Fiction Inspired by Apathy
By Conor O'Rourke
Staff Writer

Eddie Mathews opened his eyes. Was he asleep? His shift in consciousness was caused by the fiery last notes of Gustav Penlacki’s ninth and unfinished, symphony. It had never been completed; Penlacki, a life-long sufferer of superstition, was only too aware of Beethoven, Schubert, and especially Mahler’s unforeseen expirations after each of their ninths. Symbolically, he delayed the ending and was found dead, pen in hand, rewriting the last bars over and over. Criticized for its somewhat garish style with which Penlacki intended to conjure apocalyptic feelings in the audience, the piece was posthumously known as The End of the World Symphony. If those last fiery notes were indeed Penlacki’s musical interpretation of the apocalypse, then it was all too fitting that the following toneless hum of a completed record waiting to be removed from the machine seemed symbolic to Eddie of a world devoid of life.

The record player was malfunctioning and, as Eddie counted, at intervals of every six seconds the needle touched the last bar of those almighty notes, pounding them into Eddie’s head until repetition gave way to the steady drone of nullity. Eddie was a career pessimist. He believed marriage was the union of two incomplete beings, a fickle arrangement held only together by the bestial desires of sex and human fears of loneliness. He thought of babies as cold critics of the human soul, with their penetrating yet indifferent stare into the once sacred depths of one’s existence, constantly maintained except for casual breaks to vomit.

When a teacher from Eddie’s youth explained to him the advantages of seeing his glass of apple juice half-full rather than half- empty, Eddie did not hesitate to pour the remaining liquid out onto the table, effectively conveying his feelings on the matter. Eddie’s festering anger about the world found its outlet through the pen. He had already written three novels (never published), on the decrepit state of mankind. Sometime on this particular day he had chosen to write his fourth. The story was to begin on the first day of a post-apocalyptic earth, a day that came on the heals of a vast nuclear war, and narrate the state of life that would come next. As of yet his story consisted of the single blank sheet in front of him. Eddie looked down at it, forgetting for a moment what it was he was doing. He needed inspiration. He needed a cigarette. He put the pen down and rose from his chair. An empty box of Camels rested on the nearby bookcase.

Eddie studied it vexingly, considering for a moment if this was symbolic of anything, but then wrote it off to over-thinking. He dropped the pack and moved on. He needed inspiration. He looked around the room for help. His bed in the corner was a mess of sheets and dirty clothes; the floor was scattered with cards laid on lineally from a past game of Solitaire; dirty dishes remained untouched on the table from a long ago meal; His gaze finally returned to his desk again where the paper and pen still lay in abandonment. He needed inspiration. He walked to the window and peeked out through the curtains. Outside the world was ending.

“Fucking great,” he chuckled. He had his inspiration now and he sat down and picked up his pen once again. He was poised to write. All he had to do was close his eyes to find the right word to start.

The strong last notes of Penlacki’s ninth symphony opened Eddie’s eyes with an unwelcome breath of consciousness. He shifted his focus to the spot on the table where his hand still held a pen, hovering indifferently above a blank page. As if he had just fallen asleep, Eddie experienced a moment of having lost time, trying to remember what had just occurred. But as in all dreams, as in all the small trips in between the metaphysical boundaries of consciousness and the subconscious, trying to discover only made him forget faster. Instead he is left with the terse sensation of just being switched on.

He dropped his pen and rose. What for? He asked as soon as he was on his feet. A cigarette, that was it. He picked up a box of Camels from the bookshelf and sensing it’s empty weight, carelessly threw it aside. Boredom was setting in. He looked around the room for something to do. His bed was a mess, there were cards all over the floor, dirty plates on the table, and his unused desk. He went to the window to see if there was anything appealing to the eye behind the curtain. He looked through and saw the end of the world.

“...the hell?” he grumbled and collapsed back into his chair for the effort of standing up was becoming cumbersome.

The record player droned on, every nine second repeating the last chord of Penlacki’s unfinished symphony. The sound was hypnotic, it had a numbing effect, like a heartbeat eventually going flat line on the monitor. Eddie picked up his feeling the slight urge to hold something in order to keep his heavy eyes open. Yet force working barely opposed easily won. Eddie closed his eyes.
The sound was loathsome. Music perhaps? Loud enough, in any case, to cause Eddie’s eyes to open. Eddie only knew he was sitting there in his chair because it suddenly became unbearably hard to hold the pen in his hand, drifting blankly over paper. It dropped and landed with a dry splat on the desk. He didn’t question why the paper was there, nor why he had been holding a pen. He glided over to the bookcase where he saw a pack of Camels. He wasn’t surprised it was empty. His eyes wandered over the room, not for any reason, but only because that’s what they were supposed to do. He continued to the window. Without thinking, his hand parted the curtains. What he saw was the end of the world. His mouth opened a crack and a gust of heavy air was released.

He slumped into his chair again. The record player emitted a slow moan, accompanied every twelve seconds by a higher, shorter utterance. Eddie sat not listening, eyes open, as if waiting for something. Finally, the moan was stretched to its fullest and stopped abruptly. The record player had run out of power and Eddie had closed his eyes.