The Apocalypse Monologues: Disease

We were in the subway, which was a terrible idea. My mom’s plan was to get us to City Island. She thought it’d be safe there. It wouldn’t be, but we were just looking for direction. We wanted to be told and we wanted to go. The subway platform was heaving, hemorrhaging sweat and fear. The sound was immense. You couldn’t hear the subway trains over pre-panic noise. Imagine: we all feared the touch of strangers and here were three hundred strangers crammed into a space to get onto an even smaller tube that would already have been full of sweaty, fearful strangers screaming to and failing to avoid one another’s touch. The disease spreads through various bodily contact: blood, vomit, spit, semen, shit like that. Sweat. And it spreads rapidly and horrifically. Loss of bodily control. Bleeding out of orifices. And agonizing screams. Howls, really. It’s animalistic. The disease fucks up your throat and nose, so that your vocals change. You don’t sound human, because you’re deforming. The infected seek people. As the disease starts to fuck them all up, they don’t want to be alone. It’s not malice on their part. It’s loneliness. They’ve got no cognitive capabilities. It’s all instinct. And they don’t want to die alone. They want help. So they go to people. And here we all were. A hateful, convulsing mass all doing the wrong thing. No good would come of this. And then the bad came. One of the infected stumbled down the staircase into the platform. There are supposed to be police officers containing the people who are obviously diseased. But, really, the people do a good job of policing the problem themselves. This guy was a mess. Not just from the bleeding out. Not just from the disease, but from the bludgeoning he received from whatever good Samaritans tried to beat him down. They were right behind him. You could hear the howls. The howls of the now-diseased vigilantes silenced the crowd and lit off a panic. But there was nowhere to go. Violence erupted, and the infected rolled their way toward the crowd, pushing against each other, stampeding on each other, climbing over each other. There was a rush to nowhere. The other end of the platform was locked. Dozens of people fell or jumped into the subway tunnels. Falling over each other, crushing one another, third-rail electrocution. Though the sudden noise was alarming, it was no surprise when shots rang out. People had started to conceal handguns. The distance with the gun seemed safer than beating away any of the diseased, unless the wounds sprayed blood on the shooter or anyone unfortunate enough to be close-by. Then a chain reaction would start. The people on the subway platform were shooting to clear a path for themselves, not at the diseased. At fleeing people. And then the subway train arrived. The conductor didn’t plan on breaking. He just planned on speeding by the platform. But the tunnels were full. Of people, healthy and otherwise. The train plowed through, I don’t know, a mass of, what?, a hundred? It sprayed people all over the train, the tunnels, the platform. Just a wave of blood. A mist of infected blood rained down on the riot of fear. It rained massacre. Fuck, the noise. It was like a God damned choir of howls. The infection was spreading. Every heartbeat spread more disease. My mom was screaming. But there was nowhere to go. I yanked the strings on my hoodie, trying futilely to protect my face from any sick. It was useless. My mother turned around toward me and gasped. My sister was on my shoulders, crying. I looked up to try to calm her, and she was painted with a film of gore. Blood was cascading out of her noise and ears, bubbling out of her mouth. She began to screech. Like a monster in chrysalis. She was six-years old. So small. She weighed, I don’t know, fifty pounds. I don’t know. Her body was so small. So small. So light. So light.
I threw her.
I threw her at the infected.
I threw her at the infected and ran.
I ran to the stalled train. Somehow, infected blood got into the train and I could see the process of fear and disease spread. The uninfected were like a steam of gasoline waiting for the fire to catch up to them. I scaled the train and ran down the length of it toward the end. To jump into the tunnels. To get to the surface. To run. To run. To run.

The last few moments of my mother’s life were unimaginable. I saw it. She saw me. She watched me do it. I destroyed Katie. And fled my family. The last thing I remember on my mother’s face was a look of horror as she starred at me, palpable disappointment, shock at betrayal by blood, confused dissonance at who I am versus what I did, before bloody hands dragged her to the ground.
She was screaming my name, before the screams turned to howls.

the caretaker

The caretaker
My caretaker leverages a tangle of muscle from my shoulder bone. He does it with practiced ease and grace, like a rail-thin waitress hefting a platter of filled coffee cups across the length of the diner.

I'd not hired this man to do these things. Or anything for that matter. He'd come to me without expectations on either end. We were both echoes of people, and together, we decided, we could temper ourselves into a single steady voice.

That never happened. Or maybe happened too soon. Whatever it was, we eventually found ourselves tumbling into vile domesticity.

As my life constricts around me, he only becomes more robust. He exterminates every speck of dust from the surfaces and then builds new surfaces. He deftly rearranges, spit shines, mows diagonal shapes in the lawn, and hauls wood for the continual fire.

He's expansive and tends to me in a way I find disgusting.

The quandary
It's a quandary. Am I expected to care for someone who gives me care if I want it or not? Does it have to be reciprocal? Or does care negate care?

I think about this a lot, but then he moves toward me, carrying things to comfort and cure, and the answers dart away like a shoal of erratic, translucent minnows.

A few slow bars
When I die, I want to come back here as a termite. I'll fang at the spotless unknown until the structure gives way and all is just collapse. It will make a glutton of me and I will be glad.

The muscle will climb back up onto the bone by sundown, but for now I feel ok. I can pad throughout the house without pain. Maybe whistle a few slow bars as I go.

Her teeth were the least of her problems.

Growing Up

Dad pushed himself back from the table. Looking down at the space he had made between himself and the table he started to speak, but then stopped himself and sighed. He looked over the round kitchen table at my plate. "Don't you like it?" he asked. I just shrugged and pushed the noodles around with my fork. Dad got up heavily, took his dish and walked past me into the family room.

He paused in front of the enormous potted plant that now took up most of that drab little room. Looking up at the canopy it formed above his head, he reached into the branches and plucked a brown leaf in a quick motion. I saw the edges of his mouth turn up slightly. He let the leaf fall to our floor and continued into his room. I heard the TV turn on and looked back down at my plate. I slid forward in my chair and let my feet touch the ground. I collected my plate and put it in the sink, watching the noodles slide slowly into a little pile near the drain.

Dad came out of his room with his small hand shears and started pruning his plant. He took enormous care in this, looking for any errant growth or sign of fatigue. After 10 minutes or so he stuck his thick finger into the soil, took it out and moved it under his nose. He inhaled deeply and went back into his room, returning with a small watering can. He walked past me in the kitchen and filled the can in the sink. Returning to the plant, he poured the water around its base in practiced motions, careful to let each dose absorb before administering the next. When he was done he looked up again into the plant's branches, glanced at me, said goodnight and went to bed.

Every night went like this, I'd come home from school, let myself in and wait for Dad to return from his job. He'd get home, ask me how school was and start dinner. We'd eat in near silence, then he'd watch TV or take care of the plant. When Mom left the plant had been small enough to fit in the corner behind his chair, but in the weeks and months that followed I watched it grow at an alarming rate. Dad was constantly fertilizing, pruning and repotting the plant, and his work paid off.

The plant soon became too large to keep behind the chair and was moved to the main part of the room. A few months later it became so large it blocked the television, so Dad moved the TV into his room. That was ok, I didn't like watching TV with him anyway. He always laughed in places that weren't funny and sighed anytime someone said something he didn't like. I preferred to stay in my room and look at magazines.

One night I awoke to go to the bathroom, which was directly off of the kitchen, and stopped in front of the plant. It was a nice plant really, tall and proud, its branches healthy and heavy. I could still hear the TV coming from Dad's room, but I could also hear him faintly snoring through the door. I looked at the plant again and undid the snap on the front of my pajamas. With my eyes still trained on Dad's door, I took out my penis and peed a little bit into the pot...not a lot, just a little. I quickly shuffled to the bathroom and finished peeing.

Every night for the next few weeks I repeated this act, growing bolder as the weeks went on and my sabotage went undetected. Dad was starting to notice changes in the plant however and his concern with the plant's health increased. The once luminous leaves had started to brown around the edges, slightly at first, but now it was noticeable.

Dad checked out several books from the library to try to diagnose the problem and started brewing up remedies in the kitchen. Fish parts mixed with vinegar, diluted bleach solutions to spray on the leaves, ground mint on the soil to deter pests...but none of his cures had any effect. He became increasingly desperate until one morning he emerged from his room to find 5 or 6 leaves on the floor around the pot where the plant resided. He reached up quickly to touch the plant, horrified when another leaf fell to join its siblings. Still every night I repeated my ritual and every morning he awoke despondent.

He stopped going to work, calling in sick with imagined symptoms that seemed to mirror those of the plant. Weak limbs, no appetite, hair loss-his boss said it sounded serious and agreed to give him a few days to recover. None of this deterred me though, and the plant’s condition continued to worsen. Now whole branches were dying and breaking off and it looked like the plant's days were numbered. I returned home a week later and found Dad sitting on the floor, his shoulders shaking. He was surrounded by the fallen leaves and branches of his plant and I felt the corners of my mouth begin to turn up slightly.

freehand

5/8 x 5/8" of green plaid

January to date: high/low, actual/average

extra large dippy egg

Plastic Prisoners

Maybe today we can go out to play?

is the heat even on?

1.
"Is the heat even on?" was the first thing that came through my blistered lips this morning. I was still wearing my suit, black insulated coveralls with reflective piping. My head felt like a Mountain Dew can shot through with the beebees from those toy guns the three of us would shoot before we were were allowed to have the real thing. There was no blanket, just the suit, and I was using a Sorel as a pillow. I felt a burn across my knuckles.

I was on the floor, at the foot of the couch.

I sat up, looked around; the places they usually ended up were empty. I was alone in the cabin. The potbelly stove held only reddened cinders.

2.
Most nights, my dreams are veined with violence. It pulses though me. I've seen the way my own death will play out, and I've brought death to many others. There have been quarries where bodies go unnoticed, empty factories and silos set ablaze, dogs and cats impaled on galvanized steel stakes, eyelashes plucked out one by one, blood beaded surfaces.

But my waking life is like a sieve for these things. As soon as my eyes open, it's like the thoughts never occurred, as if I wasn't capable of it at all. Nobody would imagine I could dream up such things.

Go on, ask. Everyone will say I couldn't, that it's not possible. Not me.

3.
Last night, I remember the tavern. The old men there and especially the girls. There was one girl who was maybe the onus, the reason the night cracked, splintered, and dropped like a sick tree. That girl, she has name that is as common as one of those trees, the ones that backdrop everything up here: deciduous, fallen, first overcome by borers and now overtaken by fungus.

She told me about her job scrubbing up after emergency surgeries, the harsh chemicals that sting her eyes.

Shots of whiskey were spliced between pitchers of beer that seemed to keep coming. I paid, insisting, inching closer, pretending the music was too loud and this was the only way to hear. She knew better and played along.

Our talk become more personal. She had an uncle who killed his best friend last fall. Gun hunting season had been extended. The population of deer was so massive that everything was at risk. Cars were getting wrecked, people were getting hurt. Killed, even. Deer were decimating the fields rowed with pine saplings. Predatory wolves were strong on venison; they were breeding like mad, running amok and killing domestic dogs.

One shot did it. The uncle was in his stand and the bullet went through the crown of the best friend's head and dropped him right there. The uncle blamed tiredness and a heavy morning fog, but the jury saw it as malice. It later came out that they were right.

My mom had died, I told the girl, bubbles in her bloodstream. She fell over in the gift shop she ran for the tourists. It was the off-season and nobody came by so nobody noticed she was dead until hours later, when we got home and dinner wasn't on the table. We drove out there and found her curled into herself on the worn linoleum. Her features were as gentle as ever.

We couldn't afford to bury her a casket, or pay for any part of a funeral for that matter. But the community rallied and helped us out with a modest goodbye. My dad never got over her, but he remarried less than a year later. My sister was too young to remember her. I'm somewhere in the middle. There are images that come to me, but nothing I can invest myself in. She's just someone who was there once and now isn't.

4.
The girl and I drank more. We exchanged numbers, put them in our phones, texted just to test them out.

Then there was a split second where something set us off. You've been there before, I'm sure. It's where the slack goes out of the conversation, suddenly everything said before that is phantasmal; the only thing that matters now is the tightening, the tensing. You both recoil, even though, seconds later, there's no concrete trace of what was said or who said it.

It just happened. It always seems to happen.

She went back to her friends. Mine came to me. We yelled for more shots, demanded the whole bottle.

Last call had already been called, but we hadn't heard. The bartender kept slowly picking up glasses and mopping up the rings they left. He looked at us in a way that showed he was apologetic, but not truly sorry.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her leave.

I ran to the door, yelled out as loud as I could, "Fucking bitch!" She didn't even turn around. I hoped she hadn't heard, hoped my voice was just held hostage by the cold air.

5.
I ran back to the guys and said let's go. We'd follow her, keep apace of her car. We'd catch up. I could make amends, apologize. Let her know that I was sorry, that most of the time I just mess things up and could she forgive me? Could she love me, not right away of course, but eventually. Could we work up to it? I thought we could. Knew it. I was sure. I wouldn't say that, not yet. But she just needed to hear me out. It was the drinks, I'd tell her. The beer, the whiskey. Us, both of us, we're just fine. We'd only get better. I was sorry. Did she believe I was sorry? Did she believe that I could be sorry?

By the time we got the engines running, she was gone. I just kept muttering "fuck, fuck, fuck," feeling totally lost.

Snow had been falling. We realized they were the last ones to go out of the parking lot, so we found their their tire tracks and followed them.

6.
It was the usual brutality of my dreams.

We gunned it, weaving in and out of each others' path, going in circles. The world sped up, everything more urgent than ever, the way it is when you're drunk and feeling desperate and chasing some purpose that keeps slipping your mind.

The moon was bright, reflected by the snow. It was so bright we cut the headlights.

Fields of alfalfa we've hunted a million times. Fields we've ridden across even more.

Startled, they ran, sprinting off in a different directions. There was screaming—I didn't know they scream. I didn't know they know how to scream. We kept at them until several fell. We rammed them, kept at them.

With the engines still running, I jumped off and knotted rope around the leg of one. I threw the rope over the tree, pulled it taught, heaving it from the ground, and tied the rope off on a branch. Blood drained from between its watershed ribs. The thing hung there, still alive but barely moving.

Back on the seat I motioned, let's go.

They followed, throttles pulled.

Eventually we stopped, the way everything stops.

The door is never locked; we walked in and that was it.

7.
My phone was in my back jeans pocket, so I unzipped the coveralls, reached in, checked it and saw that I hadn't missed a single call. Nobody had tried to reach me.

I went to the window. The were right outside the cabin, spraying a hose and a using Brillo pad to get between the grooves in the treads.

They looked at me and made no gesture, just kept working. Kept at it, spraying and scrubbing.

The runoff stained the snow bright red.