It didn't mesmerize me, this time. Maybe you needed the whole picture for that.
"Jer, what are you doing?" I asked.
When he turned towards me, I could see how out of it he was. His face like a plastic mask in the weird light. His pupils too large, his thin lips twitching. He tried to smile, but it came out as something else entirely.
"They're so beautiful, dude," he informed me, like a stuck record. "Beauty like I've never seen in my entire life. If those asses at the galleries won't show them — well, the whole world ought to see them. That's what art's about, right? It belongs to everyone. The entire world."
His e-mail page was now up on the screen. He turned back to it, and started making attachments.
What the-?
"Jer, no!"
And I started lunging forwards.
He had clicked on SEND before my hand could reach him. I stopped, feeling a lot more than helpless, letting my arms drop down to my sides.
"The whole world, man," Jer was mumbling to himself again. "The entire teemin' world."
It is two days later, by this time. And everything has changed.
No planes pass overhead any longer. There are far fewer cars, no trains. The mail hasn't come. The mart down the road is running at half-staff, and running out of supplies. There are hardly any trucks at all.
Not everyone has a computer, of course. Most of those people are just wandering around, trying to figure what the hell is going on.
Sooner or later, most of them go into a loved one's place of work, or an offspring's bedroom. And they do not re-emerge.
This morning, a fire started up near the centre of town. And is still spreading. I can see the vast plume of smoke from my window. And I keep on wondering. Those people in front of their screens down there — do they even move when the flames start to consume them? Chill thought.
The power hasn't gone out yet. Emergency measures, I suppose. I wish it would. Although that might change nothing. It took only the space of one night to put April in a coma. And it's now been forty or so hours for most people.
I ought to go see if she's come around, but cannot bring myself, since I suspect the worst.
Jer dropped round about an hour back. He still doesn't seem to realize what's going on.
As I said, maybe that's a side-effect of his partially-immune reaction to the paintings.
He told me six more times how very beautiful they were.
There's looting.
I keep thinking of places that I've only ever seen on the TV. Craggy places. Dusty places. Places where there is not so much as an electrical wire, but people live there.
They don't even know it, but they've just inherited the earth. Does an absence of technology make one meek in any sense?
Someone just got shot, down at the corner. Is the fire heading this way? God, I wish the power would go out, even though that idea rather frightens me.
Maybe I should try to get away from here, though how or where I simply do not know.
Maybe — better, easier — I'll just go back to the old house, back to that paint-redolent room. Turn one of the canvases around.
And get lost.
The same way everything is lost now.
Beautiful!
DAVID A. SUTTON
The Fisherman
When Stephanie first saw him, his eyes were wild yet unfocused. She found out why later.
She and Rod were waiting outside the holiday cottage in Pembrokeshire; the keys were promised any minute. In front of them huddled the building that had been converted from a farm structure into holiday lets. Not strictly cottages as advertised, but she was not going to quibble. Behind them crouched the tiny inlet of Nolton Haven and the swell of St Bride's Bay beyond. Stephanie had turned to watch the waves that caroused so very close to the dwellings. The beach itself was hidden from her viewpoint, below the shelf of land they were standing on. The twin biceps of the cliffs on either side hugged the bay close. Rugged and yet secure, she thought.
As she watched a seagull lazily ascend in the middle distance, a dark shape suddenly appeared out of the ground.
"Oh!" she said, starting back and colliding with her husband as he peered into a room through one of the windows.
Rod pivoted around quickly, recovering his balance and hers in turn. A few yards away an old man in oilskins was rising up as if he was emerging from the rough green turf that separated the promontory of land from the beach. They would later discover the foot-worn steps that allowed beachcombers to negotiate the ten-or-so-foot drop to the pebbles and sand.
"Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs" the old man said as he climbed the top of the rise and walked with a determined pace towards the couple. "Upon the slimy sea."
Stephanie edged closer to Rod and put her arm around his waist. He could feel her shudder. The old man was very close to them now, had entered their personal space, and she could see his red and watery eyes close up — eyes that had been staring out to sea for too many years. A seafarer's eyes, focusing not on her, but distantly, or even inwardly perhaps.
"Get away you old fool!" A middle-aged woman had rounded the corner of the holiday lettings, bearing their key. The old man turned to face her and his eyes hardened to marble, but he walked off towards the cliff path without saying anything further.
"Mrs Rollason," Rod introduced her to Steph. "Stephanie, my wife."
"He's all right," Mrs Rollason said. "Gilbert wouldn't hurt a fly I daresay, but he's not quite right, if you know what I mean." She smiled hopefully and handed Rod the. key to their accommodation. "Nice to meet you, Stephanie. I'm Joan. I've put a loaf of bread and some butter and milk in the fridge for you both, start you off. The beach shop sells groceries if you don't want to go into Broad Haven right away. If you need anything else in the meantime, please come over to the farmhouse. Either Ted or me'll always be around."
Stephanie nodded in acknowledgment, but was distracted as she watched the old man labouring up the steep coastal path that navigated the cliffs out of Nolton Haven. "Does he live around here?" she asked, hoping he did not. The man had given her quite a jolt.
"Up there," Joan nodded towards the highest visible point of the cliff. At the top, surrounded by gorse, was a small, once white-painted wooden building. It did not look much to live in. "His wife was drowned off the beach, quite a few years ago now, and he's out day and night looking for her, so they say. He's harmless enough. Needs help of course, but won't take it. Stubborn old fool."
"What on earth was he jabbering about?" Rod asked. "Sounded familiar."
"Oh, he's always saying some poetry or other. Now you two newlyweds enjoy your honeymoon and forget about old Gilbert, won't you."
When the farmer's wife had gone, Stephanie snatched the key from Rod and opened the door to Swift Cottage. A single-bedroom holiday cottage with all the modern conveniences, she recalled the brochure. The roof space above the living room was open to the rafters, one of the charming features advertised. But the furniture was a bit tatty and the kitchen units, cooker and fridge had all seen their best days some years before.
"You told her we were on our honeymoon?" Stephanie asked as she walked around the living room, her fingers lightly caressing an elaborately decorated earthenware ewer and bowl on an old sideboard.
"Well, no," Rod answered, lowering his head to come through the door from the kitchen, where he had been examining the contents of the fridge. "But I didn't disabuse her if that's what she thinks. I just told her we were recently married."
And so they were, but their honeymoon had actually been taken in Turkey earlier in the year and had turned out disastrously. The honeymoon holiday from Hell had nearly wrecked the marriage. They were still trying to get their money back from the tour company, as well as their fractured relationship from each other.