Postcards from an Empty World
Volume II
Looking back on the times just before and after the fall of civilization, I find myself fixating on people’s dreams. Not the places they go during slumber, though I suppose those may be interesting enough. I’m talking about dreams in terms of their deepest hopes and desires. The visions of a better world that exist somewhere in the subconscious minds of all men and women; the unspoken state of perfection they move toward; the ideal future that shapes their view of themselves and their worlds.
These dreams, I find, were not so quick to change in the face of the death of most everyone and everything we knew. Just after, people still dreamed about types of success and pleasure that no longer existed. So often their first thought was to turn to a product for a solution to a problem, to check their phone or their email, to try to buy some comfort or shelter from pain. For a time, we still saw things through the prisms of commodities and information.
But I think during that first winter, the dreams began to adjust. And as I dug through letters and journal entries, I found more and more things buried in these dreams that disturbed me.
Four of the people we meet in this volume were documenting their time as they moved into that first winter, and one story is from before. All of them, I suppose, are confronting the deaths of the old dreams and the births of new ones.
-Baghead
Chapter 1 - Fiona
Beckley, West Virginia
123 days after
Winter elbowed its way inside today, the cold creeping through the windows and floors to lay its hands on me, to make itself felt. A nasty guest.
I built a fire in the wood stove, piling up logs and watching them burn down to flakes of black. Orange coals glowed within, and the iron stove went from cold to warm to hot, kicking out intense heat that filled the room. Standing too close made the flesh on my face feel like it was about to bubble up into blisters.
It warmed me, perhaps, but it brought me little comfort. How will I gather enough wood to fight this cold off every day for months? How will I gather any wood once the snow blankets the ground, grabbing my ankles with every step I take?
If my count of the days is right, it would be Thanksgiving in five days. I should be thankful to still be here when almost no one else made it. I should be thankful for life now that it’s scarcer than ever, shouldn’t I? I don’t know if I am.
I try to make sense of it all. Could all of this death be part of God’s plan? Or has he left this place? Left the few of us here? These are the end times, aren’t they? If God has left us, who does that leave in charge?
I don’t know. I try to stay positive, but the days go black faster and faster.
Doyle came by this afternoon. He brought a bunch of wood, too, hauling bundles of it in a pair of large wagons. Hard work, I suspect, for a man in his 50’s. (He’s only ten or so years older than me, but it somehow seems like more.)
His timing on these things remains curious to me, arriving not 45 minutes after I wrote that journal entry about needing firewood. Sometimes it’s as though he can read my thoughts. As if he’s trying to stave off all of my fears and worries.
And despite his kindness, I find something ghoulish about the man. Something ghastly. He smiles so much. Too much. Flashing those pointy gerbil teeth at all times, his eyes gone wide. It’s a bit odd to smile like that, I think, to go around cheery like that. Everyone else is dead just about, and Doyle seems as pleased as can be to check in on me and do chores for me. Something about it makes my skin crawl.
Of course I’m not attracted to the last man on Earth, or this part of the Earth, at least. He has a bulbous forehead, perpetually shiny, and that horseshoe shaped receding hairline thing going on above it with a poof of silver hair in the center. A tuft. He has those wet, dog eyes, too. Like a sad hound of some kind. Oh, and I think I already mentioned the gerbil teeth.
Yeah.
He loaded the wood in here, pretty much doubling the stack I keep in the back room. After that, I felt bad, so I offered to make some tea. He accepted, of course.
“Getting cold now,” he said.
“Yep.”
Steam roiled off of the top of my tea cup, and I held it close to my nose to warm it. The inside of my nostrils felt all wet after a second, but that wasn’t so bad compared to the cold. My nose is always the last part of me to get warm. It stays frigid even after the fire gets roaring to the point that I take off my jacket.
“I do enjoy a hot beverage,” he said out of nowhere, sipping at his tea.
“Me too.”
It felt like talking to the dental hygienist, always spouting mundane observations while they root around in your mouth with those hooks. I decided to play it like I do in that situation and not respond. He took another slug of tea and went on.
“Still cars going past on the highway. Not a lot but some. Maybe 15 or 20 a day, I guess. Isn’t that crazy? That there are still people out there? Sometimes I think about going out to flag one down. Anyone. Just to talk to someone, I guess. But it’s too risky. After all that’s happened around here, I mean. We’re better off to keep to ourselves, I expect.”
I nodded, a single bob of the head. I sort of regretted acknowledging his speech. But maybe I’m too hard on Doyle. Maybe he’s not so bad.
“I won’t keep you,” he said, tipping his head back to polish off the tea.
He looked at me with those sad dog eyes, and the guilt crept over me.
“Thanks for the wood,” I said.
Lame, I know, but I didn’t know what else to say. I guess even when I feel bad about it, I don’t actually want to be around him.
I don’t know why I keep this journal. I lost the first two notebooks worth of stuff in the move, and it didn’t bother me. I didn’t even look very hard. It’s not like I care to look back on these horrors I’ve witnessed and lived.
It’s not preserving these moments for future reflection that concerns me, I guess. It’s the writing itself. The catharsis of recording these images and feelings that flicker over me. Somehow writing it all down expels them, purges them. The idea of sharing them makes it feel like I’m not doing this alone. It keeps me sane, at least a little. I hope so, anyway.
When you write things down, it always feels like someone is listening, doesn’t it? But then I think again about that idea of God being gone, and a shiver runs down my spine. If He isn’t listening anymore, who is?
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