Skip to main content

Day 3: TOTAL CONFIRMED DEATHS 7,074 WORLDWIDE


She did a trade with her mother: baby carrots for two rolls of paper towels. Who knew that nubbed carrots would become a form of bartering currency? They had told the elderly not to emerge from their homes, but her mother didn’t care, and there was no convincing her otherwise. She was stubborn sometimes to a fault, and now she knew where she got that trait herself. At least the pandemic got her mother to actually use her cell phone. She called to report from Walmart, that there were no eggs to be found.

Fuck.

Her store of choice to attempt to fulfill this mission was the local Sprouts Market. It was a small Sprouts, so she thought perhaps it would have been spared from the insanity of toilet-paper-hoarding. She approached the parking lot and was immediately relieved to see plenty of parking. Everything looked normal, though there did seem to be a little more than the usual amount of customers.

She made a bee-line for the eggs, only to find the refrigerated shelving covered in a tan canvas.

Gone.

Everything else seemed to be stocked, but the precious bundles of protein-packed-unfertilized-ovums were nowhere to be found.

Fuck.

She went to find dry beans. Empty while barrels yawned up at her, only crumbs sprinkling the bottoms.

Christ.

Did people think that food was going to disappear? Will it?

***

The orange man was on the teletube. He had on his serious face today, which he only used when he has been told to look “presidential.” He didn’t like doing this, and one could tell by observing him. It looked like he was holding his breath; his head moved side to side as he held in his urge to spout out reckless superlatives at the media. He was asked a question about the pandemic and like a child, he responded that the virus would “wash on through”, and made a wave-like movement with his tiny hands.

Now the doctors standing behind him took a turn holding in their faces.

She turned away, unable to take anymore of the child-leader who was now moving his hands as if he was

playing a miniscule accordion, for an audience of none.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

DAY 34: TOTAL CONFIRMED DEATHS 154,215 WORLDWIDE

The apocalypse had not slowed home improvements. In fact, this is what people must have been doing with their time, she realized, as she pulled into the home improvement store’s parking lot. It was packed. More than the big box stores, more than the super markets. There was a line of cars just to enter the parking lot, and each row was filled. Her overhead fan and light had broken over a week ago, and even though she loved the darkness and candlelight, she knew it needed to be replaced. The previous owners had spared the least amount of pennies on renovations, and this was one of the last items to go. They would make a run for it. She took her husband to ensure she had the right size, and this was his first trip to a store (besides the local convenience store) since the pandemic. They both were amazed at the amount of people that were shopping. Here they had been hiding, following orders, only leaving the house for necessities and bouts of fresh air- and these people were just meanderi...
Post a Comment
Read more

DAY 39: TOTAL CONFIRMED DEATHS 183,454 WORLDWIDE

She tried some banana bread rage-baking. She didn’t really have rage per se, but her bananas were blackened and she didn’t want them to go to waste. The previous rage-cleaning made it easier to cook, as she could actually see her counter-tops. She found she could move slowly. There was no rush now, no deadlines. Just this lingering time. Usually, she was a sloppy cook, but now she took the time to organize her ingredients and instruments before actually getting started. Who was she? She laughed. There was something magically about the smell of baking bread filling the house. Just just sat in the aroma. She wasn’t even hungry. Did they make candles with this scent? She wondered. As she sat there in her aromatic privilege, she thought about all the families that lost their income, who were on their last pennies, wondering what the next day would bring. There was news that small businesses hadn’t received the relief funds from the government, while big companies banked millions. Workers w...
Post a Comment
Read more

DAY 26: TOTAL CONFIRMED DEATHS 95,731 WORLDWIDE

During the Christmas season people would stake LED projector lights in their yard facing the front of their house. Green and red spots would dance across the face of the house making passersby merry and bright. Sometimes the specks would form images like reindeer with Santa in tow, or bouncing snowmen with their stick arms that would dance in the windows. She thought of these images as she stared into the map of the virus in her state. She looked at it every night, gazing into the blooming, bright red dots. The dots themselves like a rash, a skin outbreak infecting every square inch of epidermis. At first there were only a few dots. In Washington state, and New York. Then, slowly, over time major cities would get the feared dot. Then slowly, leaking out from the cities, like a small pinprick in a garden hose, the surrounding areas would get their dot, but smaller. And from there more surrounding small towns would get the mark. Until now, over 25 days since people started to hunker ...
Post a Comment
Read more