Brian Eckert

I’d nearly forgotten the world was going to end. If not for Facebook, it probably would have slipped my mind altogether. I would have bungled through another morning of coffee and copywriting, completely unaware of the devastation that was to grip the Earth in the coming hours. Only a jerk spends his final day of existence writing about garage renovation costs and faulty Johnson & Johnson metal-on-metal hips.

But while I may skip work, I still need coffee. I reach for the Tupperware container full of Dazbog KBG Blend in the cupboard. Not even enough for a full cup. One of my ski condo mates has a container of Folgers in the refrigerator. I’d just assume the world end right now if I’m going to be drinking goddamned horse-piss Folgers.

If it did end now, though, at least I’d have a good view. Directly out my slider door is Lake Dillon, covered by mist in the early-morning subzero temperatures, surrounded by stony, snow-capped peaks. Hard to imagine any sort of fiery cataclysm coming to this frozen land.

The thermometer reads -12 F. It’s officially bone-chilling, nut-aching cold outside. Still, ducks paddle across the lake, occasionally diving below the surface. It’s no wonder that down insulation is so warm. We’ve got global positioning devices and wireless information networks and enough know-how to guide a rover to Mars and operate it from Earth, but when it comes to insulation, the best we can do is stuff a jacket full of feathers. I’m not sure whether that’s a point against Us or a point for Nature.

Negative fucking twelve. I don’t mind, though. I like the cold. It keeps the people away.

In all of the TV shows and movies I’ve ever watched about somebody who has one day left to live, the soon-to-be-departed spends their day doing things they’ve always wanted to do and seeing loved ones one last time.

I’ve never died before. Faced with the prospect of death, however, I’d prefer to die alone. I think it was my father who said, “Live together, die alone.” No, wait; that was from an episode of Lost. I believe what my father said was, “Every living creature on earth dies alone.” Or was that from a scene in Donnie Darko? Come to think of it, what my old man used to say was, “It smells like something crawled up your ass and died.”

At any rate, there’s dignity in dying alone. There’s dignity in being alone, period. It’d be pretty disappointing to spend your last minutes on Earth listening to the wails of loved ones, watching their flesh melt, knowing that the ugliness of death reflects the ugliness of life.

But I can’t die here. Not without decent coffee. I’d kind of like to be wearing a collared shirt, too, and I don’t have one with me.

It’s back to Denver, then. Or should I go skiing? Maybe it’d be better if I died while shredding the gnar. But I just know that some douchebag snowboarder will shout, “Mayan Prophecy…I told you it was true, bro!” Fucking snowboarders.

With all of the traffic you’d think today was just another ordinary day. Don’t these people realize that the end of the world is nigh? They need to check Facebook more often. Fuck the mall. To hell with going out for lunch. Screw skiing. Hide yourself away and prepare for death while you still have a chance. Before long, there will be more burning bodies here than at a Tibetan monk anti-China demonstration.

As I hit the entrance ramp to I-70 and start to accelerate I see a hitchhiker and stop.

“Where you headed?” he asks.

“Denver,” I say.

“Awesome,” he says, tossing his bags into the backseat.

“I’ll try to get us there before the world ends,” I say.

“Name’s Mike,” the stranger says, “but most people call me ‘Soup,’ on account of my last name, Campbell.”

“Cold morning to be hitchhiking, Soup.”

“Yeah, I gotta pick up a tattooing kit from a friend of mine, and then I’m catching a bus up North. Know a dude who’s got work for me in Wyoming. Givin’ tats is the only way I have of making money. Can’t get no other job on account of being a multiple felon. You got any ink?”

“No. I change my mind too often. Even if I found a design I like, I’m afraid I’d get sick of it in a year or two.”

“All my tattoos mean somethin,” says Soup, who proceeds to rattle off, in fragments, the whole sad story of his life, from getting hit by an Oldsmobile at the age of seven to his seven year stint in the state penitentiary.

We pass a cop car parked on the median, looking for speeders.

“Know what you call it when you see a cruiser with its lights on?” says Soup. “A sex party. Because somebody’s gettin’ fucked.”

Soup has been a heavy user of meth and coke. He’s been to prison for armed robbery and assault. He stole a phone last night from a Walgreens and fell off his bike trying to get away from the security guard. Soup believes in Karma.

Junkies like Soup talk a lot, mostly about themselves. They go to prison and read the Bible and get heads full of ideas about salvation. They get out of prison and can’t find work and end up hitchhiking around the country, looking for odd jobs, staying in $25/night hotels, drinking brandy and shooting junk with some whore who sucks and fucks ‘em, makes ‘em forget that he is a forgotten man in the most violent nation on Earth, a place where salvation means ending up in Vegas, playing the slots and hoping to get enough money for another room, another bottle, another fix, another bitch.

Soup believes in reptilian alien conspiracy theories. He’s watched a “bunch of YouTube videos” on the subject (very likely while on meth). Soup, statistics bear out, will end up back in prison, where there’s no YouTube. Only Bibles that offer false hope to disenfranchised men.

I drop Soup off at the Sheridan Boulevard exit. He hops out of the car at a red light and thanks me.

It feels good to do a final good deed before the world ends. Soup very well may be the last person I speak to. We’re both going to die soon, and die alone. And while I will die with a collared shirt on, drinking a cup of French roast in my basement, Soup will die wearing a dirty red parka on the side of the road, waiting for a bus North that never comes.