Red Eye

Part One

It's the end of the world and I'm trapped at Starbucks. I'm living a basic bitch's wet dream right now. All I wanted to do was find a quiet spot to work on my novel but now I'm trying to survive a war against godknowswhat with decorative cake-pops and whip-cream. But then again, no better source of inspiration than to be directly in the middle of a world-wide disaster. Am I right?

Fuck me!

Why couldn't I have found refuge at a Whole Foods or CVS? No, I had to come here, to this place where everyone looks at you weird if you don't use their fancy language to order a fucking small black coffee. Their sizing sounds like they tried to combine every European language into an indecipherable dialect. And don't even get me started on the food menu! Like... what the fuck is a "sous-vide" egg supposed to be? Trying to one up Dunkin Donuts with their fancy-as-fuck breakfast sandwiches and stupid-ass lemon loafs. 

I don't know how to use any of their machines --- seems like you need a fucking PHD in engineering just to plug some of them in--- so I've basically been keeping myself awake by drinking cold-brew from the tap and snacking on those freeze-dried strawberries they put in the refreshers. I've made numerous attempts to heat up some of the so-called "baked goods" but they either end up completely burned or even more undercooked than when they were packaged and sent off to storage. 

Rummaging through the break-room resulted in the discovery of a makeshift emergency kit comprised of a pill bottle containing what looks like a struggling addict's trail-mix of Adderall, Ibuprofun, and possibly Tic-Tacs, gauze pads and band-aids held together with a rubber hand, and a lone tampon as well as one of those toilet plunger-looking things they use to smush the overflowing trash bins. Guess I can always use that in case I need to defend myself from whatever hellish terror is happening outside. 

Thankfully I came prepared and brought both my phone and laptop charger with me but the WiFi has been cutting in and out since this all started. I've been trying to stay updated with everything that's been happening but there's not really much to go on. All the news channels have cut out and social media is mostly made up of videos of attacks or people desperate to make contact with friends and family.

Fuck, I've been rambling and haven't even begun to explain what happened in the first place. Apologies. I'm a notorious ranter. I have a tendency to start stories without giving them a proper introduction... and very rarely an ending worth emphasizing the point I was trying to make. 

This all started a couple weeks ago. No one is really sure what triggered it exactly. We don't even know where it first began; only that it was being reported around the world. 

People just... started getting sick. Upset stomach, nausea, muscle weakness. Some thought it was pneumonia; only this was happening in the middle of summer. Then people thought it was localized cases of food poisoning. Some bad meat products sold at grocery stores that people were cooking and eating during barbecues and pool parties. Everyone thought it would blow over in maybe a month or two.

Then the symptoms got worse. Whatever this was, whatever this is... It started to change people. They started getting burns on their skin. Full-body rashes like shingles on steroids. Then came the severe, even violent mood-swings. Personality shifts so dramatic that those afflicted barely had time to register they weren't themselves anymore. Suddenly the news ran rampant with reports of huge masses of people attacking themselves and others. 

Hospitals were jam-packed with victims of whatever had triggered this terrifying transformation but were helpless to come up with any kinds of treatments. We were warned how to look for initial signs of the infection, told it would be obvious to recognize who had it and who didn't. But no one could tell us how or why it was happening, and even if they could... it was too late to stop it.