End of the World

“Today is the day,” Nny said, connecting a red plug to a red socket, tossing them aside, and grabbing another handful of cords, headphones around his neck blaring out thin reedy noise. “This is going to be just awesome.”

Edgar didn’t say anything, just collected the connected wires and cords and twisted them carefully up with salvaged rubber-bands. His hands were sweating. He was more nervous than he could ever remember being in any lifetime. Imminent death was nothing to what was going to be happening in the next hour…

“Fucking shit-,” Jimmy burst out suddenly, and Edgar nearly hit the ceiling. “-fuck fuck fuck FUCK.”

The lights went out.

“Jimmy?”

“I didn’t do nothing.”

“Obviously.” Devi drawled, and the faint scratching sounds of someone looking for the flashlight tucked at the base of the cymbals echoed through the darkness.

There was a small metallic ping, and a much louder metallic smash, and this time Devi joined Jimmy with the cursing.

“Flashlight?” Nny said expectantly. Then, “Ow.” The flashlight clicked on, blue light showing Devi lifting her battered cymbals off of Jimmy and Nny rubbing his shoulder. And Edgar, still nervous as hell, fell off the lunch table.

“Oh yeah.” Devi said. “This is going to be fabulous.”

OOO

The bell rang. The students trickled into the cafeteria in clumps and clusters, getting their lunch, sitting at their tables. Stepping blankly over wires and around speakers.

The tables they had claimed no one went near. The tables were as invisible as they were. Edgar saw Nny’s knuckles go pale through the dark skin as he gripped his microphone, his thin shoulders draw together as he scanned the sea of uncaring faces.

They were invisible.

Nny was shaking, his elbows trembling just a little back and forth, the microphone lowering.

And then he glanced back and grinned a wild, laughing, fang-filled smile at Edgar, and it had been laughter all along. Edgar smiled back despite himself, despite the crippling stage fright, despite the very real concern that his heart might chew its way through his chest and go screaming away out of the cafeteria, despite everything.

Today was the day.

Nny stepped off Edgar’s table, eyes locked on a shaved-head punk who looked right through him.

~Sit tight, I'm gonna need you to keep time
C'mon, just snap, snap, snap your fingers for me

Devi and Jimmy, on their own respective tables, joined in, timing a-thousand-practices-perfect.

The punk, puzzled, snapped his fingers. His friends broke off shaking a nerd down for change and stared.

Nny smiled.

~Good, good, now we're making some progress
Come on just tap, tap, tap your toes to the beat

The nerd scrambled to his feet and hid behind Nny. The gaggle of black-leather skin-headed dropouts watched them both like startled cats.

~And I believe
This may call for a proper introduction, and well
Don't you see?
I'm the narrator, and this is just the prologue

The punks nodded in time warily, one pulling his headphones off as he looked over Nny’s shoulder, past the punk, at the pale pigtailed girl thrashing away at her patched drums on top of a cafeteria table. She blew him a kiss, not missing a beat.

~Swear to shake it up, and you swear to listen
Oh, we're still so young, desperate for attention
I aim to be your eyes, trophy boys, trophy wives
Swear to shake it up, and you swear to listen
Oh, we're still so young, desperate for attention
I aim to be, your eyes, trophy boys, trophy wives

The punks were watching now, staring wide-eyed at them and at Nny as if summer break had arrived early. They followed Nny, trailing along and running into crowds as he stalked away through the crowd. Offended jocks opened their mouths to shout and left them open, gaping at the insane apparition of three students and the relentless music blasting across the room for the first time. Girls were setting down mirrors and makeup to whisper and point at Jimmy, too wrapped up in his guitar to preen but not quite enough not to wink.

People were watching Edgar.

He played harder.

~Applause, applause, no, wait, wait
Dear studio audience, I've an announcement to make
It seems the artists these days are not who you think
So we'll pick back up on that on another page

Edgar’s hands were slippery across the keyboard, his bangs sticking to his forehead, but he followed the music and every note was electric, unstoppable. This was different than rehearsal, a thousand times different, and his fear had transfigured into a screaming exhilaration. A mistake was unimaginable, ludicrous.

~And I believe
This may call for a proper introduction, and well
Don't you see?
I'm the narrator and this is just the prologue

This was what he had lived for. He could almost feel his fingers sparking as they pressed and slid across the keys, felt that if he looked down he would see the fat blue pricks of light, but he couldn’t look down, he was watching Devi, a burst of color across her cheeks, one of her drumsticks splintering in her hands, Jimmy, so turned in on his strings and his fingers he had lost all trace of anger or bravado.

~Swear to shake it up, and you swear to listen
Oh, we're still so young, desperate for attention
I aim to be, your eyes, trophy boys, trophy wives
Swear to shake it up, and you swear to listen
Oh, we're still so young, desperate for attention
I aim to be, your eyes, trophy boys, trophy wives

And Nny, lighting-bright and pacing through the crowds and cliques, crossing invisible lines, stealing their notice and pulling it along behind him as a twisted electrical dream of a pied piper. He was singing as if he thought he could pour himself into the microphone and find redemption through the wires and the amps.

And they played harder.

They were exploding in slow-motion time-lapse beat by beat, it occurred to Edgar to think, and this was what they looked like inside-out.

Elvis has not left the building, people. Elvis has changed his mind.

~Swear to shake it up, you swear to listen
Swear to shake it up, you swear to listen

You haven’t seen anything yet.

~Swear to shake it up, you swear to listen

Nny, surrounded by the crowd, surrounded by their audience, his audience. The collective attention of a room crushed full of kids and they were all listening. And he turned and smiled at Edgar.

~Swear to shake it up, you swear to listen

And he smiled, and he pulled out something small and dull black and vaguely oval from his pocket as he stood and nodded to their music, as they poured themselves into their instruments, as they sought their own redemption, and he snapped his wrist.

The switchblade glittered like a chip of lightning in the fluorescent
light.

~Oh, we're still so young, desperate for attention
I aim to be, your eyes, trophy boys, trophy wives

And Nny smiled at Edgar as the crowd went wild.

OOO

Edgar opened his eyes, blood in his mouth, thrashed his way to his feet. The lights were out. Something warm and heavy slid off him with a thump at the same time as Edgar was attacked by a corner, as he tripped over something else and smacked face-first into a wall.

“Edgar-”

Hands around his wrists. Stars underneath him.

“Edgar!”

Thrashed and kicked and tried to bite. He had to, had to-

Slowly his eyes adjusted. He was bent over the wall of the roof, two feet away from a nasty drop. The stars were the grid of streetlights far, far underneath him.

“Shhhh. Come on, calm down. Calm down...”

He let out a long breath and let himself slide to more solid ground, sinking back into the makeshift fort of pilfered nurse’s office pillows and blankets and duct-tape nestled into the corner of the roof. Why…?

“Nightmare?”

Edgar blinked. There was a meteor shower that was supposed to be happening… It had been all over the news. People were saying it was the last sign of the end of the world…Nny had wanted to see it. They’d been waiting for the lights in the city to dim, for the sky to really clear.

“It was…you…” Edgar bit his tongue, winced at the pain, shook his head. “Yeah, nightmare.”

“Mmm.” Nny patted his arm absently, settled back against his chest, eyes returning to the sky again. He hadn’t slept at all. “Oh. Oh look…”

The stars were falling, sharp, bright, painful rips across the sky as they flared and burned and died.

Edgar leaned back, wrapped his arms around Nny and looked up as well, across the electric web of city and the flashing cuts of the stars.

Together, they watched the end of the world.