We With Daisies Lie

Two Feet of Snow

            

Things have changed. I guess you know that. Some people accept the way things are now. I guess that's the easiest way to survive. I wish I was like them but I’m not. Before it happened, I was on my way to being a writer. I guess that's why I'm doing this now.

            I've been snowed in for the past month, supplies are low. There's no use trying to trek outside, not unless you want to freeze to death, though that may be the best way to go these days. The truth is, I probably won't survive the week. Every ounce of energy I have is going into writing this. This place won't be secret for long- a big house in the middle of nowhere, in the spring this will probably be a territory worth killing for, but for now it's a tomb, and this is my last will and testament.

 * * * *

            By the third day, I had lost everyone I knew before it started. That's not to say they all died exactly, some I really did just lose. My sister, for example, she was a financial adviser for a fortune five hundred company in London. I think she was in the Netherlands when it all started here. I don't know where it began really. It seemed to be everywhere at once. Phones went down pretty fast, I'm ashamed to say I called an ex girlfriend before I called my sister, and one call is all you got.

            I used to call my sister Bambi so I'll use that name here. Bambi and I were all that what was left of our family after the divorce. Our mom left us when she left our dad. We never forgave her, but then again she never gave us any reason to. We were left with a drunk who among other things liked to take his failures out on his children. My sister learned pretty quickly that to live outside his rule she'd have to be successful in something. We never had money, so she chose that. Community college and a few math scholarships later she was on her way to a well paying job as a CEO’s personal assistant a year after graduation. All she had to do was show her boss that what he was doing was wrong and that they could make more money if they followed her advice. Up she went, after that it was off to the races for Bambi.

She felt bad about leaving me, but I told her to go and live her life, I would graduate soon and by the time I did she would have a place big enough for both of us to share. She'd be traveling most of the time but that just meant I'd pay half the rent on a place I basically had for myself. But when graduation came she was too hot to stop, she had a place in Paris she couldn't give up- living in France was her dream since she was little. She felt terrible and would send me checks with little excuses written in the memo lines such as ‘for a new bike, get some exercise!’. I was too broke to decline. I can't blame her for succeeding, and I wouldn't even if I could. The honest to goodness truth is I was so proud of her for doing what she did, for keeping her head down and just doing the work- for enduring our father until she didn't have to anymore that I began to look at her like a model for what my life should be, and how I would treat any problem that came my way from then on, keep your head down and endure.

I had got a studio apartment in downtown Manhattan. I felt like Holden Caulfield or one of Bukowski's barflies. I was living all on my own above a bar that never closed. I was smoking cigarettes in my room and staying up all night writing pages and tossing them out the window as soon as I wrote 'The End.'

Along the way I met some guy who asked to see my stuff. He thought I had potential and paid me an advance to write some generic piece about living as a young man in the city for his blog. I gave him three thousand words on the importance of writing a grocery list before going shopping. And that's how it was for a while, just me and my laptop.

            Then, one day, I got a call from a friend I'd known in school. She lived upstate and had asked me to come to her wedding. I didn't even know she was engaged. I wrote three ten pages essays in as many days for some friends who were going to N.Y.U for the suit money and a graduation speech for the car rental. It had been a long time since I had driven a car- I relished it. I used the money Bambi had sent me for the next month’s rent on a BMW convertible and a wedding gift, fine china for her and a gaming system for him. Looking back it did seem pretty sexist but what did I know about wedding gifts?

            I spent a quiet night at a roadside motel along the way; I guess that could have been when it all started. I was so tired from the road that I didn't even turn the TV on. The next day I knew I would probably just barely make the ceremony if I left as soon as I got up, so I got fully dressed before leaving. I was dreading the conversation with the hotel manager- “Why're you in a suit? Are you queer 'er some'in?” I imagined him saying. But when I went to check out, there was no one there. I wrote down my name and credit card number on a notepad and left. I accidentally took the pen with me- when I got to the car I stopped and almost went back to return it. As it turned out, keeping that pen was what saved my life that first time.

If you think too much on things like that- if I just did that, or, if I didn't remember to do this- you'll drive yourself mad. Alive is alive is alive and that's all there is to it.

It was the hottest summer I remember. In life there are certain situations when the same questions come up time and time again. In prison it's ‘what are you in for?’ Now, when you meet someone new and it looks like you're going to be in the same group for a while you ask “Who was your first kill?” but I always lied. I told anyone who asked that my first kill was the motel manager- the one I never saw after I checked in. I only told the truth once, to a girl named Emily. When she asked, I told her that my first kill was a woman. A mother. And she had her children with her.