Cookie Mueller’s “The Truth About the End of the World”

AMONG THE EIGHT beforehand uncollected works in Semiotext(e)’s reissue of Cookie Mueller’s starry Strolling By Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black is “The Fact Concerning the Finish of the World,” a mordant doomsday dispatch from the stygian Eighties, someplace on New York Metropolis’s Decrease East Aspect. Right here it seems the actual disaster is that there isn’t one—no flash, no flare, simply disappointment and the inevitable comedown.

Till just lately, it had been a very long time since I thought of nuclear conflict. Now it’s everywhere in the information once more, reigniting that swiftly tilting feeling that our world’s destruction may happen straight away as a substitute of being dragged out over years or a long time. No plagues, no escalating local weather disasters, just a few man and a button. And I sympathize with Joanna, Mueller’s protagonist, excessive and earnestly inspecting her maps, hoping to simply put a pin in it someplace, to get it proper; hoping that in so doing she will take her life’s final seconds again into her personal drained fingers.

Mueller was an acronical muse, beatified by these greats with particular evening imaginative and prescient: Nan Goldin, Gary Indiana, John Waters. However her items radiated past her picture, and the essays and tales in Strolling, out this month, effuse Mueller’s hard-boiled allure, her eerie means of transmuting the apocalypses of the second into timeless fable.

—David Velasco

LATE ONE NIGHT after Joanna put her two youngsters to mattress, she sat down on the kitchen desk with a bottle of Rémy Martin, the Bible, an ephemeris, an atlas, a calculator, and 7 grams of cocaine. By eleven within the morning, after limitless exhaustive calculations, deciphering, deducing, and studying, she got here to the conclusion that by the date September 2 of that 12 months, solely two days away, the world would come to an finish. Only a few individuals would survive. Civilization could be destroyed. Many of the planet could be beneath rubble or water. There have been just some locations to go to flee the inevitable finish.

It was all there within the ephemeris, the ebook of the chartings of the moon and planets. It was additionally there within the Bible in Revelations after which, too, calculators don’t lie. In her atlas, she had circled factors on the map of the Earth the place it will be secure to go when the cataclysm started. She had used the longitudinal and latitudinal numbers appropriately, she knew. She then drew traces intersecting every level of security on the map, and these traces fashioned symbols and pictures that additional proved that her discovery was appropriate.

It wasn’t the occult. It was actual, there it was in black-and-white. Scientists and physicists engaged on issues like these would have achieved no higher, she prided herself.

There was little doubt in any respect. Fact was reality. There was no escaping it. She had missed nothing in her huge analysis.

She must act rapidly, she hadn’t a lot time. Her two roommates, who have been simply waking up, needed to be warned, and her kids who have been watching Saturday-morning cartoons must undergo a strict coaching interval to metal themselves for the trials forward. She would name the information companies, the papers, and the radio stations and TV. She would naturally present all of the conclusive proof.

She sensed that different individuals had been feeling it too. It was within the air, the sensation of impending doom. Everybody was sensing it, she had realized. Even her canine and cat, the psychic barometers, had been experiencing uneasiness for the previous week or so. Animals are extra psychically conscious, she had learn a few years in the past. They at all times find out about an impending catastrophe earlier than it occurs. Take a look at the best way they act earlier than a storm, when birds fly decrease and cows in pastures lie down. She knew it needed to do with the air stress. It was denser. Nicely, the identical sort of vibration stress had been weighing on her thoughts. She had had an image in her thoughts daily for the previous week. It got here into her head daily till she couldn’t stand it anymore, and that was when she sat down on the kitchen desk and figured all of it out . . .

One of many roommates got here into the kitchen. “You look just a little worn out, Joanna.”

“What do you imply, Alex?” she requested, fairly on pins.

“Nicely . . . form of wild eyed. Have you ever been up all evening snorting that stuff once more?” He pointed to the folded snow seal that now contained 5 and a half grams of cocaine.

“I couldn’t sleep . . . but it surely’s not the cocaine. I’m in shock, Alex.”

“What’s it, Joanna?” Alex requested, involved.

“I’ve simply figured one thing out.” Joanna’s voice shook.

Alex felt the load of the sentence, was floored by the depth of her eyes, so he was speechless. Joanna stared at him, her eyes burning into his Foster Grant light-sensitive glasses. When he regained his composure, he stated, “What’s it? What’s occurred?”

“That is going to be a shock, Alex. You higher put together your self. You higher sit down and have a drink.”

He poured himself a tall one. Truly, Alex by no means wanted any encouragement when it got here to consuming.

Joanna at first questioned if Alex would consider her, however she dismissed this thought as quickly because it had fired throughout her brainpan. In fact he would consider.

She sensed that different individuals had been feeling it too. It was within the air, the sensation of impending doom.

She questioned if he would comprehend the complexities intellectually. Or would he be shocked by the enormity of the disaster? He had at all times been a delicate type and really optimistic about humankind. However then she remembered that he was an astrology buff and she or he relaxed a bit. Sure, he would perceive the ephemeris, on the very least.

So she instructed him slowly, evading the actual level, establishing the determine first. Intermittently, he swallowed his brandy and took snorts of cocaine. By the point she had gotten to the purpose, Alex had achieved a half gram. He picked up the ephemeris and pored over it. He inspected the map, checked the Bible, and used the calculator. Then he sadly shook his head.

“Sure, Joanna. It’s true. I can’t consider it . . . but it surely’s true.” He was pale and the pupils of his eyes have been very giant, the best way pupils look when somebody takes an excessive amount of LSD.

They talked for an additional hour or two, did some extra of the cocaine.

Calculations and info saved falling into place, lining up completely, becoming like keys into specifically made locks.

Joanna’s youngsters got here into the kitchen.

“The place’s dinner, Mother?” the fattest one requested.

“No dinner tonight. Peanut butter and jelly are within the fridge,” she stated, considering that in a couple of days well being wouldn’t matter. We’re all going to slip, slide, slide. At a time like this, how may she make hamburgers and broccoli?

Alex and Joanna studied the world map, making an attempt to decide on a spot the place they need to go to be secure. They regarded on the locations circled: the Azores (the place Atlantis will need to have been), the positioning of the good pyramid in Egypt, Stonehenge, Peru on the Nazar land scrawlings, the Tower of Babel website, St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, the Bermuda Triangle, Easter Island, and Newark, New Jersey.

“Why Newark, New Jersey?” Alex requested.

“I don’t actually know, however I’m certain my calculator isn’t unsuitable. Newark may need some sort of odd power we don’t find out about.” Joanna was certain there should be some messiah rising up in Newark. There should be some rationalization. Newark? In some way it simply wasn’t something like all these different locations.

“Nicely, then we’ve to go there as quickly as attainable,” Alex stated with willpower.

“At the moment.” Joanna was relieved that it was solely about an hour’s drive away.

The opposite roommate got here into the kitchen at this level and checked out each of them. Her identify was Laura.

“What are you two guys doing in right here for therefore lengthy? Boy, you each appear to be you’ve seen a ghost or one thing.” She poured herself a glass of orange juice. Joanna questioned how Laura may even consider consuming orange juice at a time like this.

“We’re going to Newark, New Jersey, proper this minute. We’ll clarify on the best way. Get within the automobile, Laura, and don’t ask questions,” Alex stated and obtained as much as get his automobile keys.

“Don’t overlook to convey the cocaine,” he stated to Joanna.

“What’s all this about?” Laura requested.

“I’ll get the children prepared,” Joanna stated and obtained up.

All of them went to Newark and checked right into a room on the Ramada Inn. There they waited it out. Laura left and went again to New York when she came upon what was occurring.

“You’re each loopy. It’s the cocaine. Don’t you see that?” She laughed and instructed them she would see them again on the Decrease East Aspect when the cocaine ran out.

A couple of minutes after midnight on September 3, Alex, Joanna, the 2 youngsters, the canine, and the cats obtained into the automobile and headed again to New York. All of the cocaine had been gone for seven hours and the world regarded to them prefer it was going to go on for an additional few million years. Trying on the lights of Newark, New Jersey, by way of world-weary eyes, Alex and Joanna have been extremely depressed.

—Cookie Mueller