Memoir of the Apocalypse — An Abandoned Story

Below is a story that I abandoned. I began it excited, drafted it, edited it, shared it, and then when I stood back to read over myself, realised like a slap to the face that it didn't work. But for those who don't know, this is what writing is. I have a lot to learn still and a long way to develop, and this is one of those learning experiences.

In this stories case, the elements that are holding back are its structure, pacing and delivery of exposition. It, to a small degree, commits the cardinal sin of 'telling not showing'. I think moving forward, I have to focus on tying together the moments I narrate through via scenes, with tension and dialogue, instead of an after-the-fact recount of the event. I also think that it's pacing is too slow because of the 'retelling' narration. Structurally, I don't think that the different elements of the story build up to a satisfying conclusion, and this is because I didn't know or understand what I was writing about as I wrote it.

My goal for the story was to explore the worst-case scenario of the climate catastrophe and still maintain a hopeful and optimistic vibe. In some ways I did deliver on that idea, but I think the main thing I'm doing throughout the story is thinking through my own fears related to the climate collapse and trying to come to terms with the bleak reality myself.

To fix this story, I think I'm going to it into an Epistolary, structuring each of the moments around a 'diary entry'. This would be like 'Diary of a Bad Year,' by Helen Simpson; but, where her story is incredibly pessimistic about the human condition, mine will stick to the belief that humans are intrinsically good.

I also plan to keep posting these 'learning experience' stories to my blog along with a short reflection on why it didn't work. This is mostly to keep me accountable and to create a permanent place for me to think back on them, and so that one day, I can look back on how far I've come.

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Memoir of the Apocalypse

I’ve always had a passion for drawing in black and white. So when my parents passed away, I tried to feel connected to them again by sketching out their portraits. But no matter how hard I tried, the drawings never turned out. They always felt wrong, like something was missing.

My parents fled from Brisbane to Melbourne when I was young. I remember snippets: firefighters staring at the thousands of Queenslanders migrating south, the blood-red sky, and the look of relief on my mother’s face when it turned blue again. I can only imagine the happiness they felt when we hit the Victorian border, and were moved into a little one-bedroom flat in Collingwood.

My father always told me we were the luckiest family in the world. ‘Morning angel,’ he’d say, sipping on his rationed coffee. ‘Another day in paradise, eh?’ And this day in paradise would have him leave before sunrise to work a double shift in a warehouse. Mum, after kissing me goodbye, would leave just as early for her job as a secretary. We were lucky enough to share our unit with the Flynns, another family of refugees, and every morning they’d make me breakfast and Helen, their eldest, would walk me to school. They were from the Maldives, but they never really talked about it — maybe they just wanted to forget.

Growing up, the old world hovered over me. Dad used to be a mechanic and mum a lecturer and poet. In that life they had brothers and sisters and families and careers, but now, all of it’s gone. Sometimes I’d have dreams about the old world; I’d wake up in sweats with sounds of birds chirping, grass through my fingers, a cool breeze against my skin. I could feel it. Then I’d sit up, blink, see my parents either side of me, hear the Flynn's snoring across the room and realise it was just a dream.

For High School I was sent to a climate refugee school and learnt about all the things the generation before us had to live through. We began to understand that our parents were still in shock, that they were in pain. As the years passed, we came to understand that we were the children of the apocalypse.

Mum insisted I learnt basic survival skills, like how to find water, how to get used to the feeling of hunger, what food is and isn’t safe to eat. ‘No one can predict the future,’ she’d say. ‘What happens when the fires come here?’

I’d shrug. ‘At least it’ll be interesting.’

She didn’t reply. She taught me everything she knew.

It was around then that I fell in love with art. At first, it was painting. I even won an award at school for my black and white urban landscapes. ‘It’s for record keeping,’ I told my teachers. ‘So the future generations can see that we found meaning in the concrete and metal.’

My father thought I could work for a VR company as an artist. The government was producing VR content showing off how they believed they’d geo-engineer the environment back to a pre-collapse state. But I wasn’t interested in creating a world that won’t ever exist, better off showing people the beauty that’s around them, not the beauty that’s lost.

When I finished school I volunteered during fire season as an aid worker. I thought of my parents as I leant over the ship’s railing, binoculars against my eyes, looking across the water to the fires. I didn’t need them to see it, but somehow the act of holding the glass up protected me from what was really happening. The ship inched further down the shore, and we picked up two families who were swimming towards us. I pulled a young girl out of the water whose arm was burnt black, charred and scaly like a piece of bread you burnt over the fire, and the smell, I’ll never forget it, like roasting pork.

When I got back to Melbourne, the first thing I did was talk to my parents. ‘How people back then allow any of this to happen?’

They looked at me bewildered, shrugged.

‘How did you survive?’

‘We were lucky,’ dad said. ‘Aussies always lend a hand. You proved that.’

Mum nodded. ‘If I’ve learnt anything, it’s that people are always willing to help.’

The older I got, the more I thought about what mum said, the more it terrified me.

The government put together a program to try to rebuild the major cities. I thought I’d travel to Brisbane and paint what I could see and feel — you know, in the way that only art can.

When I arrived, the city was abandoned, and a skyscraper toppled into the river and the land scorched bare and everything looted. This is where I come from, I thought, and this is all that’s left. I knew this place through pieces of conversations I’d heard: a coffee shop on Ann Street, a restaurant on the wharf where they had their first date. I saw a hole in the ground where I knew Southbank’s beach used to be. I painted nothing that trip.

I stopped drawing after that and settled for a job in Melbourne working as a secretary for a VR company. They saw the art I’d done and liked it enough to hire me. I met Alex, an artist and a programmer. One night he showed me the virtual world he was making. I saw a blue lake with rolling green hills in the background and birds fluttering off trees and leaves fidgeting in the wind.

‘Hey there,’ Alex said, lifting the headset off me. ‘I mean — I’m flattered, but there’s no need to get emotional. It’s just eco-propaganda.’

Naturally, we fell in love and I moved into his unit. It had a remarkable view and was on the fifteenth floor and overlooked rows and rows of identical houses which opened up around an old world, classical building. The left side of the building had collapsed in on itself, and the right side was held up by large stone pillars with gargoyles peering down from the peaks of them. I asked around if anyone knew what the building was used for. No one had a clue. In front of the building was a square block of dirt that was left empty except for a statue of a woman holding a scale, a cannon and two metal benches bolted into the ground.

I sat on one of the benches and, for the first time in years, drew pictures of the old architecture. I tried to capture the section of the building that was still intact and show how it connected with the part that was destroyed. I thought it was strangely beautiful and stayed drawing as it got dark. Across from me, a homeless man curled himself up on the metal bench. He pulled a blanket from his bag and fell asleep with his head resting on it. Everything around me sat lifeless, until a pigeon flew in and sat on the head of the statue. The homeless man shuffled, rolled over and everything became still again. My drawing wasn’t bad, but it didn’t capture the changes in time that I felt, how one moment bled into the next, the way the two halves of the building bore down upon its surroundings.

A unit across the dirt block where I was sitting turned its lights on and swung its window open and pigeons awoke and fluttered off. Their wings gleamed against the lights before disappearing into the darkness.

When news reached me that dad was falling ill, I moved back to Collingwood to take care of him. Alex was really supportive, but couldn’t stomach the long drive to work, so instead, he visited on the weekends and after work.

Seeing how sick dad was horrified me. He’d just stare at nothing for hours at a time, and the longer I stayed, the more I noticed he was aging unnaturally fast. By the end of that summer, his skin had sagged and folded and turned the colour of cinnamon.

‘You gotta eat dad,’ I’d tell him.

He’d smile at me and eat whatever I forced him to, but nothing else.

On the first day of Autumn, I sat with him and watched him gaze out the window all day. I wondered what he could be thinking. Maybe about what happened throughout his life. All of the causes and effects of all the decisions he’d made in his life compounding away one after the other in his mind, probably wondering how that easy old world slipped away from him.

The consequences of what their generation did to the world won’t end with them. I’ve inherited many of their fears and griefs, everyone of my generation has. We all understand now how we’re globally connected; that human beings are capable of great horror with seemingly no malicious intent; that, all at once, the entire world can slip away beneath you and never return.

‘Do you remember? he said, eyes still glued to whatever was outside. ‘Do you remember,’ he said again, now pointing out to a hill in the distance. ‘That night on Mt. Cootha,’ he let out a laugh and smiled. ‘The mangoes we ate, the stars. How young we were then.’

I didn’t reply.

‘Probably time for a nap, dad,’ I said. ‘I’m gonna go get some fresh air.’

That night, at just past midnight, dad woke from a coughing fit. He flung himself up in his bed, then lit a candle.

Mum sat up next to him and patted his back.

‘Nightmare,’ he said, looking at us.

‘Are you alright?’ I asked.

‘Of course.’ He got up, grabbed a glass of water from the tap, and got back into bed. ‘It’s all hunky-doory, guys. No need to wake up over me.’

Later that night, he died, and within a month, so did mum. It happened to the complete indifference of the world and within what felt like a moment. When I look back to pen portraits of them I’ve been working on, I think of how everyone blames their generation for everything that happened. People think it was their fault the world over-consumed, their fault they used fossil fuels, their fault they raised the sea levels. I don’t know how the world ended up this way, no one really does, but I do know that too many people think that they were the enemy. But they lost everything you could possibly lose: families, homes, wealth, education —and yet they never lost their humanity. I came into their world after everything had collapsed, and they built a loving family with me and they’ve only ever been kind to everyone they came into contact with, and they only ever spoke about the mateship they shared with others, how other people’s empathy was what pulled them through. These sketches, the ones in black and white, they’re too simple. This isn’t what the world needs, not when it’s so quickly losing its patience. No one could have seen what was coming. And yes, everyone regrets not taking action sooner, but the world can’t live with that kind of regret. If only people had known that the only enemy they ever had was themselves.

Few turned up to their funeral: me, the Flynn’s, and a few work friends. I said all the kind words you’d expect, and felt stupid saying them. I had the book of portraits I did of them cremated with their bodies.