THE LAST KIDS

That year the children stopped coming. We stopped getting pregnant; we stopped giving birth. But you wouldn’t know about any of that, would you, my dear? You weren’t even there. It was simply a spontaneous response to a situation that shocked and disturbed us. We were all so filled with a collective shame and horror at what that wretched boy had done, our wombs just seemed to close at the thought of another such monster springing forth from our loins. How would we like it then? We thought about the boy’s mother, the shame that poor woman felt. The fear, too. People were crying for her blood as well.

We stopped having kids.

We called in to the radio talk shows, we wrote letters to the editor. Bad enough he was a fellow countryman, we said. Lord, embarrassing. But he was a boy any one of us could have birthed. We could have pushed him out after several agonising hours of bloody childbirth, supported his downy head while he suckled our breasts. We scrutinised the pictures of the boy the TV newscasts used. We studied them for any signs. Was there a wide sloping forehead? Wide set eyes? A broad nose? Those were characteristics of the criminal profile, you know.

But instead, we saw an innocent face, a baby face. Smiling eyes. A broad smile. His teeth were milk white, gleaming like bathroom tiles in his mouth. This was not the face of a killer. He looked like one of our own.

He could have belonged to any one of us. Of course, the boy was not the only one to push us into the state of national disgrace. There were incidents around the world with the sticky fingerprints of our countrymen all over them in England, Canada, Russia, and even as far away as Australia. Innocent people stabbed, held up, decapitated. It was intolerable.

We rallied the troops. The movement spread world-wide. We held midnight meetings in the park. Under navy skies, with watery half-moons and dreamy prickles of stars, we screeched through loudspeakers. “No more children!” we whooped, as trees sighed around us and the clotted dreadlocked bums in their cardboard box homes muttered under their rum breaths.

The more sentimental breeders among us were made to see the wisdom of our decision. Young brides who wanted to procreate. We held their hands, convinced them not to. It was for the greater good. We were taking a stand. We would no longer be mothers. It was the only way to rid our city, our country, of potential evil. We were breeders of monsters, men, who eventually got older and raped and killed and terrorised us. It was perfectly reasonable, we felt.

We stared suspiciously at the kids who’d just been born, who’d just made it under the wire. We examined them like specimen under a microscope. Should we off them? No, we decided, we’d keep tight reins on them. No TV. No books. Nothing. These Last Kids would be perfect, a super species. No monsters.

We agreed.

At first the men worried. They were afraid for us. Maybe they were a little afraid of us. Then there was the fact that we’d retired from sex. Our avenues became still, no longer filled with the muted sounds of beds creaking, moans of ecstasy, and headboards slapping the walls. Instead, our rosebush-lined streets with their double garages gave way to the thin buzzing whines of power drills and other such distractions. A thin whistle permanently filled our ears.

We got older, we all did.

Years, months, days.

Then, after Camelot, the mayhem.

Overseas, there were rumblings of Last Kids revolting. Our perfect children! They were falling upon each other, baring their teeth like crazed packs of hyenas in the streets. They smashed shop windows and vandalized their neighbours’ homes.

At first we blamed repressed sexual energy.

But that wasn’t it. The Last Kids were middle-aged now. They realised they were the end of the line. They were panicked at the thought of the world ending after their generation. They were being strangled by their own vanity, and the natural need for procreation. They felt what we were all feeling: they missed the soft yield of baby flesh, the sweet baby smell of innocence and talcum powder. They missed staring into the eyes of little miniatures of themselves and experiencing that delicious shock of reflection therein.

They threw out their birth control devices. Burned them. That was the real bonfire of the vanities! What hadn’t happened in years, the threat of a mad world, suddenly hovered like a nuclear mushroom bloom on the horizon. A wave of crime rippled across the oceans. The trees shivered in the breeze and the moon appeared murky and unreal in the sky.

Years went by.

We grew older still.

Years, months, days.

The babies started coming again. And once again homes became filled with the sounds of colicky crying, and we returned to the old natural disorder and chaos that had governed us all those years ago. We could hardly remember that time, that life had become dim in our memory. But we were headed there, we knew that for sure.

Then there was the interview. The boy, who had escaped the chair because of his age then, spoke from his prison cell via satellite. He was now a grey, old man. Hardly a boy anymore. Spidery lines had sprouted on his face. His smile had dimmed. He was barely recognisable after the gap of so many years. He addressed the same strawberry blonde reporter who had interviewed him as a boy. She too had gone grey, come out of retirement for a final scoop.

The boy spoke not of the remorse he felt at the murders. Instead, he spoke about the action we had taken. “It’s basically genocide,” he said. He had earned college degrees during his incarceration. “It is wrong. No good can come from repressing natural instincts.”

Natural instincts, the aging strawberry blonde reporter repeated, a slight curl to her top lip.

He was half-right, of course. Crime statistics shot up. Restraint had given way and the bottom had fallen out again. In rose bushes at night, masked burglars lurked. There were drive-by shootings. People began being held up at ATMS. Worse, more hideous and gruesome murders began again in earnest. The world became black again. Our perfect world was no more.

That’s how it was, once upon a time, a long time ago. For a while it was good, it was Camelot. But you did not know how it started. You were not there. This is your history. This is how you came to be born. This is why you’ve come now, as bright as you dare, to be pointing that gun at an old woman, who has seen everything, who just wants now to sleep. So go ahead. Do what you want to do. Pull that trigger. I do not care. I am content with my memories. The question is, will you be with yours?