Doomed

appear as a familiar blue form emerges. Last to flow through the locked door is a not-appealing pigtail of braided blue filth. With that Mr. Crescent City stands among us.

Having once more taken leave of his overdosed body, he blinks, looking around at my Gund stuffed monkeys and Steiff bears. His rheumy eyes settle on the radiant golden Festus.

According to the angel Festus, God chooses a messenger every few centuries to deliver an updated game plan for righteous living. Moses or Jesus or Mohammad, this person disseminates the newest generation of God’s Word 2.0. Noah or Buddha or Joan of Arc, the messenger upgrades our moral software, debugs our ethics, upgrading our values to meet modern spiritual needs. If you believe angel Festus, I am nothing more than the latest version of God’s earthly mouthpiece.

“After you prevent today’s cataclysm,” declares the beaming Festus, “you must halt all human forays into the evil field of stem-cell research.”

“Beg pardon?” I ask.

Festus rails, “As God’s voice, you must curtail the freewheeling civil rights of women.”

Flattered as I feel at being so chosen, I’m not thrilled with the news I’m being given to deliver.

Lifting his tiny arms into the air and flailing his hands, preacher-style, my upstate boyfriend rants, “It is God’s will that all women abstain from voting and birth control and driving automobiles!”

While my pint-size Aryan poster child rattles off the rest of God’s demands—no more blacks marrying whites… no men marrying men, ever… absolute mandatory circumcision for all members of both genders… veils, lots of veils and burqas—I turn to Mr. K and make my introductions. Not even death negates my years of decorous training in Swiss etiquette and protocol. “Mr. Crescent City, this is the angel Festus.” With an appropriate cant of my head, I politely say, “Angel Festus, this is Mr. K. He’s a ‘psychic booty caller.’”

“Angel Madison means ‘bounty hunter,’” says Mr. K. He gazes upon Festus, that golden blaze, as if my upstate swain had summer sunshine coursing through his veins. Giving a deep, blue sigh, Mr. K says, “I wish I were an angel.”

It’s here, Gentle Tweeter, that the idea strikes me like a bolt of blue lightning. To Mr. K, I say, “You really want to be an angel, huh?”

“I just want to die,” says Mr. K, “and have everything be happy and painless. Forever.”

“Find God,” says Festus, “and you’ll find peace.”

To that I say, “Angel Festus, shut up.” I add, not wishing to offend, “Just for now, okay?” Already I can see that Mr. K’s blue is fading from cerulean to turquoise, from azure to French blue. Our time is running out as his not-healthy liver is winnowing the ketamine from his bloodstream. As he fades from robin’s egg to powder blue, I offer a bargain. “Take my parents a message, and I promise to make you an angel.”

“A message?” he asks.

“Tell them to stop with all the cataclysm stuff, okay?” I say.

Mr. K returns my gaze with puzzled stoner eyes. “And I’ll be an angel?”

“Tell them,” I say, “that they’re stupid hypocrites, and that they shouldn’t have not told me about Tigerstripe having a gruesome kidney disease.”

Mr. K begins to nod, his eyes closed, as if deeply comprehending my words. Eyes closed, he smiles.

“And tell them,” I say, “that I accidentally killed Papadaddy Ben by semidetaching his wing-ding because I thought it was a malevolent, rapidly inflating dog boo-boo.” I ask, “Does that make sense?”

Eyes closed, Mr. K nods sagely. His pigtail bobs in agreement.

“Also tell them,” I say, “that I only invented Jesus on my mobile phone, but it turns out that there is an actual Jesus….” Turning to Festus for confirmation, I say, “Right?”

“Correct,” Festus affirms.

To Mr. K, I say, “What’s most important is that you tell my mom and dad that I really, really love them.” Leaning closer to my blue confidant, I whisper, “And please tell them that I did not suck on any spider monkey ding-dings or do the Hot Thing with any water buffalo, okay?”

The slack look on Mr. K’s face suggests I’ve overloaded my messenger. As his soul vanishes, gradually leaching backward to wherever he’s left his physical body, the pale blue of him fades to grey. The gray goes to white.

The walls of the stateroom begin to vibrate, and a not-unpleasant hum suffuses my bed. The megayacht engines of the Pangaea Crusader have started. Outside, increasing gales scour the decks and thrum the rigging.

“Above all, please,” I entreat my fading go-between, my meaty hands balled together in prayer, “tell them to die with all the full-size candy bars they can carry.”

DECEMBER 21, 1:45 P.M. HAST The Abomination Spurs a Cataclysm

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If we compare the ancient codices recorded by scholars since Solon, we see almost identical depictions of the end times. The so-called global Doomsday mythos depicts a beautiful thing-child leading a procession of disciples up the slopes of a gleaming mountain. The mountain rises at the center of the Pacific Ocean, and this ceremony takes place in the waning sunlight of the shortest day of the year.

For the first time, Persephone will not return. Dawn will come, but no one will be alive to witness the next sunrise.

In place of plastics, now the she-child is borne along by a retinue of human beings. Instead of dry-cleaning bags and soda bottles, serving as attendants are earthly potentates and rich chieftains, everyone dressed in costly crimson raiment. This vast throng parades upward across the barren architecture of artificial clouds. Their steps follow winding switchback trails. This procession mounts ever higher, swinging censers of sweet incense and bearing lit candles.

Around the horizon in every direction, great plumes of black smoke rise like tornadoes into the afternoon sky. Underfoot, the ground shakes. This mountain they scale is the tallest in the land. Its towering peak is level, a plateau, and waiting at the highest point is a massive shining temple. This bright palace appears as a pastiche of Gothic and baroque and attic shapes, of domes and spires and colonnades, the caryatids and cartouches rendered from glistening fluoropolymers. This part-cathedral, part-skyscraper crowns the summit.

It’s in this glorious sterile sanctuary, overlooking the entire world, where two millennia of scholars vow that human history will end.

DECEMBER 21, 2:05 P.M. HAST Thwarted by Continental Drift

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Gentle Tweeter,

We’re running. My chubby legs scamper. My tubby knees pumping high, I barrel along, sopping with perspiration. My loafer-shod feet stomp, scale, vault up the steps of a staircase molded into the steeply pitched flank of a nothing-colored mountain. A white, cipher-hued precipice. Scarcely without pause do I leap upward in pursuit of the cadaverous Mr. K, who sprints the stairs ahead of me.

Moments before, we’d emerged from my stateroom to find the yacht deserted. A veritable Marie Celeste. An unmanned Flying Dutchman. The salon was vacant. The decks not occupied. My borrowed PDA emitted its Europop ring tone, and Archer bade me, “Look outside.” He said, “Look out a porthole or whatever.”

In this landscape it’s hard to miss: A procession of people are walking single-file, ascending the slope of a peak in the middle distance. To a person, they all wear hooded red robes. Thus attired, the thin trickle of them