Amor Fabula Ep. 07

People were acting up in a bad way. They blamed the unusual Aurora Borealis phenomena seen around the world for it. At least that's what they blamed at first. When the official story didn't wash with the public, they changed it and said the world was going through some fucking Oort cloud from space, or that we were getting too many X-rays or Gamma rays from the sun. You know Gamma rays, right? That's the shit that made mild-mannered Bruce Banner turn into the Incredible Hulk.

It didn't matter what they blamed, Elias thought. He was in his mid-twenties, doing stupid odd jobs for people too old or too lazy to work around their own houses. There were times when he didn't even get paid for his hard labor; he did jobs for future favors, or for home-cooked meals. That's how it had all started for him.

One day, Elias was sweating his ass off thanks to a really intense sunshine that the news people said was completely normal. That was something. The sun made his flesh itch and turn deep red after he'd been doing yard work for only a couple of hours. It didn't matter what anybody said. That shit was not normal. The sun was not supposed to cook a person like a microwave.

A guy had walked up to Elias from the sidewalk, while he'd been tearing weeds out by the handful, from some old woman's dilapidated front yard.

"You've got a good tan going." The man said.

Elias figured him for one of those Jehovah's Witnesses that went around handing out little Watchtower magazines. "Yeah, I'm busting my ass here trying to get back inside. Can I help you with something?"

"No, I'm just passing by, trying to walk to the store instead of taking the car all the time." The guy shrugged. "Hey, let me tell you something. It's hot as Hades today. I want you to remember that. Tomorrow, you're going to see a lot of planes flying around that won't be taking the regular flight path to the airport. You keep an eye on those planes, will you, buddy? You'll see them flying up at forty, forty-five degree angles, like the space shuttle taking off. All those planes, they're going to be leaving trails that crisscross all over the sky. Those trails are completely natural. The clouds they leave behind, those are completely natural too. But there is one thing you can count on. When you see those planes in the sky, it will be a hell of a lot cooler tomorrow than it is today." The strange guy waved and kept on walking. "Two days on, one day off. That's their schedule."

Elias hurried up with his weed pulling, ignoring what the man told him and soon after putting it out of his head. The thing is, Elias had a lot of time on his hands thanks to not having steady employment. He spent much of that time watching violent cop shows and more violent action movies. If he had enough cash, he might grab a six-pack from the liquor store. As far as having a girlfriend, forget it. He couldn't afford one. The last chick he'd dated, Lucy from up the street; she'd dumped his broke ass for some other guy five months before. Elias lived with his mother, because he couldn't afford to live anywhere else right then.

A few days later, he was pulling out old carpet for a neighbor that wanted to rent out a guest room. The neighbor was hinting that maybe Elias could move in once the room was ready, but he knew that was bullshit. The old fart was just saying that so Elias would do a better job in cleaning it up. The carpet was so filthy it raised up a cloud of dust that took ten full minutes to settle down. When Elias started sneezing, he went outside for fresh air.

It wasn't as hot as usual, he discovered, and in the sky, he saw a plane climbing up higher and higher while leaving a gray trail behind it. That's when Elias realized it wasn't as hot as it had been just a couple of days earlier. He walked to the front of the house, and then looked up from the sidewalk. Those trails were everywhere, some recent and skinny, others stale and puffed out. The entire sky was covered in gray haze.

Elias remembered what that guy had said: two days on, one day off. From that point forward, and since he didn't have much else to do, he would go outside for a look, or if he couldn't do that, he'd glance out the window. It was true. The planes sprayed their shit in the sky, then the sky would fill up with clouds and it wouldn't be as hot anymore.

Because he didn't have anyone else to talk to, Elias told his mother about it, and about the research he'd done on his computer. He explained that people were taking specimens of the chemicals the planes were leaving behind. Those chemicals were toxic to humans, yet the sky was full of them and nobody on the news was talking about it. His mother made a face at him and told him not to worry about the sky, but to worry about the light bill and the water bill instead. After that, Elias kept his growing suspicions to himself.

Not long after that, people started getting crazy. Road rage was becoming common, where a car would follow another car for miles after being cut off in traffic, resulting in ugly and sometimes fatal confrontations. Angry drivers were constantly in the news after they jumped sidewalks and smashed into crowds at malls or bus stops. Cops were shooting so many people that the public started shooting them back. That's when the news started pointing at things in space as being the causes, and they had their scientific data to back them up, but Elias wasn't buying their bullshit anymore.

"Mom, the planes were spraying all day again." He said, one night at the kitchen table as he ate a turkey sandwich.

"I saw that." She nodded. "The news said they were contrails."

"They're not contrails."

"Do you have a degree in science now?" She blasted him. "Are you telling me that you know more than the people on the news, when you're sleeping in the same room you slept in when you were a little boy? Why can't you be more like your brother? He has his wife and his three kids, and his house on the hill..."

"Jay can barely pay the mortgage, mom. He's going to lose that house one of these days."

"That's what you want to happen, isn't it?" His mother huffed and left the table, taking her food with her. "You've always been jealous of Jay!"

Elias kept eating because he was hungry and he hadn't eaten since breakfast. His sandwich no longer had any flavor to it, and neither did the little bag of chips he'd been picking at.

His mother's name was Anne. She just over fifty, but she wasn't a bad looking woman. Her face was attractive, and her figure lean and athletic. His mother dyed her hair to keep it dark brown. If Anne dressed up, she could still hold a younger man's attention. The problem with her had always been her attitude. She was a demanding woman who'd sucked the happiness and wealth away from two husbands already, and since she didn't have a third husband or a boyfriend handy, Anne was now taking her frustrations out on him. Elias tried to be a good son to her, but in his mother's eyes he would always come second best to his older brother Jay. Elias had been a failure ever since he'd been born.

Something happened to the atmosphere, causing things to become even worse among the people. The news deliberately misinformed the public, starting up with their parade of lies and pointing their fingers on the sun, space clouds, meteor dust, and anything else they could fabricate. Later they started calling it a mysterious outbreak.

Elias was wise to their tricks. Those planes had been spraying aluminum into the sky for decades by then, in microscopic particulates that floated into human nostrils and lungs. The thing about aluminum is that the human body didn't cycle that out like it did with other pollutants. No, aluminum went into the brain and stayed there. If Elias had to guess, he would have said that somebody in charge was using radio frequencies to make the aluminum and whatever else was in those chemical aerosols react and affect the way people thought. That, in his non-science degree opinion, was making people insane.

The people went savage. It wasn't enough for them to kill each other with cars, guns or other weapons. Now they were using their bare hands to rip each other to shreds. It was happening all over the place: in big cities, out in the country, in the forests, out on the mountains, everywhere. The politicians were attacking reporters who asked too many questions. The military was dropping bombs on friendly countries. The cops were getting so paranoid they opened fire on each other.

People were getting what they deserved, Elias thought. For over twenty years those planes had been dumping toxic garbage on their heads, and instead of doing their own investigations, all those people vehemently hurled insults and hatred on the dedicated and persecuted few who were doing the actual research. Now that things were falling apart, it was too late. Elias no longer cared one way or the other about the state of the world.

"What are you going to do, Elias?" His neighbor asked. "Where are you going to go?"

He shrugged. "I'm going to have a beer and watch the world burn from my front window."

Elias thought he'd gotten along with that old man, but he was wrong. His neighbor made a disgusted face at him and trudged over to his car. The old man drove down the street and around the corner. That's when shots rang out. Maybe someone had taken his neighbor out or not, but Elias was not about to walk outside and become the next victim.

His mother had been over at a friend's house across the street. She came storming in, screaming about how the cable was out, and how the phones weren't working anymore.

"Elias, I can't reach your brother!" She shouted at him, growing more frantic when he didn't get as worked up as she was. "Maybe something happened to him! We have to go see him!"

His mother had always denied the trails in the sky, so it was easy for Elias to ignore her.

In a rage, Anne shoved past his chair and went to snatch up her car keys. "I'm going out to see if Jay is all right!"

That was an implied command for Elias to drive, or at least for him to get in the car with her. "I'm staying here. I'm not getting shot for driving out this late. You can go if you want to."

His mother shoved at his chair on her way out, going out of her way to offend him, but Elias didn't bite. Anne made it as far as the driveway. As she was opening up her car door, shots were heard up the street, followed by angry shouts and the screams of hurt people. That was enough to compel Anne back inside.

She tried the phone again. When she discovered there was no signal, she threw it at Elias and broke it. That was enough for him to leave the living room and head into his room, with his beer still in his hand.

That night, the neighborhood sounded like a war zone.

It wasn't difficult for Elias to see his mother as a natural enemy. That's what she'd been to him, ever since he was little. If he said north, she'd say south. If he said black, she'd say white. Many times, he wondered if she did things like that simply to spite him, to force Elias to become more like his older brother.

"Are you coming with me or not?" She screeched at him, the moment he stepped out of his bedroom.

It was still early. If he refused, his mother would be pestering him all day. That was the reason he got into the car with her. Anne didn't want him to ride along because she loved him, of that much he was certain. No, she wanted him along as a handyman who might be able to fix a toilet or barricade a door.

Anne drove down the block and rounded the corner. They passed their neighbor's car, which had bullet holes in the front window. Half a block later, they drove by the neighbor, who'd been dragged by the feet for some reason Elias couldn't understand.

His mother reacted by screaming. When Elias didn't scream along with her, she started screaming at him.

They were lucky. Nobody shot off rounds at them, except for one young punk who shot into the air as the car drove past him. Once they managed to get through the city, the road went from straight to curved, and there were fewer houses around. That's where Jay lived, out in the hills, in an expensive house with a big parcel of land around it, far from common peasants like Elias.

When Anne pulled into the long driveway, the curtains in the front window slid open. Once Jay's children recognized them, they ran outside to greet their grandmother. Jay had three kids: Alex was 17, Ana, named after her grandmother, was 15, and little Becky was 10. The girls were Jay's, while the oldest was inherited from his wife's previous marriage. The kids tried to welcome Uncle Elias, but Elias' grudge against his older brother was so great he refused to acknowledge Jay's kids.

"Where is Jay, and where is Mary?" Anne asked, taking a girl under each arm.

It was Alex who tried to answer. "Dad went out for food and water. He called to tell mom that someone had rammed into his car. Mom went looking for him. Then the phones went out. They've been gone since late last night."

"Well, I'm sure they'll be here any minute." Anne reassured the kids. "Let's get inside and get ourselves organized."

That's the kind of woman Anne was: strong, independent and courageous. She went directly to the pantry and took stock of what she found there. After this, she took Jay's rifle out of his bedroom and loaded it. The kids saw her as some kind of superhero. All Grandma Anne needed was a red cape.

Elias was angry at having been taken out of his home. He didn't want to be in his brother's house, where he had to look at Jay's expensive things all day and be reminded of everything he couldn't afford. Elias would have been happier sitting in front of the picture window back at his mother's house, watching the carnage unfold before his eyes like it did in the cop shows. If someone shot him, he could already envision the death portrait the picture window would frame him in.

Jay's kids were sheltered and naive, even the oldest. Alex trusted Anne when she said his parents would be home soon, and so did the girls. Elias felt they were too pampered; the kind that wouldn't take out the garbage unless they'd been asked a dozen times, or that left lights on or water running. He hated those kids because they were little clones of his brother.

"Elias is just a little under the weather." His mother passed off her son's contempt. "He didn't sleep very well last night because of everything that was going on."

"What's happening, grandma?" Alex asked. "Is it like that civil war we always hear about on the news?"

"Nobody knows what's happening." Anne lied. "Maybe the news will come on later and tell us. Why don't we play a board game while we wait for mommy and daddy to get home?"

Elias went to the fridge. He found three wine coolers and no real beer. This almost enraged him enough to start walking back home, except he was sure his mother would make a scene in front of the kids. He hated looking at Jay's children, but he hated being embarrassed in front of them even worse.

"Elias, you need to go around the house and nail all the windows shut." Anne ordered.

He did it, mostly because he was bored.

"Elias, can you take an inventory of the tools in the garage?" She asked later. "Can you do it without opening the garage door so no one driving by will see you?"

He did that too, to get away from his mother.

"Elias, can we fill up some buckets with water, in case we get cut off?"

"Elias, can you look for some candles?"

"Elias, if you find any batteries, I want you to put them here, and if you find any matches or lighters, I want you to give them to me."

"Elias... Elias... Elias..."

At first, he nodded and obeyed. As the day went on, however, Elias began to notice that he was the only person Anne was putting to work. Alex was moping around looking glum, while Anne played with the girls and kept them preoccupied. Elias had become the work mule, the same as he was back home. He resented being in his brother's house all over again.

The next time his mother asked him to do something, he said, "Ask somebody else to do it. I'm not the only person in this house!"

Anne did what she always did. She walked away from him for about an hour. When she came back, she made the same request. This time, Elias walked outside to the front yard. He wondered how long it would take him to walk home, and what the chances were of getting shot along the way.

"When is mommy coming home?" Becky asked, as Anne got the girls ready for bed that night.

"I'm sure she'll be here soon." Anne nodded. "She'll be here when you get up in the morning."

"Are you really sure?"

"Yes, honey, I'm really sure."

Elias had been listening from the hallway. When his mother left the girls' bedroom and shut the door, he asked her, "Why do you keep lying to them?"

Anne glared at him for a long second, before she strode away.

Alex was playing with his radio that night, while Elias and his mother sat in the living room. All the teen was getting out of the radio was static.

"Why don't you put that away and go to sleep?" Anne asked.

"Sure, grandma." The teen relented. "Can you keep trying? Maybe we can get a news station."

"Just set it right there on the end table." Anne told him. "I'll take a look at it in the morning."

Once Alex was gone, she looked to Elias. "Can you take that radio and hide it in the garage for me? Put it somewhere that Alex won't find it."

"Why?" Elias asked. "Why don't you just tell them the truth?"

"Never mind." She hissed at him. "I'll do it myself!"

The second day in Jay's house passed by the same way.

The third day in Jay's house passed by the same way.

By late morning on the fourth day, Elias was so fed up he took a chair outside and set it in the shade. The previous day had been intolerably hot, especially with all the windows shut. He looked up at the sky, wondering if the planes would be spraying their filth, and they were. The planes were making a checkerboard pattern with long trails that drifted into wispy clouds.

His mother had taken to carrying the rifle around wherever she went. She strode up to him to start making her demands for the day. "We need to drive back to the house. I want to pick up my clothes and my picture albums. You can get whatever you need, so you won't be so depressed all the time."

"I'm not depressed." Elias denied. "I just don't want to be here!"

"For five seconds, can you think about somebody besides yourself?"

"Why don't you?"

"I'm taking care of my grandkids!"

"Ever since we got here, you've been making me do everything around here! I want to see one of them do something for once!"

"You're so selfish, Elias! They don't know anything about being a handyman! They're just kids!"

That was it, Elias understood. His brother Jay was the divine Golden Child, while his brother's kids were all eternal babies. And what was he? He was the runt, the loser who sat around all day drinking beer and scratching his belly. All that work that Elias had done to his mother's house, all the work that he'd done for the neighbors, it meant nothing to Anne because he was not Jay. Elias did everything wrong, while Jay was always perfect, and so were his stupid kids.

Maybe he could get his mother to drive him back home, and he could stay there when she came back. That might work. "I'll be waiting in the car."

The city was full of dead people. It smelled of dead people, and so did their neighborhood. Some of the houses on their block had been burned down, they saw as they cleared the litter and obstacles lying on the street.

Anne parked in the driveway, relieved when she saw their front door was still shut and their windows intact. "I want you to fill up the gas tank."

"How am I supposed to do that?" Elias balked.

"Simple. You get a water hose and bucket, and you find a gas tank with gas in it. Do I have to do everything around here?"