The Ascension
Carrie didn’t have any kind of visa to stay in the country. Her tourist visa had run out six months prior and she’d ended up working for cash at her friend Marianne’s holistic bookstore. That was where she met Bruce. Twice a week he came in to do healing sessions in the back room and sell his book, A Human Being’s Guide to Ascension.
On their first meeting Bruce began by telling her a number of things about herself. The first thing he said was: “Stop running. You won’t be happy until you stop running.”
Carrie kind of agreed. She had been thinking the same thing herself for a number of years. Running had been the proper response at one point but not anymore.
Two weeks later she moved in with him.
Bruce lived in a neat fibro house on the main street of a wheat and sheep town. Once, his parents had owned the entire town and all the land surrounding it. When they died, they left it to Bruce, their eldest son.
Bruce was extremely good looking. Carrie thought he looked like one of the male models in a Country Road billboard she passed every day on her way to work. He was tall and tanned and had all the chiseled, masculine angles that were considered attractive. It seemed there was something untrustworthy about such good looks, but she supposed he couldn’t really help that. And he had a nice place, neat and clean. The perfect place to stop running.
The first night, he ran her through his “end times prophesies.” He explained that they were living in the last days, that society was coming to an end, and only those who were pure enough, and had done the spiritual work, would ascend to heaven. He even had a date for all this to occur: one month away.
That first night, he sat under a reading lamp on the other side of the lounge room. It was strange, Carrie thought, that he didn’t want to get close or make any sexual advances. He had asked her to move in with him and she had agreed, under the assumption that he was attracted to her and that they would begin a sexual relationship. Instead, Bruce talked on for hours; there seemed to be no end to his doomsday monologue, and he hardly took a breath, let alone the time needed to make any moves. He explained that in a past life he had been Jesus Christ of Nazareth. “I was born Jewish, saw the error of the Jewish faith and began preaching the message of loving kindness from the age of thirty.” He spoke in a sharp monotone, matter-of-fact, as if someone had asked him about drenching sheep.
At first Carrie thought that the ascension he spoke of was some sort of internal enlightenment or transcendence of the mind. But soon he was unfolding diagrams of bodies ascending to the heavens, pictures of corpses rising from tombs. There were abstract blue celestial beings, there were photocopies of newspapers articles – the US invasion of Afghanistan, China’s nuclear arms – all highlighted and sticky-noted, all fulfillment of prophesy as put forth in the Book of Revelation, which he also kept close at hand on the side table, a well-worn gilt-edged copy.
“You see,” he beat his finger against a large chronological, illustrated list of political events, “You see, it’s all here – you can see it, can’t you?”
Carrie nodded. His eyes were glistening and intent behind his reading glasses; he had his leg folded over like he was a real scholar. Carrie’s first instinct was to laugh, but she held it back. His cheeks glowed pink, as if he was about to burst from the sheer joy of sharing his findings. Staring down at the swirling carpet between them, Carrie thought that everyone did carry on with such a lot of bullshit in life, why was his bullshit any worse than the usual?
At close to midnight, Carrie yawned. “So what do I need to do?” she asked. “Like, to ascend?”
“Believe,” he whispered energetically, “all you have to do is believe what I’m saying is true.”
That seemed easy enough. She had believed all sorts of stupid things in her life, like the idea that hard work paid off. She had believed in friendships and family, in trust and loyalty, she had even believed in “The One.” At thirty-nine, she often had trouble committing to generally accepted concepts like work, relationships, morality. But she thought if she put her mind to it, it might work.
Carrie asked if he had any wine; she usually drank a bottle a night. Bruce informed her that they must remove all defilements – there was no time for distracting diversions or self-indulgence if they were to work towards ascension. He explained that she would have to follow his strict raw food, no-sugar diet. There would be a lot of fasting over the next few weeks. This, Carrie realized, was going to be the hardest part.
At midnight, Bruce showed her to the spare room he had prepared for her. The room smelled of fresh paint, and the crisp pink and yellow bedsheets, she could tell, were brand new. She didn’t know whether to feel relieved or rejected when he said goodnight abruptly and shut the door. On the bedside table was a fresh bunch of white daisies in a glass vase. She lay down and watched the water in the vase tremble slightly with the sound of a distant beat. She had heard it earlier. It must have been coming from the pub down the road. She closed her eyes and fell asleep.
* * *
She didn’t find out until a week later that everyone in town called him “The Jesus Guy.” They were at the annual agricultural show where Bruce had a stand doing palm readings and healing sessions. Bruce had bailed up the man selling chili jam a few stalls down.
“Yup, died on the cross, all of that,” Bruce had said. “Paid for your sins.” He pointed his finger right into the man’s chest as he talked, just in case the man thought he didn’t die for him specifically. The man laughed and Bruce said, “Oh you laugh. You laugh because you know it’s true!”
Carrie, sitting at the stall, felt herself slide down in the chair, hiding behind the piles of Bruce’s pamphlets and books. She watched a local woman walking past turn to her friend and say, “Jesus is at it again.” The friend closed her eyes and a look of pain shot across her face before she opened them. It was a weary rebuff, a mannerism Carrie felt some affinity with.
She sat at the stall as the heat rallied against her, wondering what she’d gotten herself into. She fantasized about secretly buying a hot dog and an ice-cream, but she was just too exhausted by the heat, and the lack of a decent meal, to move. It seemed the town was already taking a toll on her. For the first week it had been radiant. So completely opposite to everything she’d ever known in Europe. She thought, how could a place like this exist? That humans inhabited it exhilarated her.
After that first week, the intensity of the heat seemed to bore holes in her eyeballs. She blinked and squinted, her eyes red and weepy. She had to wear sunglasses constantly. When she opened her mouth, flies entered. Words came out hard and blunt and gravelly. Her face seemed to change shape just from looking at it all. Nothing new came or went in that town. The wheat fields all around were yellow seas, shimmering with white heat like they could morph into giant fireballs right before her eyes. She started to think maybe the world was ending, maybe these were in fact the last days.
During the second week, they went to the sale yards to sell off the lambs. Bruce had disappeared and she was looking for him when a man approached.
“Listen,” he said. He talked loudly, his hot tobacco breath charged at her face. “I dunno what your story is, but I’m Bruce’s brother.”
“Oh, it’s nice to meet you, I didn’t know…”
“You know he’s completely out of his mind. You know that, don’t you? We have to call the mental health unit every other week to come and take him away. Guy’s a fucking nut job.”
The brother barely looked at her as he talked, preferring to squint over the top of her head. Like Bruce, he was tall and sunburnt. Before she even knew how to respond he was walking away, shouting, “I’m through with the prick.” He threw his hands up, already three or four paces from her. “He won’t take his meds, won’t see the psych, this time he’s Jesus, last time it was fuckin’ Hitler! Christ!” The brother disappeared into the sales office. Carrie felt shriveled and stupid leaning against the steel railing of the sheep pens, her mouth still open in surprise despite the marauding flies.
Later in the afternoon, she lay on her bed and tried to focus on her breathing. The meditation sessions Marianne ran at lunchtime in the store often made her feel more relaxed. They stopped her mind running away. That was the thing, she could stop running, but her mind – that was a different matter. Her mind was constantly in movement, trying to solve, fix, plot, pre-empt. She tried to slow it down. What was she feeling? Anger? Anger that she had once again thrown herself at any port in a storm, as her mother would say?
She let out a deep breath. She had to say something to him. She had to have the courage to act differently, not act out of fear or some other emotional response. She remembered something she had read in a book Marianne had given her: “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.” It was never too late to live outside the shadow of the past; she’d be forty next year and this kind of behavior could just go on and on forever.
He came in from harvesting, glistening. Sometimes he looked so perfect, straight out of a commercial. That’s what he was – a commercial for life, not the real thing. She felt ripped off, then angry at herself for being so presumptuous.
“I wanted to talk to you.” She got up from the bed and came out to the kitchen.
“Talk? This isn’t the time. We need to pray, and clean up.” He looked around the house. Her butter and knife were still out on the kitchen bench. She’d bought a loaf of bread in secret, eating the whole thing in one afternoon.
Carrie felt puffs of silence leave her mouth. She wasn’t good at this. Initiating dialogue wasn’t her thing. After all, how do you ask someone if they’re crazy? She heard the shower turn on before she realized she was standing by herself in front of the kitchen bench.
That night she tried to justify her staying. Lying in bed, she told herself that she was getting used to the silence, enjoying it even. What better way to realize the important things in life than to partake in a countdown to the end of it?
At three in the morning Carrie decided to pack her bags. Enough with the false bravado, it was the best thing for both of them. Putting her belongings in the case she felt she was doing a good service, being dutiful. This was the one thing she knew how to do – leave, and she did it as efficiently and wordlessly as a night shift worker knocking off.
But this time she hadn’t thought it through. There was no way to get out of town, no buses or trains. All she could do was steal his car. But she thought – after working with Marianne, who was always going on about having integrity – that stealing should be beneath her. She’d been keeping a tally on all the immoral things she’d done and by this stage it wasn’t looking good.
She sat on the suitcase and considered what she really wanted in life. What would it all look like in five years’ time? Often she tried to imagine a small child, but she found anything to do with raising children tedious and draining. Her mind went to the other women in town; some of them had lived here for forty or fifty years. The thought of staying in one place for that long repulsed her. It felt like death, or a death of something.
The sun started to come up and she began unpacking everything again. She was busy folding her clothes and putting them back in the drawer when she noticed Bruce at the door, his face still puffed up with sleep.
“What are you doing?” he whispered. He wore checkered pajamas that were too big for him.
“Just tidying up,” she smiled.
* * *
She talked to Marianne at the bookstore the next day.
“I don’t think it’s going to work out,” she blurted out, “with Bruce.”
“Do you love him?” Marianne asked, rearranging the crystals on the front counter.
“I don’t know.” Those kind of pie-in-the-sky questions always annoyed her. “I can’t pin down emotions like that. I just wanted a place to think about my next move. That’s all.” She didn’t want to tell Marianne that she thought Bruce was crazy with the whole Jesus thing. She wondered if Marianne already knew that, and, if she did, why she hadn’t warned her. “I just needed something to look forward to, I guess. I’ve read about that type of condition. The reward center of your brain has been overstimulated in some way and it never quite calms down, always looking for some incentive, some prize. Maybe I took too much ecstasy when I was younger. Maybe I should be on antidepressants or something.”
“Maybe it’s just being human,” Marianne said.
It felt like Bruce was some kind of reward. When she first met him, straight away her brain had started hatching little plots and devising schemes to get him to notice her. The two weeks before she moved in were really the peak of the relationship – those two days a week when he came in to do spiritual healing and sell his guidebook. Those two days, she had dressed differently, she became a different person, a better person, someone she liked a whole lot more.
“Somewhere along the line, though,” she said to Marianne, “I got the idea that my purpose is to keep moving. I don’t like to get bored,” she adjusted the letters on the label-maker. “I suppose, I just don’t want to be boring. I want to be the interesting one at parties.”
“Don’t we all.” Then Marianne stopped what she was doing and smiled. “Sometimes you have to just trust that things will unfold as they should. Don’t try and think, or do – just be, just sit with it all a while.”
She swallowed hard and focused on the labeling of the incense sticks. Carrie had never had a long-term relationship. Some of her dalliances had definitely had potential but she had never stayed long enough to find out. The first argument or sign of trouble and she was out the door. She always left first, like it was some kind of competition, a running race. She always won, getting out while they were at work or asleep.
At the end of the fourth week, Bruce rented out the town hall and put an ad up in the shop window: The Coming Apocalypse and What to Expect. He stuck it in between an advert for a combine harvester and a handwritten Laying Hens Bales For Sale sign. Carrie gave him some options for wording it differently. “Maybe just invite people for a catch-up and a coffee,” she said. “Have something a little friendlier, less Doomsday.”
But Bruce said people needed the truth and there was no need for diluting it.
Nobody showed up of course. The inside of the town hall looked like it had been untouched since 1963. It smelt like wheat and dust and her modern jeans and sneakers seemed to juxtapose its very being. Carrie tried to busy herself making a cup of tea and looking at the old photos of the town’s celebrated farmers and football players. One of them she recognized as Bruce’s brother.
“I met him,” she pointed to the photo on the wall. “Your brother, I met him at the sale yards last week.”
Bruce was silent.
“You didn’t tell me you had a brother.” Carrie took a sip from her too-hot tea.
“He’s not my brother.”
“What do you mean? You’re obviously related. You even look alike.”
“He’s no brother.” He snapped his mouth over the words. “He’s an impostor, a heretic. He’s tried to silence me. They have ears but they do not hear.” Carrie could hear the shudder in his voice but she was tired of the charade.
“Well, I have eyes and I can see.” She turned to him, he sat next to the table of pamphlets in the otherwise empty hall. “Something isn’t right here.”
“Something isn’t right with me?” He looked up at her, suddenly lost and wretched.
“I don’t know, all I see is a lot of people …” He looked hurt and she wanted to backtrack, but she felt she’d talked herself into a corner. “A lot of people think you’re,” she paused, “incorrect.”
He looked out the open front doors of the hall like he was imagining a place he’d never been to. He seemed alarmed by the place, like he was digesting the confusing facts of it, trying to gain a picture of it in his mind. He scratched his arm thoughtfully and there was something so shy and genuine about his mannerisms. Carrie felt awful and half wished the world really was ending in a matter of weeks.
“I’m no false prophet. I want them to see the truth, that’s all. I’m not interested in making friends.”
Carrie nodded.
“You believe my brother?”
“No … sometimes I just wonder why you don’t have any followers besides me.”
“Maybe you’re the only follower I need.” His voice sounded hopeful. He adjusted the pamphlets next to him, making them more symmetrical.
After an hour of waiting, she headed back. Starving, she was intent on going past the town shop and pigging out on potato chips. Stepping out into the blazing afternoon sun, she glimpsed back to see him slumped in the plastic chair, one man in a giant hall, a big man made small. Pity was what she probably felt and she immediately regretted it. It was never good to pity someone – not good for them, not good for her. She wondered if that was one of the reasons she felt compelled to stay.
She hadn’t been home for five minutes when there was a knock at the screen door. From the silhouette she thought it was Bruce back already, but as she walked closer she saw it was his brother.
He gave a loud sigh. “I’ve been talking to the mental health nurses from Meckering. Bruce hasn’t taken his medication for a few months now.” He put his fist on the handle of the door. “Can you let me in or what?”
Carrie hesitated. Her illegal visa status had been on her mind the past few days, plus it didn’t really feel like her house to let people into. But the brother, with his self-assured swagger, was hard to say no to. She flicked the latch.
“They’re all worried he’s gonna do something,” the brother continued. “Thing is, you mighta cottoned on by now, Bruce is a paranoid schizophrenic. These are his pills.” He shook them up near his ear in a gesture that was patronizing and comical at the same time. He slapped the bottle on the kitchen bench. He took a distracted breath at the kitchen then headed back to the front door, shouting, “Now if he wants to go crucify himself to a light pole I don’t give a shit, but I promised the nurse I’d give ’em to him, because I’m meant to be his designated carer.” His thick fingers came up to air quotes on the last words.
Once again, before she had time to respond, he was out the door.
* * *
It was the tenth of December, two days until Ascension Day. Carrie took the box of pills from the bench. It had a bright orange design and various warning stickers. She opened the lower cupboard and carefully hid the box behind an old crockpot at the back. She noticed again the beat in the distance, coming from the pub. It was Friday night.
She didn’t hear Bruce enter the house; he was so quiet, padding in slowly after taking his boots off at the door. When she looked up from the book she was reading in the lounge room, she jumped at the sight of him. It was dark and the only light came from the small floor lamp next to her.
He looked like a cardboard cutout of himself – no buoyancy or life, just a representation of a man. In the low light, his face was shadowy and sunken, full of dips and curves.
“Are you okay?” Carrie asked.
He stared at a point in the kitchen, wide-eyed, transfixed. He couldn’t seem to hear her. Carrie got up from the armchair. Not until she was only a few steps from him did he register her presence. He flinched like he’d just noticed a projectile approaching his face.
“I need to take a shower.” He turned towards the bathroom.
Carrie wanted to follow him, but instead she said, “I’ll make you some food.” For once he didn’t protest. She made the coleslaw that he had made her on the first night she stayed with him. Listening as the shower turned on, she opened the cupboard and reached behind the crockpot. She broke two capsules sprinkling the contents over his bowl.
The next day she hid another in the morning juice he always drank.
Usually he slept only a few hours, staying up all night poring over his bible, scanning religious magazines and taking notes. Sometimes he prayed in supplicating, head-shaking murmurs. But on the evening of the 11th, at half past ten, Bruce fell asleep, on the couch, under a pile of Prophecy Watch magazines. He looked so peaceful that Carrie put a blanket over him and went to bed herself.
Nothing was said the next day. Bruce only came out of his room to get a glass of water around 7 a.m., his brows furrowed. She watched him from her bed as he went down the hallway back to his room. At about 9 a.m. she got up and knocked on his door. There was no sound and she turned the doorknob to find him lying on his back on the bed, completely still, his eyes wide open. She had to watch his chest intently to see the rise of his breath and decide he wasn’t dead. Slowly she tiptoed into the room and climbed across the bed. The sun was ramping up its offensive through the closed curtains, a crow was lamenting mournfully outside. They were both still here, very much on earth. They hadn’t been sucked into heaven or any other dimension of time or space. She lay next to him and hugged him tight and he didn’t try to stop her.
Nadine Browne is a writer and youth worker. Her work has been featured in The Moth, Overland, The Lifted Brow and ABC Radio Australia. She was a Starworks Fellow in NYU's MFA fiction program in 2019.
