Pandemic

Chapter 8 - Pulchritudinous fire and glaggie

8

God knows where he or why he got them, but Patrick Goosling has a bunch of Woman Weekly magazines. ‘Patrick Goosling’ is the name written on a sign on the door, so Aria just assumes that it was his name. 

Since everyone still is asleep, she decides to flip through the magazines to kill some time. There isn’t power here either, so she sits down by the still burning fireplace. She reads one article about how to get the perfect body by dieting and exercising every day, whilst on the next page it’s written page on page on how you should love yourself no matter how you look. 

As she sees a picture of the president and his wife, it occurs to her that they both most likely are dead. Most people are. Nearly everyone is gone. She won’t ever get to see the endings of her favorite TV shows, never get to read the last book of her favorite series. She will never be able to gossip about hot celebrity guys with her friend, because they are all dead.

All of a sudden she feels ever so alone.

Why is she here? Hiding in a lodge in the land of nowhere with three other random people she has met on the road? There is no reason for her to trust either of them, yet she does.

Maybe it’s because she hasn’t questioned anything before now? 

When she starts putting the situation in perspective she sees how incredibly meaningless it all is. And it crushes her. 

Aria realizes that she has been a victim of her own instincts for the last days, acting completely mindless just for survival.

Matt can’t possibly care about her in any way, because he doesn’t know her. Claire isn’t her friend, because to her, she is just a stranger. John doesn’t want to protect her because he wants her to live, is just a man with authority and self-respect.

But aren’t they more than that?

 

They are, aren’t they? 

She doesn’t know. It felt like they were, and it still feels like it. It’s so much harder to accept when she thinks it through. 

‘They have gained my trust,’ she whispers and stares down in her magazine at the picture of a man who used to have power, but now undoubtedly is just a corpse lying somewhere. ‘If they weren’t to trust they would have left me behind long ago.’ Like I left Amanda. 

Her sister might be somewhere, carrying her baby brother, Jason, around on her arm. Aria had yelled at them the last time she saw them, telling them to go bother someone else. Mom and dad had already died, and Aria had planned to sit down somewhere and die too. Then Arielle had pouted with her lower lip, and cried, before she picked up little Jason and left.

 ‘I’m going to hell,’ she sighs, whilst struggling to read the title of the next page. Her sight is blurry from uncried tears that she refuses to cry.

                                                 ***

‘Are you up this early?’ John sees Aria half snoozing in the corner by the warm fireplace. She has found a blanket, and there’s a huge pile of magazines next to her. Woman magazines. He must have been a weird and somewhat disturbed man.

 ‘Mph,’ she mumbles and slightly straightens up.

John walks towards her and sits down at the other side of her magazine pile. It’s getting colder, and there’s only ashes and small, red embers left. If only he could save lives as he can save the dying flame.