Mark Falkin - The Late Bloomer

[long pause; distant sounds of singing-humming]

KJL: Maybe you really are their savior, Kevin.

KGM: I’m really tired of that conversation. Dead horse, dead end. They don’t need me.

KJL: Okay. [sigh] What Johnny said was… he said you can help them remember.

KGM: I’ll help them over a damned bridge. Yes yes.

KJL: Won’t you even consider that? I mean, that’s why I asked you about Bastian’s ghost. Can you even consider it? Something that’s beyond reason? Kevin, this whole experience, that morning, the world dying off as it has. That’s not something you or I or Dr. Jespers or anybody would’ve thought possible. So why can’t you? You came here on a kayak for days and days. Don’t tell me you don’t somewhat get this.

KGM: Is that what Johnny wants you to do? Talk me into it?

KJL: How can I possibly talk you into it? [long pause]

KGM: Whales on fire. They dance. Celebration. That thing, out on the water….

KJL: I haven’t seen anything. What are you talking about?

KGM: Something’s happening tomorrow. I know it. It’s—

KJL: What? What are you talking about?

KGM: It’s the thing I can’t see, they haven’t let me see.

KJL: What what what?

KGM: What Simon was talking about. Tomorrow’s the beginning.

KJL: The beginning.

KGM: Before I saw you running up the pier, I was looking at the drilling platform out there thinking I saw something on it.

KJL: On it.

KGM: Yeah. Something really big that moved.

KJL: Moved.

KGM: When I looked at it through the binoculars, nothing there. Just the platform, a rig coming up out of it.

KJL: So what’s the—

KGM: When I look out there again with just my eyes, I see it. Sitting there. I’ve been seeing it, iterations of it, since the morning of.

KJL: Kevin, it’s, what? A mile out there in the open ocean.

KGM: Something there.

[long pause]

KGM: Remember that morning? Bass naked with the gun? You’re nodding. Right before he turned to shoot that boy at the door, do you remember what happened?

KJL: You were talking to him, telling him to put the gun down.

KGM: Well, yes, but more specifically. After that. You’re shaking your head. Everything went black for a moment. Remember that? Not just clouds but like a full eclipse.

KJL: I… remember turning my head to the door because of that boy there. I remember screaming. His face… moved.

KGM: You don’t remember that wink of darkness?

KJL: Huh-uh. I can’t really—

KGM: Well I do. And whatever it was that made it dark moved quickly away, then Bass shot the boy through the door. Whatever that was that blocked out the sun for that brief moment, that’s what’s out there on that platform watching us like the weasel watches the hen.

KJL: I don’t know what to say, Kevin.

KGM: [quietly, recounting to himself] Always indirectly, I see it. Saw its tail on the trail. Saw its shadow riding the wave. Saw it at MoPac, standing on the other side of the train cars. On Forty-Fifth behind the kids. Now it’s out there.

KJL: You’ve not told me any of this.

KGM: I didn’t want to believe it. If I admitted seeing it to you, it’d’ve seemed real.

KJL: Kevin.

KGM: It waits.

KJL: For what?

KGM: The beginning.

KJL: Kevin…

KGM: What, Kodie? Won’t you even consider it?

KJL: Okay, okay. Point taken.

KGM: The dark smiling teeth. This is its lieutenant. Kodie. I know you know what I’m talking about. You won’t look at me.

KGM: [quick whispering] You’re here. Now I’m here. A million of them are here. They’ve been waiting. They could have taken us out at any time. At any time at all.

KJL: You’re scaring me, Kevin. Blink, Kevin.

KGM: Time’s on their side.

KJL: Are you awake? You’re sleep-talking. Kevin, wake up.

KGM: Whatever’s out there, it’s not just out there on that platform. It’s everywhere. It’s vast. Like what Jespers was saying. [sound of ripping Velcro, zippers, paper shuffling] “This thing (his word) hides in plain sight like dark matter in space. It’s there, it’s so everything, so everywhere that we geneticists don’t think to see it. We don’t know it’s there, like a fish doesn’t know it’s in water.” On the platform out there it shimmers. Like it’s there but it’s not.

KJL: Hey. Enough now.

KGM: Like the white stuff. It’s always been within us. Hasn’t it?

KJL: Kevin. Please, let’s sleep.

KGM: Dark side of the helix. [whispering] Cerca, cerca, cerca .

[whispering, talking to himself, to the recorder; sounds of footsteps, KGM pacing the floor]

KGM: My God—the kids have been trying to tell me all along. Johnny was trying to tell me. Because I did know. I wouldn’t admit it. I took those feelings and bent them into fiction. I absolutely knew, and I did nothing. [more pacing sounds]

I ask you, dear reader, what was I supposed to do? I mean, tell Mom, the school counselor, Mr. English? Tell them what? That I’m having vivid visions, dreams, my brother mumbles things to me when he sleepwalks and pees on the floor which I clean up so he’s not embarrassed, and because of these things I’m certain the world is ending soon, like right around Halloween sometime? Pffft. They’d’ve put me on psychotropics faster than you can say “selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor”.

You just tried to say that fast didn’t you? That’s why I like you. You’re hanging in with me, more than anybody.

Maggie? What? C’mere. Lie down. You feel it. Don’t you, girl? My anxiety, that they stir in their sleep.

KGM: [voice panicked, whispering] Kodie. Kodie. They didn’t pick me to save them. They didn’t pick me.

KJL: Hmmm? What are you talking about now? You’re sleep-walking again. Come back to bed.

KGM: No! [still whispering] Kodie. That thing out there. They’re doing its bidding now. I’ve felt all along that they’re conflicted. Professor Fleming, is this why you didn’t want me to know about Jespers’s work? “The dark side of the helix” isn’t just a turn of phrase, is it? You knew if I knew… I’d know too much.

KJL: Why do you keep waking me up? I thought you said—

[sound of skin slapping skin]

KJL: Hey! Why’d you do that? That hurt.

KGM: Gotta wake up. We’ve got to get out of here. Before dawn breaks. It’s their float zone. They’re not as… aware just before dawn breaks. I’ve watched them. They go into this collective REM sleep spasm thing. We can get away. [sound of Velcro ripping; metal snapping] We’ve got this glock, this dog.

KJL: What are you doing?

KGM: I’ve been thinking. Maybe the old world picked me, picked us. Like Fleming and Jespers tried to tell us—we’ve got the conch, we’re supposed to keep the flame of the old world. We’re supposed to save us , but not by staying here. You and me, Eve. We’ve got to try. You’re nodding. You know I’m right.

KJL: Okay. [voice broken; sniffling]

KGM: C’mon. We can do it. Yeah? Okay? You okay? I need you.

[sniffling loud and close to the microphone; scratching sounds [29] It’s believed they are hugging here, as is ratified by KGM’s next statement. ]

Dear reader, her face is buried in my chest and she’s nodding her head. This is when you go awwww .

[KJL laughs quietly, sounding loud in the microphone]

[sounds of sirens; very loud] [30] By the recording time stamp, it is believed to be dawn.

KGM: The sounds! The kids are—

KJL: —same as the morning of…

[sounds of running footfalls; heavy breathing; dog barking]

KJL: Same sounds! What is that?!