought it was just my body heat and that anyone who held anything for long enough would make it hot. 
Nearer and nearer. In my head I zoomed in on them all, flew over them grouped there waiting and swooped away, turned round and came straight back to London. I wondered where my courage was, I seemed to remember possessing quite a big dose of it at one time, I was always proud of it, saw it as an integral part of my character. I sort of smirked and sighed making a noise with my lips and the two gap year girls stopped chattering and looked at me strangely. I was loosing it I thought, I must have made a really loud sound. 
‘Are you OK?’ the one next to me asked. I nodded and blushed.  She smiled and said, ‘it’s just that I get sick sometimes landing and I thought maybe you did too, there’s some bags here.’
‘I’m fine, really,’ I said ‘just a little nervous, landings make me nervous,’ I lied glibly.
‘Oh I know what you mean.’ the other one said, ‘ I like take off though, it’s quite a buzz.’ We all grinned and I felt suddenly better and sorry for my earlier, nasty, jealous thoughts about them. And then we prattled until we landed, all three of us! That really lifted my spirits and I swung out on to the concourse to face the music. 

Zeb
My leg was shot to pieces but could be saved. I was lucky I suppose. Could have been dead or an amputee. Anyway I arrived home in a mess. My head was a mess as well as my leg. And I was in quite a lot of pain, drugged up against it and that’s where I got my taste for the drugs I guess. Going home was weird, I couldn’t wait to leave Afghanistan and  I was looking forward to food and comfort if not  to living with them but  I couldn’t have imagined in my wildest dreams how bad it was going to be. 
My plan was to get out of there quick but it didn’t turn out that way. My leg took a long time to heal and Mom, well she was crazy. The first couple of weeks were fine, I got a lot of attention and pampering and I guess I enjoyed that even though there was a part of me still out there with the boys, thinking of what they were going through, feeling bad about being so comfortable. But hell, I told myself, they would be doing the same in my shoes and I couldn’t help being injured.  Karen, a girl I’d dated afew times before  came round a lot making cow eyes at me and hanging on my every word and I was flattered, she was pretty, eye candy, but dumb so that soon wore off. I got really mad at her one day when she said she understood. I was telling her some of how it was and I sort of got seduced by her gaze into playing for a bit of sympathy. I told her about the waiting quiet at night, how you don’t know when it’s going to come at you and how scary that could be. ‘I can imagine,’ she chirped (she had this Disney cartoon voice) opening her eyes wide and I yelled at her. Those big blue eyes filled with tears and she ran from the room and never came back. Then she put it all over town that I was crazy and I got some real funny looks when I finally got so stir crazy that I limped in to town one day.  You hear about how war vets get treated like pariah dogs and it is so. People don’t want to be reminded. And they’re frightened, you have this look like you’ve seen it all, horrors they can only guess at, makes them uncomfortable. I stared in to the mirror a lot at the beginning and wondered who those dead eyes belonged to. They sure didn’t seem like mine. I felt like Tom Cruise in that movie. And I couldn’t sleep, funny I slept out there but at home I couldn’t. I started hanging out at Joe’s Bar and drinking. I’d hobble back with alcohol on my breath and Mom would be waiting for me like a fat avenging angel. She’d put on a lot of weight while she was ill. She’d beaten back the cancer but noone knew if or when it might come back and we tiptoed around her, giving in to her every whim, not flinching when she cursed us and then melted in a heap of self-pity. I began to hate her where before I just disagreed with her. Our relationship totally broke down as they say and we had no common ground to communicate on. When I’d come in drunk she’d look at me with a killer look and say in a low vicious voice that I was bad, always had been but now I was worse, drink was evil and she didn’t want it in her house. If she’d know about the drugs she would have ….well I don’t know what. She was always at me to go to church and get healed in my soul, my soul was black she said from all the killing I’d seen and all the alcohol I was drinking but that I refused to do. I couldn’t set foot in the place, I literally couldn’t. I imagined sitting there with Rev.Grey beaming down on me and picking me out, saying what a hero I was but that I needed cleansing, absolution and to feel the spirit of the lord move through me again. He came to the house one day and I nearly threw up, the way he looked at me with his mock loving eyes, speaking in his fake baritone, saying he understood my reluctance but if I would only give it a try I would find comfort and solace and all that bullshit.  Mom was hovering by the door wringing her hands and looking over his shoulder at me and nodding at every bullshit thing he said, as if I was ten years old and was getting bawled out by the teacher. 
I wished Charlotte was there, I wished that a lot. I thought of going to see her in London but I didn’t have much money and my leg was still being treated. I’d contracted gangrene somehow and it was getting worse. I still dragged in to town though otherwise I would have gone completely crazy. I’d got to know afew of the guys at the bar and there were some army guys there too, on leave or injured like me. 
	Then there was Dad, poor old Dad. When he wasn’t at work at the plant he was tinkering in his shed. He was kitting it out for survival come the big one, in case any of us got left behind. That meant me of course. I was bound to be left behind; after all I’d rejected the church and was a stinking, drinking layabout in Mom’s eyes. Dad was OK, he just couldn’t get out from under her influence and he didn’t want to upset her in case she got sick again. He missed her though, how she was. I did too if the truth be known. She was different before the cancer; she was softer, more forgiving - kind of sweet even though she had a fanatical belief in the End Time. A lot of people in the town did, do now so she didn’t seem crazy then. Anyway Dad was always down in the shed, partly to get away from her I thought. She gave him a hard time, the only ones who escaped were Carrie and Rev Grey, even the neighbours caught a tongue lashing from her every now and again. Carrie fed the hatred I think now, didn’t realise it then but I can see it now. She’d come tripping round with her big geek of a boyfriend smiling like butter wouldn’t melt but pretty soon she be stirring Mom up, complaining about this and that and everything ‘til they were in a permanent state of outrage. I couldn’t understand how they could square their bile and gossip with their beliefs. Speaking ill of others was practically a hobby with them and I believe Mom’s only source of pleasure. I guess she was frightened of the cancer coming back, frightened of dying but again that didn’t add up, dying according to them, was the biggest blessing, they’d be there ready in heaven waiting for the rest of us to be whisked up in the ‘Rapture’ so why was she so frightened? I tried to see it as a good sign, maybe her beliefs were shaky, had been shaken by the cancer but I couldn’t imagine her admitting it even if it was true.  I guess she had to cling harder to them so she didn’t loose them altogether. 
	Finally Charlotte came and rescued me but a lot went on in between. It’s hard to believe what happened and harder to talk about. I’ll have to one day and it will be to Charlotte but for now I like to just keep on an even keel, survive, I just need to survive.

Charlotte 
While me and Zeb talk about the woods and the fantasies we had, another part of my mind is thinking about what we can do today. I have a day off and I’m determined to take him out. We sit murmuring on Alicia’s big sofa while she gets ready for work. She occasionally throws us a smile like a proud mother and I swear the woman has no badness in her. I keep waiting for it to appear, surely it’s there in everyone but I’ve never seen it in three years. Injustices make her angry but even then she finds a reason for why people act like they do. Must be the meditation she does every morning, it keeps her calm and sane and then she goes off and does aromatherapy on stressed out people so she breaths in all the calming oils too. I ask myself every day what she sees in me, not in a self denigrating way but because we are so different, like chalk and cheese, like day and night or winter and summer. She’s not your average pie in the sky new-ager though, I don’t want to give that impression. She’s down to earth and pragmatic and she has a science degree.
         ‘Hey’, she says now, ‘why don’t you two go to the Natural History museum, there’s some wonderful stuff in there and then you can go for lunch in St James’s park, it’s such a beautiful day.’ She stares out of the window for a second and turns to us with raised eyebrows, asking. 
          The sunlight streaming in through the window behind her catches her hair and it almost dazzles me. I can’t speak for a second, I feel sick with love. 
          Then I say softly, ‘What d’you think Zeb, sounds good doesn’t it?’ 
          He nods and rubs his eyes. I know he’s afraid of going out around the city. Loud noises scare him and he gets overwhelmed by people.
          I say so Alicia can’t hear, ‘just for a while, it’s not far and the park’s huge, it’s peaceful in there.’ 
          He nods and glances shyly over towards Alicia but she’s gone, we can hear her making coffee and soon the smell drifts through to us and we start to plan breakfast and a picnic to take with us.
When we step outside Zeb sticks close, his arm and shoulder nudging mine every now and again. How he ever makes it over to our place is a mystery but one I don’t ask about for fear of drawing too much attention to this fear he has. It’s a short tube ride from his to ours so I imagine he just grits his teeth and goes for it, head down in the wind, I can see him walking rapidly with his light quick steps, looking neither left or right but straight ahead until he gets to our place and runs up the steps letting his breath out in a huge relieved sigh. 
             ‘Not the Natural History museum, lets just head straight for the park,’ he says smiling at me in his nervous but winning way. ‘It’s beautiful there and the sun’s shining.’ 
             I nod and smile back reassuringly, I don’t mind, the parks just fine by me. Anything’s fine by me if it makes him happy.
We sit on the grass under a huge oak. It’s chilly but there’s still warmth in the sun. He sighs and lies face down then looks up at me. ‘I’m OK you know Charlotte. I’m a lot better than I was. I know I seem a bit….’
         ‘Look it’s OK, you don’t have to explain.’ I say and then bite my lip wondering why I always cut him off. I’ve done it a few times of late and I’m the one who wants him to open up. Alicia agrees that he needs to talk but says not to push it, that he’ll do it in his own good time. But why do I cut him off? Maybe to protect him, maybe I don’t want to hear it, maybe I’m protecting myself or us both. 
         He smiles like he knows what I’m thinking and says, ‘hey let’s eat, I’m hungry.’
        ‘We only just had breakfast.’
        ‘I don’t care I’m hungry.’ 
        He’s changing he subject, we laugh a little relieved to be off the hook. Food will fill the gap for the moment. We eat homemade mushroom pate on French bread, crisps (Zeb calls them chips still) rocket and spinach salad, olives stuffed with jalapenos and then some chocolate cake. 
        Replete we both lie back on the blanket under the trees again at peace for a little while. Then after a half hour or so I decide to try.
       ‘Zeb, you know when Mom ….’ He looks at me, his eyes say not now, not here while we’re having such a good time, quiet, uneventful but good, that’s what he likes quiet, uneventful times. I stop and shrug, never mind it’ll keep and he rolls over on to his stomach. Then he says, slowly, thoughtfully, into the grass ‘you and Alicia, it’s real love isn’t it?’
        ‘Yes it is,’ I say without hesitation.
        ‘How did you know, I mean it looks like it from where I’m standing, lying,’ smiles, chuckles, ‘but how do you know, how did you find out?’
       ‘Wow, that’s a big question. Well actually it’s not. I just felt it in my heart. That’s corny I know but I can’t explain it any other way. I looked at her and I just felt soft sort of, a melting, not sexual but in my heart. And I liked everything about her even the bits that I knew would be irritating.’
        ‘Are they irritating now?’
        ‘Sometimes, yes. She’s too damn good if you know what I mean. Sometimes I want to poke her, make her angry and I do but I always regret it. It’s not in her really and I find that hard to understand.’
        ‘Yeah, me too. But she’s great, I love her too, in a brotherly way of course. I’ve never been in love, not the way you described it.’
         ‘Plenty of time for that Zeb, plenty of time. Hey have you ever…you know…with a girl?’
         He blushes and I’m overwhelmed with the urge to make him laugh and giggle like when we were kids. I leap on him and find the sensitive spot and start to tickle but he shoves me hard and pins me down with an iron hard arm and I gasp and blink back tears. 
         ‘Take it easy Zeb, you’re hurting me.’ I’m gasping a little and I see his eyes refocus and he lets me up muttering that he’s sorry but I shouldn’t jump him, not any more, he can’t help his reactions. I nod, looking him in the eyes trying to convey silent understanding. I sigh then and sit up. Then I say in a croaky voice, ‘is it so hard to talk about?’
        ‘Which part Charlotte?’ He has an uncharacteristic edge of bitterness in his voice. I nod again and think, yeah, which part? Good question. But I have to try, I’ve been putting it off, silencing him when I shouldn’t have because I’m scared to hear about it all, having settled my own demons I don’t want to deal with his I suppose. I wish, stupidly that I could draw him out with a wise homily like you see people do in TV dramas or sentimental movies, even soaps – starting with – “you know when I was ..” or “ I had this friend…”  but nothing relevant comes to mind and I knew I would have to make it up and he would see straight though me. So I decide I must take a risk and say,  ‘maybe the part where you moved in to the garage. I mean how did that happen? What did she say?’
           He shrugs and mumbles, ‘she just didn’t want me in the house. I was out of it all the time.’ He shrugs again, taking the blame ot at least not blaming her.
          ‘Aren’t you angry?’  I ask. He shrugs yet again and I feel angry, with him for shrugging but mostly with her for hurting him and not looking after him. 
           I say righteously ‘how could she, her own son, I mean how could she?’
         ‘She had her reasons.’ Now he’s closed down and I know it’s useless to pursue it.
                                                                         *
Yeah, so I was walking, striding across the concourse feeling better for my contact with the two gap year girls. I went to get my case and was actually humming sort of casually as I waited. I really felt good and I was still high on Alicia, we’d known each other about three months then and I was going to move in with her when I got back to London. Anyway I saw my bag, grabbed it assertively but politely, which I was ridiculously proud of for such a tiny act, needed to boost my pride so badly I guess. 
          There they were waiting for me in the right place, grouped together, Rev grey too, as if they were going to have a photograph taken and it all drained away from me, that fragile confidence just disappeared like water down the plughole. It was so exactly how I had pictured it that it was freaky and my legs turned to rubber. I plastered my mouth into a smile which must of looked like a death rictus, and stumbled towards them. It seemed to take hours to reach them, - all their eyes boring in to me seemed to create a sort of force field, which was keeping me back. But finally I made it and went straight to Dad, the least toxic of the bunch. He hugged me tight and I hid for a moment in his warm, familiar bulk. Then I felt Mom tugging my shoulder and came out of it. She looked terrible, thin and grey, her hair was growing back in patches after the chemo, her hand felt like a claw. 
          ‘Charlotte you’re back’, she said,  ‘thought you never would, took you a while.’ She let this hang in the air her eyes burning with a sort of mental fever.  I smiled weakly and mumbled some excuse about work and money. 
           ‘Hey meet Ronny, we’re engaged.’ Carrie flashed a big ring at me and grinned in to my face, pushing Ronny forwards as if he was the prize of the century. He gawked at me, one of those tall skinny guys with a big adams’ apple and stuck out a huge bony hand on the end of a sticklike arm. I shook it aware that my hand was clammy with anxiety.
         ‘Hi Ronny,’ I managed to say in a strangled voice. ‘Um, congratulations Carrie, when did all this happen?’ I tried for a bright excited girly tone and smiled as hard as I could at them. ‘When’s the big day?’ 
            She named some day so far in the future it seemed irrelevant and looked me up and down in that critical disdainful way she had. She, actually, looked quite good, this Ronny suited her apparently or maybe it was just the general prospect of marriage. They definitely wouldn'y have had sex yet so it wasn't that.  Anyway she had a nice new bob in her blond hair which was a big improvement on the tight pony tail she usually wore that had pulled her face back and made her look severe. Her expression was softer, more in keeping with her face and curvy body somehow and I saw now that she was almost beautiful, I mean in the conventional, physical sense. I was used to seeing her with expressions of malice or anger on her face, which had wide cheekbones and full lips with a pretty curve to them. She was also wearing quite a trendy suit which slimmed her broad hips down and all for this geek I thought nastily and immediately felt horrible, probably he was a really nice guy and I resolved to give him a chance. 
        But now Rev.Grey was shepherding us off, he seemed to be in control of us all and I wondered when that had happened. I looked at Dad out of the corner of my eye and saw that he looked diminished, oddly shrunken although he was still as big as a bear. Must be Mom’s cancer I thought and realised I hadn’t even asked how she was yet. I pushed my way in between her and the Rev. 
         ‘How’re you doing Mom?’ She looked at me with an - as if you care expression - and said, 
      ‘Doing OK with the reverend’s help and my church.’ No mention of Dad or Zeb then, that Carrie was a help went without saying of course. 
       I nodded, ‘was it bad, the treatment?’ a weak and stupid question, of course it was bad. She looked at me with disdain, 
       'Sure, it was as bad as it can be.’ 
       She sounded angry and I meekly nodded, couldn’t think of anything else to say, wished I could’ve hugged her but we just didn’t have that kind of relationship. I stared ahead and was about to say something bright and chirpy about Carrie and the geek but when I turned back to them, Rev Grey had his arm round her shaking shoulders. She was crying – Mom was crying. I had never seen her cry before. I was shocked and felt tears prick my eyes for a second until a cold feeling stopped them in their tracks. I could feel my mouth pursing relentlessly, hardening myself against her. The bitch, I thought, when had she ever shown me any sympathy, or Zeb or Dad even? But still, we’d never had cancer so how could we know what it was like?  I imagined all those cells dividing and invading her big slack body and reducing her to this stringy, feverish woman whose eyes I was trying to avoid. It made me feel sick to my stomach and I stumbled a bit partly from the nausea and partly from the effects of the flight. Ronnie caught my elbow and looked down from what seemed a great height, 
       ‘You OK Charlotte?’ his voice was soft and concerned, sensual if you didn’t look at him. I nodded and smiled quickly at him as I righted myself and moved away from him. He was too close, too solicitous and I thought Carrie might get jealous. I moved closer to Dad, almost nuzzling up to him for reassurance like a lost dog. 
        He put his arm round me and said quietly, 'hold up there funny bunny, soon be home. It’s a shock I know to see her like that. She’s been very frightened and ……difficult. It’s been hard for us all.’
       ‘I know Dad, - I mean I can imagine. I feel bad I wasn’t there for the worst of it but I’m here now.’ I squeezed his arm and felt false. What could I do, what did I ever do but cause trouble? And I was here to tell them about myself, about what  I had discovered and would make me a freak in their eyes.  He smiled down on me and patted my hand. Now I was near to him, leaning on him actually, I realised he’d lost weight too, I had been fooled by the bulky clothes he was wearing. 
        ‘Dad, are you OK?’  I peered up at him.
        ‘Sure honey,’ he smiled down at me, I saw his laugh lines fanning out reassuringly but I felt terribly fearful, my stomach fluttered with nerves, I felt something bad might happen just around the corner or that maybe it had already happened.
        ‘How’s Zeb?’ now my voice was cold, I knew something had happened to him and noone had told me yet.
        ‘He’s f…’
        ‘Don’t say he’s fine if he’s not Dad, tell me.’
        ‘Well he’s been very sick too with his leg, he got gangrene but that’s getting better now, it’s just that your mother…..’
        ‘What,’ I demanded, ‘what’s she done to him?’
        ‘Nothing honey, calm down, we’re doing things a bit different now for your mother’s sake.’
        ‘Where is he, what’s happened to him?’ I was beginning to panic.
        ‘He’s moved out, only to the room over the carport, it’s better that way.’
        ‘But why, I mean it must be harder to look after him, how does he manage the stairs?’
        ‘We manage OK?’ His tone held a warning  - don’t keep pestering. He loosed my arm and hurried to catch up with the others.
         When we got to the house I went straight up to the carport.

Zeb
When I’m in my apartment, ‘flat’ as they call it here, I’m OK. It’s small and quite dark but that’s how I like it. I don’t want a lot of space with shadows and places to hide. I have a room with a tiny bathroom and a kitchenette. I keep it neat, clean, it’s easy and therapeutic the cleaning I do. It has a beginning and an end and it’s repetitive, I can handle it. I go to Burger King, just across the road, most days for a bean burger and fries with a salad side, no relish or mayonnaise, dry food and quite healthy really whatever Alicia says, I love it that she cares though. My flat is above a bar and at night I hear people laughing, sometimes there’s shouting and vomiting but even this is OK, I like the fact that I can feel the world out there even if I’m not partaking of it. I’m a short subway ride from Charlotte and Alicia, sometimes I walk though when I can’t manage it because the subway has a lot of dark and unoccupied spaces that I imagine falling in to or I imagine that the enemy is there. This enemy has no face, nationality or substance, it’s just a sense of some dark evil figure out to get me. I did see it once but I guess it was a hallucination. Sometimes I feel like jumping in front of a train down on to the oily tracks but I could never do that to the driver, could never give anyone that image to live with. There’d be the softish bump first and then the swift, last sighting of a figure - a movie dummy falling like a broken branch past the windscreen with a real face white and desperate. 
         Today I’m staying in all day and all night and that’s a relief. I do this every week, only once, I make myself go out on the other days and once a week I go to Charlotte’s. When I stay in I plunk on my guitar, clean and tidy the room and write my journal. I started this writing when we first went out there and often I read it back to myself, I read about my time out there in that dusty dry place of high mountains and rubble. When I’ve read the last few entries I write about now and a few days later I compare myself as I am now to what I was then. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes bad. There is some progress. What I don’t write about is that time in between. One day I must, I know I have to but it’s hazy and I feel I might disintegrate if I do, it seems a worse fear than being blown up in some stupid war zone. 

Charlotte
What I found in the carport still gives me nightmares. How they could have left him like that is way beyond my comprehension. Needles on the floor, vodka bottles and an overwhelming smell of piss and something rotten.
     End times, rapture, holy holy shit.