the last judgment

“So much to look at,” said Gracie, a bit breathily, in a manner that obviously prompted a response. When she didn’t receive one, she looked peripherally over at Will to take stock of his emotional state. He exhaled through his nostrils, eyes wide, focused on the painting. The knot of shiny jacketsleeves around her waist was loosening, and she tightened it in a quick, thoughtlessly fastidious gesture. “Wow,” she said.

            They were standing at the very end of the gallery at Vienna’s Royal College of Art, the school Hitler was rejected from as a young painter. Gracie turned her attention away from Will’s reaction to The Last Judgment by Hieronymus Bosch and back towards the painting itself. It was indeed overwhelming. After all the straightforward splendor of the Reubenses and Rafaels, which revealed subtle shadings of meaning only after you had gotten past their grandly declarative surfaces, the Bosch had a teeming quality that unsettled rapidly. It seemed to whisper incoherent, high-speed depravities in Gracie’s ear, those hissing voices growing in proportion to the level of attention she gave.

            Though the painting made Gracie a bit uncomfortable, as did Will’s silence, she continued to scan the three panels for detail, trying to force her attention to linger on individual images, not allowing it to become diffused across the hopelessly complicated sprawl of the thing. It was hard to fathom something this unhinged being produced 500 years ago. The clarity of its hellish schizoid conjurings felt of-the-moment, like a comic found on some dark corner of the internet.

            She looked back over at Will. He was totally absorbed.

            She looked back at The Last Judgment. People being impaled, dismembered, raped, flayed, burned, boiled, roasted. Strange creatures with mouths and assholes in the wrong places. It was really disturbing. But still impressive, even though she didn’t normally go for this sort of thing. Something about it reminded her of Yellow Submarine.

            She pulled a Muji pen and Moleskine notebook out of her bag and wrote Religion as derangement. Derangement as process. Something contemporary.

            She closed the notebook and looked again at Will. His arms were folded, his eyes red. Was he crying? She reached over and touched his elbow.

            “You okay babe?”

            He stiffened at her touch, blinked rapidly, startled by her presence.

            “Yeah, I’m good,” he replied, unconvincingly. His voice was choked.

#

They walked back to their hotel in silence. Central Vienna felt clean, contained, and entrenched, the product of hundreds of years of planning and execution. In the December twilight everything was greyscale; statues of horses and men and men on horses, civil buildings that looked like elaborate ice sculptures, hotels that looked like Manhattan brothels from the 1960s, all this broken up by the brownish Christmas markets that took over the squares at this time of year, which looked like county fairs by way of the shtetl, and above which congealed semi-rancid clouds of sausage smoke and glühwein effluvium.

This was Gracie and Will’s first trip abroad together. They had been dating for about a year. They lived in Austin, worked in tech but had artsy hobbies. Will was a photographer and Gracie made textiles. Will was the first boy Gracie had dated outside the circumscribed social worlds of high school and college. Her earlier relationships had been born in the hot flash of infatuation and burned up in the fires of chaotic masculinity. They felt intense but they didn't feel serious. Her and Will's relationship had been born in an app, and Gracie felt that it was her first of the adult variety. Will was intelligent and soft-spoken, qualities which in their combination were new to her in a romantic partner. Their life in Austin had already fallen into a comfortable routine, and though she wished sometimes he would be a little more assertive or demonstrably affectionate, she could live with it in the name of being with someone who so obviously respected her.

Gracie wanted to stop at one of the markets, or maybe go shopping, or grab a drink at one of the grand cafes, but Will said he was tired. Whenever she looked over he was gazing straight ahead, eyes unfocused, looking at nothing. Something was up. She tried to resist the urge to interrogate him. “Everything good babe?” she finally asked, unable to hold back any longer.   

“Yeah.” He couldn’t even look at her.

They approached their hotel, which was close to the central train station and its busy shopping area. It was late December, almost Christmas, everyone was off of work, and the streets were crowded with shoppers and partiers, two activities which seemed to blend together in a way that they did not back in the states. Gracie looked longingly at all the revelers drinking on the street, then back at Will, to see if he could clock and acquiesce to her desire to have fun with him on vacation. No such luck.

“I think I might stay out and have a drink before dinner,” she said.

“Go ahead.”

“You don’t want to join me? We're only in Europe a couple more days.”

“We’ve been drinking a lot, and I’m tired. But you should go ahead.”

She paused in front of their hotel, tried to meet his gaze, but there was no gaze to be met, just the same odd vacancy.

            “No, I’ll just come up with you. I’m tired too.”

#

When they got back to the hotel room, Will took a long shower and then lay on the bed looking at his phone in silence. The hotel was older and a bit worn-down; a big radiator blasted away under the window. Gracie had wanted to stay somewhere nicer, but by the time they planned the trip all the good hotels remaining were too expensive or in less attractive neighborhoods. She had been irritated at Will for procrastinating their trip preparation, and was now doubly irritated that he didn't want to take advantage of the one nice thing about their hotel--its location. She took out her journal and wrote it's normal to fight on vacation. Then she put it away and looked at her phone until it was time to go to dinner.

            Dinner was at a famous Wienerschnitzel restaurant. It was old and lively, full of Viennese charm, and they split a bottle of wine, but Will stayed quiet. As Gracie got a little drunk, she decided not to cave to his strange mood and began chattering away about her family (political arguments between her father and brother), her work (passive aggression between her boss and her boss's boss), and the book she was reading (Trick Mirror). "There's this essay about marriage. She says that modern weddings are a relatively recent invention and there's all this importance placed on the like, physical act of marriage, especially if you're a woman. But it's incredibly expensive for everyone and a huge amount of work and pressure and it only lasts like 6 hours. And it's like, why? People act like it's this old-fashioned ritual but actually this version of it is pretty new and mostly just extractive. I mean I can see wanting to be married, but I don't know about getting married. It just seems like such a hassle. I don't even really like going to weddings." She paused and took another swallow of wine. "My mother would not enjoy this essay though. No ma'am."

            Back at the hotel, it was the same story: Will awkward and monosyllabic, claiming fatigue. The sounds of drunken European merriment from the street below were shockingly loud. Gracie wanted to power through Will's malaise. She thought about trying to get him to fuck her. Maybe that would bridge the gap. But she looked at his bearded face as he gazed into his phone and could conjure no desire. Plus she was pretty full of Schnitzel. Though this was an extreme instance, she had noticed that Will got like this; to her it seemed like a typically male trait, becoming distant and evasive whenever some even mildly difficult emotion began to surface. But they were on vacation; if he didn't want to talk to her about what was going on, he should at least have the decency to do a better job at pretending. There was no way around it: he was being weird. Sighing aggressively enough that she hoped he would notice, she turned over on her back and closed her eyes.

#

She awoke some hours later in the middle of the night, her head throbbing a little from the wine, her mouth dry and her breath coming out hot. She was in that special state of hotel-room confusion, and it took her a moment to register Will crying softly beside her. She rolled over towards him and put a hand on his chest. "Babe? You okay?"

            He rolled away from her. She hoisted herself up to a seated position, took a drink of water, and looked at Will for a moment before she placed her hand on his back."

            "Babe, what's going on?"

            "Nothing. I'm fine. Let's talk about it in the morning."

            "Babe, let's talk about it now.

            "Gracie, I just want to sleep. I'm tired and I want to sleep. Please just let me sleep."

            Gracie unfurled her biggest sigh of the trip. "Fine, let's go to sleep."

            She turned over grumpily and breathed hard through her nose.

            After a moment, Will muttered something.

            "What?" Gracie said.

            "Everything's just so dark."

            "I know babe. It's the middle of the night."

            "No I mean, everything."

            Gracie got up and turned on the lamp. The alarm clock read 3:47. "What do you mean Will?"

            Will was sitting up now. He was shirtless, and his pale chest rose and fell with each breath. "I've just been feeling really weird ever since we saw that painting."

            Gracie's irritation was mutating rapidly into concern. "What painting?"

            "The Bosch. The Last Judgment. I don't know, it just really...did something to me."

            Gracie did not know what to do with this. "Okay?"

            "I know it sounds stupid, but don't judge me, okay? If I'm going to talk to you about this, I need to know that you're not judging me."

            "Well I mean, it's called The Last Judgment, so--"

            "--I'm serious, Gracie."

            "Yeah, okay, babe, sorry, you know I wouldn't judge. Seriously."

            "Okay. So, when I was 11 years old, my grandpa died, right? Of cancer."

            "Yeah?" Gracie was trying to muster all the sympathetic sweetness she could, but it was not enough to cut through her confusion.

            "I remember having this feeling for the first time in my life, where I really understood the permanence of death. It wasn't just that I was sad about it, which I was, but that I understood what had happened. Like, tangibly. The reality of losing consciousness forever. We went to Arizona for the funeral and I remember lying awake in the hotel room, with my brother in the bed next to me, and just thinking about it. Thinking about what it would feel like to be dead. It would be like going to sleep and not waking up. Ever. And it would happen to me. Because it happens to everyone. At some point in my life, if I was lucky, I'd be lying down in a bed just like this one," he paused to smack the hotel bed with his right arm. "And I would be experiencing consciousness for the last time.

            "And once I thought about it, I couldn't stop thinking about it. For a while, whenever I would watch violent movies and a character died--even some random bad guy--I would just feel this profound...disturbance. I felt...connected to this reality. The reality of death. I just couldn't square the fact that I was going to die with the fact that I was alive. And for a pretty long time I just felt freaked out.

            "So when I was looking at The Last Judgment, there's all this horrible, fucked-up shit, shit that I couldn't even imagine, and all of a sudden I felt it again. This like, death-poisoned thing. There's so much evil out there. So much terror. It just felt present.

            "And I started thinking this is a vision of hell. And it doesn't matter if hell is real or not, because the world already is hell. What's the difference? So many people in so many places experience so much suffering on a daily basis. And when you consider the whole span of human existence it gets even worse--it's so incredibly rare to not just be suffering all the time. I was standing there and seeing all these things and thinking about how it all came from one person's imagination and then thinking like, this actually doesn't come from one person's imagination, it comes from the world that we live in. Famine and slavery and genocide and war and...whatever. It's all there all the time. It's a fact. Like death. Living in the world requires this huge amount of denial. We have to not think about the fact that all of this horrible shit is going on because if we did, we'd go crazy. All these people in other countries and they're suffering because of us."

            "Wait, Will, stop, please."

            "What?" Will was red eyed and red faced. He was wound up, his words coming out in an uncontrolled torrent, as if Gracie wasn't even there.

            She paused for a moment as the radiator started clanking. She felt awake but light-headed, her body fully attuned to mounting crisis. It was too hot. She got up and went over to the thermostat on the wall, but it didn't seem to be working--the dial just slid around with a disorienting lack of friction.

            She returned to sit at the foot of the bed. Now that she understood what was going on, Gracie still had no idea what to do about it. She understood what Will was saying and didn't even entirely disagree with any of it. But the suddenness and intensity of his feelings scared her. She said, "I'm trying to follow you but I feel like you're getting carried away. Why is all the suffering because of us?"

            He launched back in with no hesitation: "Are you serious? I mean, our way of life, western neoliberal capitalism...it depends on the suffering of others. We couldn't have all this stuff if it weren't for the suffering of others. Sweatshop labor where workers are poisoned and kept in poverty. The constant covert warfare in other countries. The occupation of Palestine that the US funds. I work for fucking Facebook for god's sake. The amount of energy it takes to keep our servers running...I mean...fuck! Our way of life would not exist without the immiseration of huge numbers of people, not to mention the destruction of the natural world. And then there's everything we do to animals! I mean, even just eating factory farmed meat: these animals are literally tortured to death. I mean sitting there in that restaurant, all the fucking veal that comes through that place. I wanted to throw up! You don't have to believe in conspiracy theories or be crazy to know about this stuff! It's all real! And it's just the stuff that we know about! It's the tip of the iceberg! All the comfort in our lives, it has an equally horrible opposite!"

            "Yeah, but that doesn't make it our fault. We didn't ask for any of this."

            "But that's the whole point, we don't have any say in the matter. None of us. We're all just given a part to play in this absolutely brutal world, where we're either suffering or benefitting from the suffering of others, and we're all in denial about it."

            "I don't know Will. I think there's a difference between trying to enjoy the life you've been given and living in denial."

            "Sure, you can try, but what can you really do? Any good we've have done is outweighed by all the suffering caused by our consumption. Like, how much money have we spent just on this vacation that we could have used to feed people who are hungry? In a couple days we'll be opening presents paid for by your dad's Raytheon pension."

            "Jesus, Will, I thought you liked my dad."

            "I DO LIKE YOUR DAD." Will seemed to realize that he was losing control of the conversation. He breathed deeply, tried to compose himself. Then he said "you're paying attention to the wrong part of this. It's not about us. It's not about you or me. It's about everyone else. We're all so numb to everything around us. We're not awake. No one is."

            Gracie wasn't sure that this was fair. She paused, caught between instincts to comfort and argue. She got up fully onto the bed and moved closer to Will. "What about all the beauty in the world."

            "What about it."

            "Well, if you're not awake to all the pain, maybe you're not awake to all the beauty."

            "Maybe I'm not."

            "Baby, you're so empathetic, and that's great, I love that so much about you, but like, I'm kind of struggling to totally understand what the whole crisis is here."

            "Life is a crisis! That's what I'm saying! Life is in crisis! All the time! And we never acknowledge it!"

            "Okay, okay, okay. I hear you."

            "You're being obtuse Gracie. You're not listening to me. I'm trying to get you to understand how I'm feeling and honestly it seems like you don't want to hear it."

            "I do want to hear it. I do. It's just...a lot. It's late and I have a headache and it's a lot. That's all. I'm just wrapping my mind around it."

            Will began to cry, and then the crying turned to shaking and heaving. Gracie tried to wrap her arms around him but he withdrew and cried harder. When he quieted down, Gracie said "babe, I'm really worried about you. This seems like a panic attack or something. Should we go to the hospital?"

            "No." His voice was scarily quiet.

            "Are you sure? I get being freaked out by this stuff but this is...worrisome. I don't like seeing you like this."

            "I'll be okay. I'm just upset."

            "Will, this is like, not normal."

            "I don't know what you want me to say."

            "It was just a painting!"

            Will exhaled hard through his nose.

            Gracie said, "I want to help you. But you don't seem like you want to be helped."

            "Gracie, I don't have the energy for this anymore. It's the middle of the night, let's get some sleep."

            But Gracie was not tired, and some part of her was not ready to let this moment pass.

            She said, "okay so now you don't have the energy?"

            "Oh my God, Gracie, I'm sorry, I just...I'm having a hard time and I don't want to argue with you."

            Now a tear began to form in each of Gracie's eyes. "Don't you like our life together?"

            "What?"

            "I mean, is everything really so bad? We have each other. We have a nice life together."

            "Gracie, that's not what this is about."

            "But is it not?"

            "No. It's not."

            "I just like...this is the most emotion I've ever seen you show. And I don't understand why this is happening now. With me."

            "Gracie, why are you doing this?"

            "I'm not doing anything Will. You're the one who's..."

            "I'm having a hard time. Why are you making this about you."

            "Because we're in a relationship. You're my boyfriend and we're on vacation together and we were having a nice time and then all of a sudden you are losing your mind because of a painting, and I'm sorry but this just like seems like it might be a little bit about me."

            Will exhaled hard again. "Jesus Christ Gracie."

            "Well, I mean, am I wrong?"

            "No! I don't know! Why are you doing this?"

            Now Gracie was starting to cry in earnest, tears forming gently and sliding elegantly down her cheeks, an easy type of crying she'd done hundreds of times, not like Will's all-or-nothing outburst, just a little display of emotion, right there on the surface, a good and nice way to draw someone closer. "I'm just worried about you. And I'm worried about us. I'm worried that you haven't been having a good time. I'm worried that you don't really like me. I'm worried that you secretly think I'm not smart. I'm worried that you hate my parents. I'm worried that our life is not good enough for you."

            In that moment, all Will would have had to do was comfort her with his body. He wouldn't even have to say anything. Was that so hard? He could have turned to her and held her in his arms and stroked her hair and whispered a little shush in her ear and then everything would be okay, and they would fall into a dazed sleep and wake up feeling closer to each other than before.

            But he couldn't even do that.

#

Six years later, Gracie received a Facebook message from Will. It was long and rambling, and seemed to be precipitated by her incumbent marriage. He apologized for his conduct in Vienna, and said a lot of stuff about his "journey" towards "the center of knowledge" which had rendered him "whole in the presence of God's light." She clicked around his internet footprint and confirmed what she had already started to see before she stopped paying attention, which was that he had gone down some illegible path of new-agey cultishness and had emerged on the other side as something unrecognizable to her. She looked at his professional website where he marketed himself as an "integral theory consultant," and offered personal spiritual coaching sessions for $200 an hour. He now had long hair pulled back from his face, which beamed at her.

            She had not finished reading the message as she paused and looked out the office window of the Victorian in East Oakland that her fiancée had bought after he sold his startup, and that she begun the process of refurbishing after being laid off from her job at Snapchat. She felt more emotional than she had expected. The morning after Will's breakdown, when he told her that he couldn't be with her anymore, she had felt oddly calm, proud of herself, as if she had just executed some difficult technical maneuver. He had flown back to Austin the next day, and she had gone to recover at her parents' house. A couple months later the pandemic hit, and a couple months after that she got a new job and uprooted her life and became, in California, the person she had been meant to be all along.

            She might have expected to feel angry, or triggered, or even just annoyed by this unsolicited dispatch from someone that she now believed she had never really known. His mode of address certainly reminded of that sleepless night when she had first realized, almost in spite of herself, what she needed from a partner. But she felt for a moment oddly tender towards Will. She wondered what her life might have been like if she had stayed with him. Maybe they both would have quit their jobs when the pandemic hit and moved to the woods somewhere. Maybe she would have gotten into meditation or become vegan or written a novel. Maybe she would have come to practice ethical non-monogamy, or gone to law school, or learned to surf.

            Her dog barked downstairs, just once. She started to get up from her chair but it was probably nothing. They never would have stayed together.

            She read the rest of the message. It moved from apology and earnest declaration of wellness to something stranger, some kind of condescending mode in which he seemed to suggest that she was not living her life correctly. As if he knew anything about her life.

            "I remember you so fondly, but when I find myself reflecting on our time together I am filled with unease: I think that I failed you. I was so young and so near the beginning of my journey that I showed you a false vision of my reality. I worry that, in my attempts to lead a righteous life, I turned you off to a potential path of lightness and (forgive the pun) grace. I write you now in hopes of remedying that mistake, for which I again apologize. I like so many others have found immense comfort and strength in renouncing material rewards. Helping others become whole is the north star that guides me now. If you'll share your address with me, I'd like to send you some materials--a few books that have helped me immeasurably, and maybe some small tokens of my appreciation and goodwill. If you're not comfortable with this, I understand. But I would not have felt right if I had not reached out and said my peace to you. I wish you nothing but health and happiness as you embark upon this new chapter of your life."

            The apology she liked. The suggestion that he could help her she did not.

            Her comfortable melancholy ended abruptly, she shut her laptop and walked downstairs to see to her dog. He had peed on the welcome mat and was looking up at her with embarrassment. She sighed and said "fuck, Sushi, what the hell."

Rob is a writer based in Los Angeles. His fiction has appeared in Midcult, and his nonfiction in Brooklyn Vegan and Invisible Oranges. He is the associate producer of premium vertical series content such as Seduction Cove, Video Game Romance, and Gossip Godmother.