Malaise and Ennui (Short Story by Cody Banning)

     

I finished this just now, at around ten till one AM. Hope you guys enjoy!  

 Malaise and Ennui

    Despair sat in her rocking chair on the front porch of the cosmos. She knitted storm clouds together into beautiful blankets of deepest, darkest, gloom. She smiled as she watched her sister Chaos dance, glide, and rage through the universe, especially on a little planet called Earth. She watched her cousin Strife and Famine, and her uncle War, not really causing, but gently nudging the world deeper into her own arms. She smiled more broadly. She was so proud of her family. So proud. They all did their jobs flawlessly with the deft hands of experts, except, her own children. 

    

    She had twins, a daughter and a son. Malaise and Ennui weren’t the children Despair had always hoped for. Malaise sat around all day under an old dead tree in a graveyard in a Portland, Oregon reading Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson, thinking about funerals, hospitals, and grocery store queues, the most depressing parts of life. She checked her smart phone periodically and sent a SnapChat or deleted someone from her Facebook for disagreeing with her, or just for being too happy. Malaise was, to the few humans she had met, the most depressing girl they had ever seen. 

 

    Ennui spent his days in an internet cafe in Santa Monica, commenting on YouTube and Reddit about the futility of modern life on his MacBook Pro, wearing his American Apparel t-shirt and his Sperry boating shoes while drinking a designer, organic, half caf, soy, Chi Vente latte. Whenever an actual person speaks to him, he quickly runs them off with his regurgitation of Niche and Richard Dawkins. Even though his mother is a goddess and he, himself, a demi-god born of  human apathy and Despair herself, he is an atheist, because it is trendy and they are so oppressed. His posts online are filled with “trigger warnings” and NSFW tags, because they are so deep and philosophical that the “mainstream” doesn’t get it, man. They just don’t. He is not just a petty, selfish, self-important, sex-crazed sociopath. He’s a visionary, and being a visionary is painful, bro!

Despair watches her children and their daily lives and she is saddened by their lack of contribution, of effect on the world around them. If only they could cause just a few people to do– Wait. What’s this? Despair notices a young girl sitting alone in her room, she is talking to a friend on Skype and listening to some very depressing music in the background (Despair makes a note, she is going to have to start a new Pandora station for this band. Pandora. “Hmm, I wonder how her box is?” Despair digresses. Back to our regularly scheduled gossip session…). The young girl begins to relate a story to her friend.

“Like, my mom doesn’t even understand me.” Says the first girl.

“Oh Emm Gee, I fuhreeking know. My mom is such a total curmudgeon about things. I can’t even.” Says the second girl.

 

     “I know, like, I am just dripping with malaise here but she just doesn’t get it. She tells me how privileged I am. Like, how not ‘every teenage girl has the money to have an iPhone and a car,’ puhhhhleeze. My iPhone is only a fuhreeking five ess and my car is a tahwenty-freeking-thirteen. They’re both like, two years old now. I was a babe of fourteen when this car rolled out new. Eww.” Says First Girl.

“Ugh, I know. It’s so disgusting. My iPhone is a six, but not a six plus. Mom was all, ‘Why does such a little girl need such a big phone,’ and I was all, ‘So it’s at least as big as everyone else’s, Ma. Jeezus,’ She doesn’t get it.”

“Mine either. I am so in despair right now.” Firsty finished as she flopped backward on her bed clutching her chest.

    Despair put down her knitting. She walked into her cosmic house and slipped into a little Caucasian number. Blonde with striking features, sunglasses, black dress, and floppy black hat. She called it her Jessica Lange outfit. The resemblance was there. She then popped into a little cemetery in Portland, Oregon. As she appeared in a puff of depressing smelling smoke, Malaise looked up from her reading (It was something about shades of grey, Despair thought she would look into this later, it sounded delightfully depressing.).

    “Hello, Mother.” Malaise sighed.

    “Hello yourself, you little scamp. I sat up there for years knitting rainy days and darning discouragement thinking that you and your brother had done nothing to contribute to the family business, but look at you!” Despair was almost laughing with happiness.

    “Yeah. Whole generations of people who don’t care about anything but themselves. It’s not exactly news, Mom. What’s the big deal?” Malaise went back to her reading.

    “What’s the big— The big deal is this. You have found a whole new way to cause despair! It is a new kind of despair altogether. I think I need to go back to college or something!”

 

    “Congrats, Ma. While you’re there, can you drop off these bad professor evaluations to Ennui so he can post them to ratemyprofessor.com? Also, can you go now. I need to get back to brooding. Thanks.”

Despair popped across the country to Santa Monica to visit her son and brag about his sister’s accomplishments. She was only a little taken aback by her daughter’s devil-may-care attitude, mainly because she was so happy not to have raised two good-for-nothings. As these thoughts were flowing through the caverns of her brain like fresh rain water from the mountains of success, she stopped in amazement. There seemed to be a ton of carbon copies of her son around her. Listening to portable record players, leaning against scooters and drinking from metal flasks, or crying in front of art-house movie theatres as they talked of their goings on, saying things like:

“That film was so full of ennui. It made me feel such beautiful despair.”

or

    “In this album you can really taste the artist’s pain. The ennui courses through my veins and leaves me with a grey and foreboding desperation.”

or

“So I stopped by the side of the road, cranked my Hi-8 a few times and shivered with ennui as the tears ran down my face. I despaired that the sunset I was filming could be mankind’s last if North Korea decided to push one button.”

Despair smiled widely. She walked into the coffee shop her son was in, she was now clad in flannel and short khaki shorts, red hair hanging to her waist. A t-shirt under her flannel featured three wolves baying at a moon made of what looked like quinoa. Ennui stood, a tear coming immediately to his eye in a overly practiced fashion. He embraced his mother deeply and wept openly. He stepped back, quickly clicking the iLife camera on his Mac to life. He spoke, “This is my mother. She birthed me, and from her I began. I came to her not in a flood of blood and placenta, but in a cascade of melancholy. I sucked from her bosom the knowledge of dashed hopes and grew into despondency. This is the she. This. Is. She.” The room erupted into applause, tears now staining many faces.

“Revel in the beautiful sorrow together, my brother!” Yelled one bespectacled youth, his mustache curled perfectly.

“Do you know all of these people? Have you told them about me?” said Despair.

“Not before just now, Mother, and yes, I know them. We share our spectacular gloom together. We despair together, Despair,” He winked.

“I thought all of these years that you just sat here on this computer contributing nothing to your family,” Despair looked at her son in smiling disbelief.

“I did sit here, Mom, but as I sat here I created a new kind of despair through internet trolling, cyber bullying, helicopter parenting, social media zombies and dubstep. I have made your job wireless, Mom,” He smiled.

“Well, what can I say except, ‘carry on with the good work’? Here, your sister gave me this,” Despair handed her son the flash drive Malaise had given her, “She seemed to think you’d know what it is.”

“Oh, I do. Thanks mom.” He hugged her a long moment, stepped back and announced, “My womb!!!” The room erupted again.

Despair just smiled and waved as she blinked away in a puff of smoke.

“Did I mention she’s an illusionist?” Ennui said to the room of shocked spectators who erupted into flannel and American Apparel clad applause for the third time in ten minutes.

As Despair returned to her porch, she sat down to her knitting with refreshed purpose, fired up YouTube, and watched fail videos long after the sun had gone to the other side of that little rock called Earth below. She smiled as she looked on, realizing that her two children were not only worthy, but innovative. She pumped one fist in the air, framed her eye with two fingers, whispered ‘Swaaaaag!’ quite loudly, and continued to knit, content.