The End of the World by Andrew Biss Page B

of–”
    Just then, Mrs. Anna rushed towards the sink and began striking at the Monsignor with the broom. “All right, that’s enough! Out! Out of here!” she commanded.
    The Monsignor shielded himself with his arms, his seething condemnations continuing to spew forth. “Doomed! You’re all doomed! Especially you, faggot woman!”
    Mrs. Anna continued her attack with the broom with an aim and expertise that suggested to me that this was not the first time such a scene had played itself out in her kitchen. “Away!” she barked. “Back down! Down, I say! Get back down there!”
    Even as he began his retreat down into the sink, the Monsignor persisted with his rabid rant. “He’s watching you! He hates you! You’ll burn! You’ll see!”
    “Out! Out!” cried Mrs. Anna, her blows now raining down on top of the Monsignor’s head with increasing vigour.
    Almost out of sight, the Monsignor made one final attempt at making us see the error of our ways. “Burn! Rot! Rot in hell!” he gurgled, as his bruised and battered pate disappeared back into the decrepit plumbing system.
    “Down! Be gone!” Mrs. Anna continued, presumably for reassurance more than anything else, before delivering one final, decisive whack of her broom. “Out!” she proclaimed, triumphantly.
    I sat down in one of the chairs and held my head in my hands, attempting to make sense of the events that had just transpired. I looked up at Mrs. Anna in search of an explanation, but she seemed unaware of my presence. She was leaning up against the sink, catching her breath and wiping beads of sweat from her furrowed brow.
    “Good heavens, that was…a little out of the ordinary,” I understated.
    “I’m sorry,” she said, in a tone that struck me as a little defensive. “This place is old – these things happen.”
    “He just popped out…out of nowhere,” I explained.
    “They come from below. I think it’s the moisture, the dampness that attracts them. They’ve no place here, but still they come. I’m sorry.”
    “Mrs. Anna, I don’t wish to sound…well, ungrateful or disrespectful, but I must say thus far this establishment has fallen far short of my admittedly limited expectations.”
    “Look mister – whoever you are – you’re not so far from that life and not so very far from the next so count yourself lucky and stop complaining. I’m stuck here – stuck in the middle. If things crawl out of the sink or from under the baseboards I do what I can to eradicate them, but it’s not easy. They’re persistent. I offer you a place to stay in a moment of transition and I try to make it as comfortable as possible. But just you remember, this is temporary. For all I know I’ll be here for evermore.”
    “Perhaps I will be, too,” I contested. “None of us know what lies ahead. Perhaps I will end my days here. And if that’s so, with all due respect, I would hope to see some significant changes adopted in the day-to-day running of this operation.”
    “You? Hah!” she chided. “You’ll be gone before you know it. You all are eventually…almost all. But I’ll still be here, so don’t suppose to tell me what or what not to do. I do my best.”
    “How do you know how long I’ll stay here? As long as I continue to pay my rent on time there’s nothing to say I won’t be here for years to come…presuming the standards improve a little.”
    “Of course you won’t. You’ll be gone.”
    “You don’t know that,” I said, rather childishly.
    “Yes, I do,” she replied, equally childishly but far more confidently.
    “How? How could you possibly?”
    “It’s always the same with you people – here today, gone tomorrow.”
    “What people?” I demanded, somewhat incensed at the idea of being lumped into some generic, faceless subdivision of humanity.
    Mrs. Anna folded her arms and looked at me as if I were a half-wit. “Who do you think?” she said, with a slight roll of her eyes. “The dead, of course.”
    Just as