This is the perfect street for collusion.

The world is coming to an end. I get this feeling because people are worried that the resources they are using are limited. But no one wants to cut back. Other than my family, people still bathe twice a day and use their electricity as if these impermanent privledges are eternal rights, even though everybody knows the end is near. The Alesian Church is especially guilty. I was holed up at my parents' house trying to avoid marauders one evening, the sun having just gone down, when suddenly I heard, and seconds later saw, a white helicopter, descending wobbly and grotesque into the driveway. Either man or machine had been drinking, that was certain. I asked the pilot where he got such a thing and, moreover, gas for such a thing. He chuckled and said, "Well, the Alesians, of course."

He took me to their church. I thought it was "Elysians," but alas, the front door of their "temple" had it spelled all wrong. "They've got it all wrong," I thought. But they didn't. They had electricity, and they were all happy. They weren't talking about God or Jesus at all, just having fun and not worrying. Lots of apocalyptic games like tag and hide-and-go-seek.

A man came by my parents' house the other day. He was looking for my brother, said something about arms dealing. My father said he wasn't home. He covered for him. So he was pretty pissed when upstairs he found the square, clear plastic zip-up travel bag with two .38 revolvers in it. He yelled when he found the guns. My brother deserved it, the yelling, and my brother knew he deserved it. And this fact made him giggle. Usually when my brother giggles it is when he knows something is wrong and everyone else knows something is wrong and he makes it clear that he endorses that wrong something and this was no exception.

So my brother sat down next to me on the striped couch in the living room and yapped on about what a wuss my father - his stepfather - is. I told him he was wrong and he responded by momentarily paralyzing me. I'm not sure how he did it, which is something I often say about my brother (actually it's more like "I don't know how he does it"), but as my body was gradually returned its right to motion, that right I did exercise. Gradually. I began by rubbing his hand. I think we called it Injin burn - or something like that - when we were kids. But that was the nineties, back when we ate dinner at a table and prayed before meals. Then I bit his arm as dilligently as possible.

Then I punched him in the face, but not so dilligently. At first he laughed, but after a harder strike he said something soft and surprised like "Oh, that hurt." It was the kind of thing brothers might do to each other when they're young and horsing around. I guess you'd say we were just horsing around, but really I wanted to kick the shit out of him.

I have to get going now. After all it is snowing outside, the world is about to end, and I have to meet some friends at 40th street, which - I am about to find out - is the perfect street for collusion.