ASLCS: Part One

Since I'm too lazy to think that I will ever find myself published or recognized as a World Class Writer, and because I like putting at least something out there for people to be interested in, here is the first part of a fourteen-part piece called A Story Like Cassandra's Story:



One, as they say, is the loneliest number. But if you think about it, two is unstable, three is completely boring, four is deceitful. For example, in every detective story, there are four characters: the detective, the one who dies, the one you think did it, and the one who actually did. So I don't trust four, and after that it just gets crowded. So maybe one is the sanest number. Maybe I'm just trying to justify myself.

The screen of the computer is the only lit thing, and as I shut it down darkness grabs the air around me, and I fumble my way over to the bed. I do not go to sleep.

This is not a ghost story, if you're wondering. Nor is it about vampires or time-travel. If it was to be published, though, and you were going to find it at Barnes & Noble, it would be smack dab in the middle of the Science Fiction/Fantasy section; because my name is Beverly Nautilus, which puts me about the center of the alphabet, and because this book /diary/memoir us about how the world will end, and how I knew it first.

It started about a week ago. I dreamed about Dante. He was wearing the same stupid looking laurel wreath from all the portraits of him, except that he also had a full beard, but I knew that it was him. He was sitting under a tree in the backyard of the house where I lived in the sixth grade.

"Hello." He said, in a very Italian accent.

"Hi." I was wearing a plain t-shirt with jeans and my hair was black instead of brown. I was barefoot, and the grass felt like wet velvet under my toes.

"Whatcha up to?" I asked, after Dante had been silent for a few hours. Someone was singing, far away.

"Just enjoying myself. It is a lovely day. Did you know that the world is going to end soon?"

"Oh." I said. "What?"

"Yes. Well. That's the way it's going to go. Soon."

"How soon?"

"A few days. Probably a week. You can figure it out."

I sat down next to him and started eating an apple. "How will I figure it out?"

"You'll read the signs, of course. They aren't hard to spot, and you'll know what to look for."

I figured that asking about that was pointless. A few Greek statues had sprung up out of the lawn. It got dusky.

"Should I tell anyone?" I asked, picturing myself as some prophet on the mount, the seer of the end times.

"No." Said Dante.

"Why not?"

"They won't believe you."

"Of course they would. I mean, I believe you–"

"This is your dream, Beverly."

"Ah," I said, "good point."

So I sat and watched my old house turn into a temple and then crumble, as my family and friends marched by in a masquerade (this, I think, was because of a movie I'd watched that day). Dante scratched his beard.

"Are you sure you don't know what'll happen?"

"Positive."

"Does it have to do with–you know–the man upstairs?"

"Who is that?" He looked at me with eyes like David Bowie's.

"God."

"Oh! Well. I don't know. I don't know who is doing it."

"Is there going to be a rapture? I mean, is this just a way for my subconscious to tell me to go to church?"

"I don't know. I don't think so, at least, as your Dream Guide, I don't really feel like giving you an allegory for taking communion. And I don't think there will be a Rapture." He paused and shrugged. "But don't quote me on that. But I doubt it, anyway."

"I would think that Dante would know more about this than most people, though."

He laughed nervously, like a student who had gotten caught cheating. "Er, Beverly?"

"Yeah?"

"You know all that stuff I say about visiting Heaven and Hell?"

"Yup."

"Well–the truth is, I've never really seen the Almighty. Or any of them. All those stories–I made them up." He looked at the ground, ashamed, and buried his face in his hands.

I patted him on the back. "It's all right, Dante." I said, and as I tried to think of something consoling to say, I woke up.