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Before We Begin: Theotokion is a little bit Greybeard, a little bit Children Of Men, and the central question of how would you feel if you were thrust into the role of fathering the most important child? Did anyone ever stop to ask Joseph the Nazarene how it felt?
Steve felt a big toe ramming into the third rib on the right side of his body, and in that moment, he realized that he was awake. This realization was coupled with another realization – that he had fallen into unconsciousness in the first place. He tried to think of what his last memory had been before blackness had overtaken him and realized then that there was a throbbing wedge driven into his brain that prevented him from dredging up any recent memories. He tried to think around it and the big toe rammed into his ribcage again. He winced and a small moan uttered from his inflamed throat.
“Come on buddy, wake up,” a thick, gravelly voice said, but it caused Steve to screw his eyes up tighter. At first it lifted the pain in his head but then the wedge drove in further, and the pain seemed to double. His gorge rose and he rolled over onto his side in preparation, and that was when his fourth realization hit him. He was soaking wet. His clothes were sodden, as heavy as a hospital lead apron. His eyelids flew open and the light that invaded was as pure and painful as the first fleeting moments of birth.
When his eyes focused, he saw first the sky, blue and cloudless above, and secondly a pair of men standing over him. One of the men was thick, with a jutting chin and a face seemingly mapped more in lines than in skin. The other had a long face and high cheekbones, feathered blonde hair, and a flattened grey cap on the top of his head. Steve sat up slowly, keeping his eyes glued to the two men. For their part, they were watching him silently, their faces concerned. The thick man’s eyes were soothing, reminiscent of the rain, but the thin man had eyes that seemed far and wee, like the little lame balloonman.
“Jesus, bud, are you alright?” the thick man asked. “That was a close call.”
“Ahweee,” the thin man agreed. Steve looked back and forth between them.
“What was a close call?” he asked. The thick man looked in wary askance at the thin man, but the thin man kept his unfocused eyes locked in Steve’s direction.
“Bud, we just pulled you out of the river.”
Steve blinked rapidly, trying to process this information through the wedge of pain in his head. River water dripped out of his hair and trailed down his cheeks. He became aware of the smell, the faint odour of fish and fainter sewage that clung to the Grand River. His gorge rose and he leaned over to spew dark brown vomit onto the rocks. The men leapt back, and the thick one uttered a sharp curse. Steve blinked blearily at the chunky puddle that had come out of him.
“Out of the river,” he mused. The thick man squatted down beside him.
“Fauntleroy and I were walking down under the bridge there and spotted you floating in the water. You must have just fallen in, I guess, ’cause here you are breathing. What happened, bud?”
Steve glared at the pair of men.
“Why did you pull me out?” he muttered. The thick man looked at Fauntleroy in askance.
“Well, it wouldn’t be very Christian of us to have just left you in there, now, would it?” he said, his tone plaintive. Steve answered this with a guttural scream. It came out of him like a warning siren and startled a flock of nearby birds into flight. The fluttering of the flock’s wings caused Fauntleroy to jump in the air and he nearly lost his footing on the bank of the river. The thick man shot out a hand and held him back from tumbling into the water.
“Holy Jesus, mister, are you alright?” the thick man asked. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Steve answered this by turning his face up to the sky and barking out a discordant laugh. The pain throbbed in nauseating waves through his head as he did so, but he found himself unable to stop.
“You have no idea,” he eventually replied. “No idea. What’s wrong with me could fill a planet.”
“Ahwee,” Fauntleroy said.
“Well, mister,” the thick man said, and then cut himself off. He seemed to chew on his words and then spit them out. “Did you really just want us to leave you there, to drown I mean?”
Steve’s shoulders slumped. “I don’t know. I don’t remember falling in the river at all anyway, I must have fallen asleep on the bank here last night. I always take a roll off of the bed in the morning, you know? It would have been a neat solution, though.”
“A neat solution to what?” the thick man asked.
“Listen, do you fellows want some breakfast?” Steve asked. He spread his hands as if to take in the great wide blue sky. “It seems like the perfect time to have some breakfast, and then I suppose we should talk. I need to talk to someone, and you fellows seemed to have saved my life for now, so the burden falls on you.”
The thick man laughed nervously, and Fauntleroy nodded, his strange, faraway eyes focusing briefly.
“Ahwee,” he said, and it was unmistakably an acceptance.
They climbed up the rough-cut rock bank and hiked past the old casino that stood guard over Joseph Brant’s ford. The walls were weather stained now, and the windows patched with plywood, but it still cut an imposing figure against the sky. The three of them remained silent as they walked along its perimeter. Fauntleroy stopped to examine a discarded laminated poster from the last great celebration they’d had in the casino before they’d closed it for good, but he dropped it quickly when he realized that the other two weren’t stopping to wait for him.
At the far edge of the casino’s lot was a crumbling parking garage and although it was so shot through with holes it resembled an old man’s jaw, they took it as a shortcut into downtown Brantford. When they emerged onto Colborne Street, they stopped so that Steve could roll a jittery cigarette from the thick man’s scant leather tobacco pouch.
“Listen, what can I call you?” Steve asked, blowing a cloud of grey smoke out into the gentle air.
“Name’s Douglas Fairchild,” the thick man said, “you can call me Doug though, if you like.”
Steve nodded without responding and they continued down Colborne Street without speaking further.
Just around the corner from where the parking garage let out was an old, green-tinted building that had once been a dormitory for the university, before the university had been shuttered for good. An old man sat on the steps that lead up to the building, his grey hair turning white. He looked up as the three men passed by, but neither party gave greetings. As soon as they had walked by, the old men put his head down to stare at his filthy bare feet.
The street beyond the old dormitory was quiet in the steady light of the morning. Many of the shops featured windows covered in plywood and doors that were locked fast against customers. Here and there a few shops remained open – a rudimentary grocery here, a storefront clinic there – but for the most part the street was battened down against a storm that seemed unlikely under the sun’s gentle caress. Between the stores – open and shuttered alike – painted shadow people frolicked, caught in the act of living in an age long since past. Shadow people shopped in shadow clothing boutiques; shadow people lined up at the bank for ATM lessons; shadow people lined up to a cinema to watch “A River Runs Through It”. These shadow people never aged, although the buildings around them did. The collapsed roof of the top story over a closed tattoo parlour bore mute evidence of this, and the three men stepped carefully out into the street to avoid the spray of detritus that had resulted from the collapse.
“City should clean that up,” Doug noted, but Steve shrugged his shoulders.
“No point now, although…besides, wasn’t Alex Morganson the city’s last real worker?”
“Old Alex?” Doug mused. “Yep, he was at that. Nearly ran me over last winter when he was plowing the Lorne Bridge. Asked him if he still felt it necessary to do it, said he wasn’t going to let anything get in the way of keeping the way clear.”
“Well, Old Alex died three weeks ago. Mrs. Tomlinson found him curled up dead near the bus station. Looked like he’d lain down to take a bit of a nap and then never woke up.”
“Holy Jesus.”
“Ahwee,” Fauntleroy agreed. Steve spat.
“Something like that. Anyway, I suspect you’ll see more garbage like that start to pile up. Weeds’ll start taking over, I don’t doubt it.”
“We’re coming up to the end soon, I guess,” Doug said sadly.
“Something like that,” Steve agreed, after a moment’s silence.
At the end of Colborne, near to where the Lorne Bridge crossed over the Grand River, there was a tiny little diner wedged in between a rundown deli and an abandoned music venue. The wood above the door was bleached, as though a sign had once been there. A sign in the window, faded near to illegibility, advertised a breakfast special for 99 cents. Steve pushed the door open and led them inside.
“Have a seat at the counter,” he said, gesturing lazily to the grimy counter at the back of the diner. “I just have to check in on a few things.”
Doug and Fauntleroy took a seat while Steve disappeared into the kitchen. When he re-emerged ten minutes later there was a scowl affixed to his face.
“Thought I’d left some clothes in the pantry, looks like I was wrong.” He shook his arms, and the sodden cloth squelched quietly. “I have some good eggs left, though, so if you fellows want some omelettes or what have you, I can whip it up in short order.”
“Ahwee!” Fauntleroy said, his excitement palatable. Doug drummed his fingers on the countertop.
“Do you have any bacon?” Doug asked.
“A small amount,” Steve replied. “Won’t be getting much more, not for a while anyway. The guy running the deli next door had a falling out with the pig farmer just outside of town and so I won’t be getting anymore bacon unless I deal with him directly. I’ll throw it in for you though. What do you want in it? The omelette, I mean. Tomatoes? Peppers?”
“That sounds great.”
Steve went back into the kitchen and within minutes the little diner was filled with the sound of crackling and the smell of frying egg and pig.
“Old Alex is dead,” Doug mused to Fauntleroy as the cooking went on. “Wonder if the city will hire anyone else to take his place, or if they’ll just let the place grow wild. Hard to say which way would be best. I guess it seems like an awful lot of work to maintain everything when less and less people live here every year. Still, I wouldn’t want to live here while the weeds take over. It would be too eerie, like living in a graveyard. I’d think that it would do strange things to the people left here, too. Let the city go wild, and the people might go wild right along with it.”
“Ahwee,” Fauntleroy replied, although his tone was doubtful.
“Well, maybe not,” Doug conceded. “Hard to think of the oldsters around here getting up tJoso much beyond some heated words. Probably keel over if they tried to go wild.”
Steve came out of the kitchen with a pair of steaming plates. The omelettes were topped with diced tomatoes and a cheese that resembled cheddar and the bacon smell filled the diner like a fog. Steve had thrown together some homefries and garnished the plates with parsley on the edges. Doug let out a satisfied chuckle when the plate was placed in front of him.
“I haven’t had a meal like this in ten years,” he exclaimed.
“I’ve been open the whole time,” Steve said. “I’ve had this location even before the cut-off.”
“Well, Fauntleroy and I, we’ve never had much money. We were day labourers, before, slept in shelters or rooming houses when we could. Most places wouldn’t give us the time of day, I guess you get used to it after a while. Even now, when everything’s just trade n’ barter, it’s hard to get out of that mindset.”
“Where are you sleeping now?” Steve asked, turning his back to rummage through the dusty liquor display located next to the cash register.
“Why, we’ve got the biggest house on Oak Avenue, up on the north end,” he proclaimed proudly. “Moved in fifteen years back, after the owners died off, got squatter’s rights now. Not that it means much, of course.”
“Of course.” Steve slammed a bottle of rye whiskey onto the counter and began fishing underneath for something. He came up with trio of shallow glasses.
“Fellows care for a drink?” he asked. Fauntleroy shook his head and returned to eating his omelette. Doug considered it and then shook his head.
“Bit early for me, even with everything considered.”
Steve shrugged his shoulders and poured himself a large amount of rye. He raised it to his lips and paused.
“To your continued good health, gentlemen,” he toasted, and then drained the liquid in one swallow. Doug put his fork down and watched Steve carefully for some time before speaking.
“Hair of the dog and all that?” he asked, his tone kept meticulously casual. Steve laughed and there was a shrillness in it that clanged off of the walls at odd angles and rattled uncomfortably in the other’s ears.
“That’s the first finger,” he replied, “the others are for when I get home. You fellows are coming home with me, okay? I’ll make it worth your while.” He uttered another laugh that skirted the edge of lunacy. “Although you may not think so.”
“Ahwee?” Fauntleroy said. Doug shook his head.
“Maybe we should move along,” he said doubtfully. Steve waved his hand dismissively at this.
“No, no, you should definitely come along. I’ll introduce you to my wife, show you my house, my garden, and the source of all my recent misery. It’ll be interesting, at least.”
“Well…”
“Please, fellows, please. You saved my life, much good it will do me. The least I can do is invite you to my home, cook you a proper dinner that isn’t served in a dying old diner.”
Doug looked to Fauntleroy, who nodded. He turned his attention back to Steve.
“Alright, we’ll come with you. Fauntleroy here can’t pass up a home-cooked meal.”
“Excellent, gentlemen, truly excellent,” Steve said, and poured himself another knock of rye. “Eat up, it’s a bit of a walk.”
It was a half-hour’s walk to Steve’s home, through an area of old houses that had belonged to professors while the university had still been operating. They were stately, multi-storey manors, many of them dating back to the 19th Century, and they were by and large abandoned. Jagged glass holes looked out onto the street where the windows had not been covered over with plywood, and roofs sagged with age and repeated winters. Most of the lawns were riotous with lush overgrowth, and where the lawns were better kept there were other signs of life: curtains that were not decayed, religious imagery hanging from porches, white-haired oldsters sunning themselves on the front steps. They did not stop to speak to any of these, and the oldsters did not hail them as they passed.
Their path took them past the old high school, Brantford Collegiate Institute. A thick steel-link fence had been erected along its perimeter decades ago, and it was laced along its entire length with dried and blackened flowers. When the breeze ran through it, it rustled and sighed with a voice that spoke of lost ages. They remained silent as they passed, and held their breath as though they were walking past a cemetery. A block later they took a left onto a quiet, shady street where only one house was maintained, a small and tranquil blue bungalow in a jungle of thick weeds, collapsing houses, and warring maple trees.
“My cabin in the woods,” Steve said, and his words slurred together. He stumbled a little as he led them up the manicured walkway and up the weathered steps of the bungalow’s front porch. He threw the door open carelessly and strode into the dim, cool interior of the house.
“Make yourselves at home,” he said. “Living room’s to the left, kitchen’s up ahead, bathroom’s just off of the kitchen. I’m going to go check on my wife upstairs.”
Doug and Fauntleroy settled into the living room, picking out spots on a large overstuffed navy couch. The stairs creaked with Steve’s footfalls but once he was upstairs no further sound issued from him. The living room was quiet and Fauntleroy dozed off after a few minutes. His snores filled the room, long, drawn-out jags of air through clogged passageways, and Doug considered pushing him over to break the noise. As he reached out to do so he heard the heavy creak of footsteps on the stairs again, and he decided to poke Fauntleroy awake instead. The lanky blonde man flew awake in a startled thrash, uttering a sharp “ahwee!” as he did so. Doug nodded significantly toward the entrance to the living room and Fauntleroy blearily got the point after a few minutes of confusion.
Steve entered the room, wearing a dry shirt and a stained old pair of jeans. At his side was a clear-skinned brunette woman in a white terrycloth bath robe. The woman had a beatific smile on her face and mouthed “hello” to them as Doug and Fauntleroy as they took her in. Doug thought that, once upon a time, he might have discounted her as somewhat plain; her eyes were set a trifle wide, and her lips came off a bit too thin and pale for the complexion of her face. They way she carried herself, however, combined with the radiance of her expression and the sheer relative youth that she projected, were enough to make her the most beautiful woman he’d seen in some time. He turned his face to check Fauntleroy’s reaction and saw with some amusement that the man’s long jaw had come unhinged.
“Gentlemen,” Steve said with a weary air, “this is Brooklyn. Brooklyn, this is Douglas Fairchild and, er, Fauntleroy. They pulled me out of the river this morning.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Brooklyn said. Her voice was smooth, the kind of voice that seemed to slide off an oiled tongue and wind its way sinuously into the listener’s ear. She extended her hand and Doug took it after a moment’s startled hesitation. Her grip was firm and confident. She did the same with Fauntleroy, who uttered a shy, barely audible “ahwee” as he limply shook her hand.
Steve cleared his throat.
“I brought them here to show them, Brooklyn,” he said. “And then a little later, when we’ve all recovered, I’m going to cook dinner. But first…”
“Of course,” Brooklyn said, her voice growing breathless with excitement. She put her hands to the trim of her robe, pulled it apart, and dropped it into a puddle at her feet.
It had been some time since Doug had seen a nude woman, but there was nothing sexual about his staring at Brooklyn. Between her swelling breasts and her pubic mound rose a belly that was quick with child. He was unsure as to how long he spent staring at that belly, his blank mind refusing to throw up anything resembling rational thought.
“Holy Jesus Mary and Joseph,” he said finally, unable to come up with anything else.
“Ahwee,” Fauntleroy agreed, his thin voice shaking.
“Now do you see?” Steve asked miserably. “Now do you understand a little better?”
Brooklyn said nothing, but continued to beam like the sun in a cloudless sky.
They spent the afternoon saying little, basking in the sunlight as the noise of the overgrowth buzzed around them. Steve dredged up a bottle of wine and split it between the three of them; Brooklyn did not have any and the reason why hung unspoken amongst them like some sweet scent hovering in the thick humid air. As the sun began it’s final arc towards the horizon Steve got up and stumbled into the house; the sounds of clanging and frying soon issued from inside. Brooklyn chatted lightly with Doug and Fauntleroy, talking about the garden, about the oldsters that lived in the neighbourhood, about the strange stories Steve brought home from the diner. After a time Doug asked her diffidently about her age, to which she responded that she was 31. Doug pointed out that this made her one of the last children to be born and Brooklyn smiled widely and said that God seeded the world with little jokes for those who paid attention.
The first touches of dusk had touched the sky when Steve emerged from the kitchen, marginally more sober and pushing a cart loaded with grilled hamburgers, fresh cut french fries, and a cucumber salad whose dressing was based in lemon and sour cream. They ate contentedly, drank more of the wine, and watched the sun dip below the wild horizon. By the time the light vanished from the world the men were quite drunk, and Brooklyn said her goodnights to them. After the patio door closed behind her there was silence, and then Steve began to weep.
Doug leaned forward in his chair and watched the man closely. Steve buried his face in his hands and sobbed, the sound echoing quietly in the clearing of the backyard.
“What’s the deal here?” Doug asked finally. “You’re wife is pregnant with the first child anyone’s seen in three decades. You’re both miracles and…”
“ENOUGH!” Steve screamed, his face flying up from his hands. His expression was drawn in rage and Doug pushed backwards so hard that he tipped his chair over and went sprawling onto his back. Fauntleroy jumped out of his own chair and went stumbling across the lawn, his lanky blonde hair flying around in shock. Steve stalked across the grass and stood over Doug, who was scrambling to push himself up.
“That’s what she keeps saying,” he said bitterly. “That we’re miracles, that this is a gift from God, that we’ve been chosen to be God’s new Adam and Eve. Well, what fucking choice did Adam and Eve have? Did anyone walk up to them and say “listen folks, I know you’re still new to this whole situation but we’re going to really change things for you. First we’re going to kick you out of Eden and make you wander in a wasteland of pain and misery. Then we’re going to put a child in you and make it so that you have to go through a time of extreme pain just to get it out of you. When the child arrives, no one will be around to tell you how to feed it, or care for it, or raise it properly. If your instincts are good, the child lives. If your instincts are poor, the child dies, and the human race dies along with it.”
Doug picked himself up off of the ground and dusted himself off.
“Is that what you’re so frightened of?” he asked, his voice rising sharply. “That you’ll have no idea what you’re doing? The oldsters lived when children were being born. They can tell you how things were. There are also books, all sorts of them. If you can find a viable connection these days, there’s the internet.”
Steve screwed up his face as though he were about to shout some more, and then hung his head instead. He stared at his shoes for a time before responding.
“No, I know. Learning how to rear the child isn’t really the problem. I mean, it worries me, but…here’s the thing. I was never a church-goer in the days when the churches were still a big thing, but I know the stories and I hear more from the wife. They all talked about Jesus, and how he was the most important child to have ever been born. No one ever talks about Joseph. He gets cuckolded by God and then asked to raise the divine son. No one ever asks him how it feels to be given the responsibility for the Messiah. How does it feel, Doug? How does it feel to be Joseph the Nazarene? To raise the most important child of the rest of history? The Bible never quotes him and his presence is didactic at best. Is that my fate? To be a footnote in the new history of the world? To be an archetype in an educational lesson about the new way of things?”
“I don’t really know, Steve.”
“Of course not, none of us do. Do you understand, even in just a tiny way, how terrifying that is though? I mean, forget that there aren’t many people here now that can tell us about how to raise a child – who can tell us how to raise THE child? The one that gets the human race fired up again?””
“I think I do.”
“I don’t think you do, Doug. It’s nice of you to try to commiserate with me, though. Would you like some more wine?”
“No thanks.”
“No, you’re right,” Steve said, his voice heavy. “It’s getting late and you two have a long road back home.”
“Ahwee,” Fauntleroy agreed.
They went through the house and Steve showed them out through the front door. The moon had appeared above the treeline of the jungle-yards surrounding the house, and Steve was able to watch them all the way down the road until they turned and disappeared from view. He remained on the porch for ten minutes afterwards, staring up at the moon in silence, his eyes dry and his face composed. When he walked back into the house he shut the door and left it unlocked.
His feet creaked the stairs with a drawn-out slowness and the sound hung on the humid night air. At the top of the stairs the light had faded away to nearly nothing, but he knew the path by easy memory. Second door on the right was the entrance to the bedroom he shared with his wife, and he paused there with his hand on the door. The coolness of the wood surface transferred to his hand, and spread a new feeling of calm into him, spreading outward from his hand through the endless branching of his nervous system.
When he pushed the door open he saw Brooklyn standing by the window, her skin seemingly glowing in the moonlight. She didn’t turn around as he entered the room, and when he slipped behind her and put his arms around her to cradle her levitating belly she started slightly. He lowered his head and rested it on the back of her shoulder.
“How does it feel to be Mary?” he murmured into her warm skin.
“I don’t know,” she said evenly. “I don’t think I’ll ever really know.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever really know how you can be so calm.”
“Henceforth all generations will call me blessed,” she said, and there was a sharp stitch in her voice that sounded to Steve like a terrible form of joy.
But wait! We don’t have to stop here! Click on the image above or those below to check out other unsettling glimpses into horror.
