Skip to main content

DAY 32: TOTAL CONFIRMED DEATHS 136,938 WORLDWIDE


A bright, canary-yellow flag with a coiled, fanged snake, ready to strike whipped in the wind as protesters gathered around the Michigan state capitol. It read, “Don’t tread on me!”

The people were protesting the new stay-at-home orders from the governor. She had trampled their rights, and destroyed the entire constitution all in one blow. How dare she? A woman! A young woman! A smart woman. Who was she to tell strapping men, young and old, how to live THEIR life?

Politics had entered the pandemic shitshow. It always had, as the Orange Leader already had given supplies to states and people he favored-but now the people were rising up.

This governor had been a favorite target of the Orange Leader, as were all strong women who stood up to him, fearless, unfazed by his hollow threats and juvenile remarks. And now the people followed his lead, gathering on the steps of the capitol building.

She had extended the rules to include no gathering besides family, no traveling to second homes, a limit of four customers per one-thousand square feet in stores, and no motor boat or jet ski use.

Why?

She was trying to stop the spread of the virus. Her state now had over twenty-seven thousand cases, and over eighteen-hundred deaths, ranked 3rd worst in the country.

She was not doing this to punish the Orange Leader’s supplicants. This virus didn’t care what political party with which one affiliated. It didn’t ask for your political party before invading one’s lungs and destroying them from the inside out.

But there they were. Draped in the American flag, clothes with the Orange Leader’s name embroidered in white over red (made in China of course), holding signs reading, “Liberty once lost is lost forever!” They weren’t wearing masks, or even trying to keep a social distance of six feet apart.

As she watched the story, she wondered if these people were dropped on their heads as infants. Or did they eat paint-chip sandwiches? What. Was. WRONG. With. THEM?

It was stories like these that made her not even want to turn on the telescreen.

But she did.

And there they were, a species working towards their own demise. It was what her species was really good at doing, especially in her own country.

At least they were number one, at something.

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