The Journey of Jackson Trimble to Fifth and Main

1

When Jackson Trimble set out on his own, he didn’t have a penny to his name. Or maybe he did. He couldn’t remember, and according to the assurance of the voice in his mind, it didn’t matter anyway.

Nor did he carry any luggage. He didn’t own a suitcase or bag—or he didn’t remember owning one—and if he had, it would have remained empty and in the house. Jackson’s instructions included nothing about carrying anything that was unnecessary or that might slow his progress.

His jaw set, he released a sigh—though he didn’t know why—and opened the front door, then the screen door, at slightly after 3 in the morning and stepped out onto the stoop. He knew only, as the voice had said, ‘It is time.’

On the stoop, he faltered and turned, looked back into the house for a long moment, and nodded almost imperceptibly.

That was not per his instructions, but he sensed that it was all right, so it must be.

Yes, everything there looked familiar. He had not forgotten the house.

The house had grounded him. His memory was quite clear on that. The house had been his base, the only place he was certain in his own mind ever to have actually existed. Leaving it to fend for itself was not easy, but neither was it particularly difficult. It was only necessary.

When that minor—and his mind added ‘Do not be selfish’—task was completed, he took great care to lean in and grip the doorknob tightly. Of his own accord and not owing to the instructions, he applied just the right amount of pressure to ensure the door would close quietly but definitively. Above all else, at least as far as he could remember, the sound of a slamming door was his greatest annoyance.

And he gently pulled the door toward him until it shut.

Still applying the same careful pressure, he rotated the knob slowly right to left to allow the bolt to slide into the doorframe.

Jackson was certain of very few reasons for his actions, but he was absolutely certain of the reason behind his actions with the door: He wasn’t being careful to avoid waking anyone. After he passed onto the stoop, there was nobody left inside.

His mind added ‘Or anywhere, really.’

No, the silence of the act was born of a sense of reverence. The reverence seemed necessary though it was not part of the instructions because it held such an odd sense of finality. He sensed the reverence and the finality, so both must be true. Secondarily to the reverence, in the rare occurrence of an irrational but original thought as humans occasionally endure, he didn’t want to risk waking the slumbering house to the sadness of his leaving.

He frowned. Would the house be sad at all?

The voice said, ‘It is time.’

Either way was fine. Jackson himself was not sad at the thought. His mind added, ‘It is simply what is.’

When the door latch slipped home that final time—well, or maybe the only time, for had he ever left the house before?—anyone else might have discerned a quiet click. But to Jackson the sound was a starter’s pistol, a signal to finally do what he was compelled to do. What he had to do, per the clear instructions in his mind.

In an irrational original action to accompany the irrational original thought, he raised his right hand and touched his fingertips to his lips, then touched the face of the door. Finally he took a step backward, eased the edge of the screen door past his right shoulder, and let it rest against the doorframe. It was only right. Now the house is complete again, all in one piece, if empty.

He pivoted on the ball of his left foot, and per his instructions, tossed the door keys onto the roof with an over-the-shoulder flip of his hand.

It was time, and his right foot twitched as if to take a step, but then it settled to the stoop again, and Jackson stood very still.

2

For maybe the first time ever, Jackson actively tried to remember.

He frowned. Had he tried to remember anything before? Maybe. Maybe not. And why would he?

But he tried to remember now. He was on the stoop and a door was closed behind him and the memory of the house was shut away and the first step of the rest of his life awaited him.

And there before him was the narrow concrete path to the sidewalk and the street beyond.

There on either side of the concrete path was the thick, lush lawn and the Mimosa trees, one left and one right.

And there was something else.

He looked to his left, eyed his driveway. Had there ever been an automobile there?

His mind said, ‘It doesn’t matter. It is time’ and the thought flipped away, end over end, into the night.

He looked again at narrow walk and the lawn and the Mimosas and past them to the blue-grey street and past the blue-grey street to the blue-grey fog that blended with the street and everything else faded into it.

Had there been other houses there like his? Had there been other trees and other lawns?

Had this been a neighborhood? A town? A city?

There were streetlights and sidewalks and curbside mailboxes, weren’t there? And weren’t there curbs? And weren’t there automobiles in driveways or garages or parked along the curb if there were curbs? And what exactly is a curb? Something you do to an urge, isn’t it?

He couldn’t merge the thoughts. They wouldn’t merge, and he curbed the urge to merge them.

His mind said, ‘Something none of you were experienced at, curbing urges. It is why we are here, a now it is time.’

Jackson closed his eyes for a moment, shutting out the fog on one side of his eyelids and containing the fog on the other side. Of one thing he was certain: He had lived in a small suburban ranch-style house—

He opened his eyes.

How do I know that?

From what depths had he dredged up ‘ranch-style’? Or ‘suburban,’ for that matter? And on the edge of his mind, his remaining faculties whispered, ‘Yes, in Garden Grove Connecticut.’

He frowned again. Was that a real memory or perhaps a fiction created by a mind striving for answers?

He couldn’t be sure. He couldn’t know. He curbed the urge to know.

Per his instructions, he did not strive for answers intentionally beyond the knowledge of what he must do. Only what he must do mattered. Only that and remembering the house and that he had lived there.

Ah, the house.

He smiled. “I lived there as far back as I can remember.” He frowned. “Didn’t I?”

And the memories seemed to have started twenty-six years ago. Didn’t they?

“Around the time I turned 43. That’s right.”

Or at least he thought he turned 43 that year.

Before that, whatever age he had turned that year, any events of his life that hadn’t escaped him completely were shrouded in a dense mental fog.

And a voice peeked through the fog with strange black eyes. And the voice said, ‘Which is perfectly fine. It’s perfectly natural. It’s perfectly right and it all leads to what you must do. It is time.’

Calmed and comforted, Jackson stepped off the stoop.

He walked along the narrow sidewalk to the wider sidewalk, stepped across it onto the blue-grey street, and turned right.

3

All of that was only Jackson’s long term memory, and that it was mostly gone was perfectly fine. There was no reason to exercise it as he walked. It had served its only purpose, having brought him to this point. He sensed that was adequate, and therefore it was adequate enough.

But the short term. The short term memory nagged at him a little.

He couldn’t remember what he had done yesterday—was there a yesterday?—or the day before or the day before that. Were there days? And were they strung together like so many pearls in a row?

But there must have been days. There must have been minutes and hours and days. And he must have done things on those days. He must have done things.

He must have gone out, of course. He must have left the house before, although he didn’t remember. He must have gone to a job perhaps? Or was he too old for that? To dinner or to a movie with friends? His consideration of those things—well, of that one thing, that job, and those people—proved he must have had a job and friends. Didn’t it?

He did have a job at one time or another, didn’t he? He must have. He was almost as certain of that as he was of the house and being inside it before he had left it and quietly closed the door.

He even clearly remembered attending his job, though he couldn’t quite pinpoint what he did for a living. Or where he did it or how he got there. Nor was he able, ever, to remember actually going there. Or coming back to his house from there. If he had a house.

But he must have had a house. He must have gone out and he couldn’t go out if he didn’t have a house from which to go. Or whether anyone greeted him at the job or when he arrived back at the house. He had always been alone in both places. Hadn’t he? If he had ever been in both places. Or either place. But he must have.

And the lawn that covered his front yard—

For a moment he wanted to look back, or thought he wanted to, but looking back was not part of his instructions, and now that he had left the stoop—Ah! He had left the stoop, so he had a stoop and he must have had a house—but he had left them both and now the instructions were all-important.

So without looking back he remembered the lawn, that he had a lawn and that it was thick and lush and green. And he remembered watering it or mowing it or trimming it back from the sidewalks on weekends. Yet he couldn’t bring up a memory of actually being in the yard for either of those reasons. Or for any other.

He also remembered—vividly, he thought, and his mind whispered, ‘Nothing is vivid and nothing is real and it is time”—chatting with friends and agreeing or disagreeing with them on a wide range of specific topics.

Yet he couldn’t recall any specifics of the utterances or even about the faces from which the utterances had issued forth and nothing about the utterances themselves in content or volume or voice intonations. Only that they had occurred.

Nothing about the venues in which those agreements and arguments had taken place. Nothing about the place where he worked, nothing about the interior of the restaurant or drugstore or big-box department store. Nothing about the street corner at Fifth and Main—though that intersection was preeminent in his mind for some reason—and nothing about the specifics of any of the other venues he must have visited with friends.

He clearly recalled going to the movies too, sometimes with those same friends, maybe, and sometimes with others, probably. They had attended movies together in the movie theater in the mall and in the stand-alone theater a mile away. He remembered almost plainly gasping in horror with them and laughing uproariously at them and even the quietly shouted hushes from others in the theater.

But again he could remember no specifics. No names of any of the several films, no content from them, no vision of the interiors of the theaters—not even the individual faces of the friends or of those who hushed them.

He turned onto Fifth Avenue and started along it toward Main Street.

And at the very edge of a fleeting, jagged fragment of what might have been a thought he saw one face, finally, and he saw it almost clearly, finally, and he almost smiled but his mind whispered, ‘Do not waste time on displaying pleasure. It is time.’

So he did not smile, but still, at least he: Remembered the face was a long, drawn, almost pinched face that pyramided down from a broad, thick, bulging forehead, and at least he: Remembered the face had centered brashly itself on the screen in one of the theaters, and at least he: Remembered it glared at him and at all of them individually and somehow without moving side to side.

The wide black eyes were just that pervasive and just that insistent and just that connected—somehow.

He remembered the eyes were shaped like crushed footballs, and he: Remembered the thin, narrow lips on the mouth had never parted, never twitched, never moved, and he: Remembered he had seen, with a torn-away glance, two small holes that he seemed to remember must have served as a nose for the face, and he: Remembered his mind had whispered to him then for the very first time and said, ‘That doesn’t matter’ and ‘See the eyes only’ and as if he might not have understood the syntax said, ‘Watch only the eyes. Your time is soon.’

And he sensed remembering giving up and he remembered shifting his gaze back to the eyes and somehow he remembered without looking around that everyone else had done exactly the same thing and—

The instructions—that’s when the instructions came. The eyes had issued the instructions and drove them deep into him. And he remembered the instructions had been significant and that ‘Nothing else matters until it is time.’ And somehow he knew without looking around at anyone else that the instructions had been driven into everyone in the theater and everyone on the planet, all at exactly the same moment, and this was The End, capitalized.

4

And for all he knew, it was not The End. He and his friends whose faces he could not make out had left the theater per the instructions common to all of them and everyone on Earth and had returned to the place they had liked best per the instructions to wait for the remaining instructions to compel them when it was finally, finally, finally time.

And for him that was now. For him, it was time.

Fifth and Main was less than a half-block away and the blocks in wherever he was were short and close together with no cross streets other than Main and it was right up there.

His mind said, ‘At the gun shop. There you will stop remembering and it will be fine.’

And Jackson covered the half-block of indeterminate length and entered the gun shop and smiled as if there was anyone there to smile at but there wasn’t.

And the voice said, ‘All of the others have gone ahead.’

And he knew somehow when the voice said ‘All of the others’ it meant all of the others and he was The Last One. It was a final honor. Wasn’t it? Or was he merely the last to be picked?

Either way it was perfectly fine. It was perfectly sensible to make room for the Others. They owned the eyes and sent the instructions, and they dipped everything on both sides of his eyelids into the calmest, easiest fog and nobody else ever could do something like that.

A shotgun lay on the counter.

Per the instructions he picked up the shotgun.

For a moment, he faltered and turned it over in his hands.

For a moment he tried to remember the brand and the shape and the size and the weight and what the hell it was and he sensed he knew all of those things but he couldn’t grasp why he would know them.

He thought again of his house, the one place he could remember firmly, though it was rapidly sinking into fog and he reminded himself before the voice could remind him that it didn’t matter.

He focused instead on the instructions, and per the instructions he placed the barrel into his mouth. It was the only way to rid himself of the memories and the lack of memories and the instructions and the voice that spoke.

He formed a U with his index finger and his thumb—he remembered he would need one or the other, but why would he remember that, of all things?—and he rested the fore stock against the fleshy web between them and moved the web along the fore stock and over the action, and he slipped one or the other—the finger or the thumb?—and the voice said, ‘It doesn’t matter’—past the trigger well and—

His mind, the voice, said calmly, ‘We have come so far. You are good to us. This is the right thing to do. It is time. Make room.”

And he faltered and frowned tried to remember how to remember but his mind had gone flat.

And the voice said, ‘Now.’

And he pulled the trigger.

5

A shout went up among The Glow and they left their positions in the sky like so many stars descending on Earth. And the colonization began.

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