Pretty Hitlers

How does anyone get themselves into this kind of predicament? On the run from what has to be the most impossibly small, but constantly angry, demographic in the world: Crossdressing Nazis. I mean, sure, they're not a hard group to piss off. But how do you find an actual group of them centralized in one location and then happen to make the exact wrong remark that would send this hairless herd of dress-clad warriors into a foaming-at-the-mouth rampage?
This night started in a club, me and stage cracking wise with my usual bad jokes. I have no illusions about the career I've chosen. I'm bad at it. It's usually just me onstage for half an hour suffering the insufferable silence of the audience as they cringe at my poor delivery and worse content.
The night ended up with me running as fast as I can down the dimly lit streets of San Fransisco, looking for an alley to duck into or building or anything to get away from these psychopaths behind me, screaming obscenities. And all because I made one little joke, not even a good one I might add, about a gay Nazi strangling a puppy in the Hitler Youth.
Man, they did not like that. A whole table of transvestite fascists (apparently they were having a Pretty Hitlers Convention. Where else but San Fransisco?) suddenly went from simply grunting at my horrible jokes with the rest of the audience to fuming with rage at the thought that their select and incredibly rare demographic would stoop so low as to strangle a puppy.
Appalled. That's what they said, they were appalled. The Hitlers in Drag were appalled. Who saw that coming.
And now, all I can hear over the pounding of my heart and the beat of my shoes against the unforgiving cement (and my inner monologue trying to make sense of the situation) was the growling coming from behind me: faux-German accents screeched across the empty night.
Ve vould nevah harm da sveet, innocent puppies!
Yah! Zey are ze Master Race's Best Friend!
I've got a run in my stockings! You MozerFuckah!
Yah! MozerFuckah!
I can't believe this would happen to anyone, let alone me.

I ducked into a building with an open door and a light on hoping they would pass by. Panting hard, I looked around to make sure I hadn't walked inadvertently into Nazi rally, or UFO Awareness meeting (I had offended those guys last week with a sly poke at Congress using UFO's so that people like Larry Craig can have sex with men and not have to worry about getting caught), or anything that would only exacerbate my current situation.
To my surprise and delight, I saw that I was surrounded by children, all sitting on the floor, playing games, and eating crackers. Apparently, this was one of those day care places where adults took their kids to get away for an evening. It was cheaper than hiring a babysitter and the kids would have someone their age to play with. To my knowledge, I had not yet offended this far more popular demographic.
I felt secure, because I figured if the Pretty Hitlers wouldn't dare strangle a puppy, they certainly wouldn't attempt to do anything that might traumatize children. I sat down amongst the children and asked if I could have a cracker, and with the first bite, horror set in again.
Matza.
Sweet God... They were Jewish. I looked around again and wondered how I could be so stupid: the game they were playing was Spin the Dreidel, they all wore Yalmulkes, there was even a sign on the back wall that said, “TorahTots!” A woman came into the room bearing a tray and calling, “Whoooo waaaaants Latke!”
The kids were overwhelmed with joy.
I had to escape, there was every chance the Nazi Nancy's wouldn't mind killing all these Future Jews of America just to get me also. Two birds, you know. I looked over at the open door where I was dismayed to find a healthy looking skinhead in a warm Gingham gown glaring at me and laughing. He slammed the door and I heard a loud thud as he propped something against it. That's when a Molotov Cocktail sailed through the window and crashed on the floor in an explosion of flame and glass (I couldn't help but wonder where those guys would hide that huge bottle. I decided it was best not to think about it too much, I mean... there's only so many possibilities). Luckily, all the kids were over by the Latke lady, so nobody was hurt. But it did get everyone on their feet.
How does anyone get themselves into this kind of predicament?
I ran over by the kids and yelled, “We've got to find a way out! There's gay Nazis out there who want us all dead!” The response was a tirade of Yiddish:
Faygola!
Oy! Gavalt!
You're Meshuggina!
Oy-Vey!
They've got some Chutzpah!
They were talking like Mel Brooks's dead grandfather. But there was no time to lose, the flames were spreading, and all the doors were blocked. There was a window low enough that we could get out nearby, so I grabbed the closest thing, which happened to be a 6 year-old boy, and hurled him at the glass. He soared with a perfect spiral, like a missile, yalmulke first through the window, shattering it and allowing us all to escape through it and out the alley.

The next day the papers covered it, naming an anonymous hero who had saved them all from the fire then vanished into the night like “a sort of nervous Batman.” A kid was quoted as saying, “He was a mensch.”
I folded up the newspaper, pulled out a pencil and paper, and started trying to think of something funny that has to do with militant computer programmers and their dates not being very receptive to Javascript.
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Elegy

I knew him deeply in my soul, albeit in function and not in name, the name a drowning symbol of reality gained but lost all too quickly, a clear beam of sunshine alighting opaquely in the gloom, scattering those verminal beasts of wintry reason and hoary conscience. He stood unmoved, ensconced in the wing-tipped shade of the ever-approaching and all-encompassing arm of crystalline Justice, the here-and-now, its stony visage lacking the pity of ancestral wisdom, save the wrinkled tears of a childhood long lost but not forgotten. You must live on in memories, though they be the self-collapsing tombs of fragile parchment, empty words emblazoned thereupon forever devoured by greedy eyes. A pallor of extinguished luminescence, our final witness thrown to the howling wind.


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Becoming Old

Of all the people my age, she was the last one I thought was going to die. I had seen her just the other day at the store, buying groceries she would never eat: a loaf of bread, a head of lettuce, a box or two of cake mix. We chatted amiably for half an hour then went our separate ways and then she was dead.
Not instantly, of course, but just days later. Natural causes.
What natural causes? She was at least as healthy as I was 2 days ago. Jean-Marie...
I'm old, old enough that people my age are typically prone to dying, old enough that the amount of funerals I've been attending has gone up exponentially over the past few years. I can't really remember how old I am, but I wish I could tell you when I was going to die. How many years I've lived is nothing compared to how many years I've got left, in my books anyway. For instance, I know that Jean-Marie was at least as old as I, but in my eyes, she might as well have only lived one day. Not even one day, half an hour. That moment of time where it was me and her, talking about children and politics. That's all I can really remember of her, try as I might. I can't think of anything earlier or after that. That's how I view my own passing life: I might as well have only been alive the moment before I stop breathing. That's all I'll remember of it anyway.

This morning, I woke up and got dressed for Jean-Marie's funeral. Getting out of bed, my bones ached in fifty different places. Sometimes at my age, you don't even want to move anymore. One of my friends woke up one morning, swung his legs off the side of his bed and threw his hip out. After 2 weeks of hospital care, he was a goner. 3 years later and he was dead, but it all started with that hip. Before that, we would sit on his porch drinking beer every Friday and talk about what it means to be alive.
Before he died, I went to the hospital to see him, dragging along a couple of beers. He didn't even look away from his TV when I walked in and said hello, he just held a vacant stare at some show teenagers like to watch. I sat in the cafeteria drinking my beer and left, resolving never to remember him in that hospital.
In short, you've got to be careful these days. The slightest injury could lead to your becoming a simple vegetable: he's not the only friend I've had to come to this end.
But I digress: I got out of bed carefully, dealing with all the pain in the world focused on no specific part of my body and walked over to my bathroom mirror, steadying myself against the marble counter top, looking over myself. I looked long, like I was looking into a fun house mirror. It seemed like my jaw hung too low and my forehead too high. I wiped the crust from my eye and realized I had been crying in my sleep again. I poked at the mole that had taken over my left cheek seemingly overnight.
Shower, put on clothes (an unreasonably difficult task), take care of hygiene. After all, while I might look like an old man, I have no intentions of smelling like one. One of the most vivid memories from my childhood, and sorry to say one of the few, is the stench of my aging uncle Harold. No one could ever really place his smell, but it was kind of a family game to try: pickles and herring? Urine and coal? Spoiled milk and cabbage? None ever really seemed to fit exactly, but all had some semblance of truth to them. It was almost like a blend of them all.
I decided to walk to the church since it wasn't too far away and who knows when the day would come when I couldn't walk anymore. Brisk morning air caved in around me, suffocating me with cold and movement, but I kept my stride and made it to the church before anyone else was there.
I walked in and Pastor Ericson greeted me with his usual, “Glad you could make it.” He was youngish, about 30 maybe, and his hair was combed to cover up his balding head. He smiled solemnly, like I guess they teach you in seminary: If you're giving a funeral, you smile like this. Wedding, like this. Homily, like this, unless you're making your point, in which case, look sternly at the congregation so that they know that this is when you listen. Raise your voice if you can without seeming too angry.
I walked into the sanctuary where Jean-Marie's coffin was sitting, surrounded by white flowers, orange flowers, a veritable rain forest. The stand she was one had wheels and a crisscross pattern. Her coffin was overly elaborate and gilded. I prayed like hell they wouldn't stick me in one of those God-forsaken boxes when I died. Sure, it's cushioned all to hell, but I want the worms and maggots to be able to get at me easier. The way I see it, the sooner I'm gone the better.
I walked up to the box, sitting open in front of the alter. She looked nothing like she looked the other day. She had become brittle and stretched, whereas the other day, she was vibrant and spritely, smiling at me while we spoke. Today, she wore a starched frown, immovable.
She wasn't really Jean-Marie anymore. But at least she was a few days ago.
I took a seat in the back of the room and watched as people filtered in to pay respects. I read her obituary, which said a lot about her family and a lot about how much of a kind and giving person she was, but said nothing really about her. You could copy and paste the article for probably a thousand other reasonable women in the world. It didn't help me remember her, it didn't help me understand who she was any better. All I had of her was 30 minutes the other day, and that was her whole life for me. I pressed my brain, trying to remember how we'd even met, whether we'd ever loved, what we had done together in our beautiful and destructive youth, but I came to nothing. The memories were blurred and smudged photographs of carnivals or movie theaters or cars. I remembered we were close, but nothing else.
The funeral progressed, and people walked up to have a closer look at the body. When I got there, I leaned down and kissed her lips. I figured if I hadn't done that before, I had probably wanted to ever since I met her. Then I folded her obituary, put it in my pocket, and walked home. Read more...

Cigarette

Ever since I got here I've been having a recurring dream. I find myself treading water alone off the shore of a large, warm lake shortly before sunset. There is no breeze, the water is a boundless expanse of tinted glass. Then I begin to sense something wrong – a disturbance in the surface of the water, although I can’t see or hear a cause. The water, no longer still, forms little peaks and troughs that grow imperceptibly with each iteration. Soon the deeper water is affected, too, and the cold water from far below begins to swirl and encircle my ankles and lower legs. Then I see it – a cigarette boat, moving at an unstoppable clip. The waves, ever larger, begin to pull me under, and as I fight my way back to the surface I realize that although the boat’s path zigzags back and forth, it is heading directly for me. With a violent swoop the cold water encircles my whole body, and I sink out of shock, to forget the terror of the ravaged surface even as thick, slimy seaweed grasps my legs and arms. Suddenly the depth becomes more than I can bear, and in spite of the boat I find myself shooting toward the air. But just before I can surface, the propeller catches my right side, steadily ripping through me for an endless second before throwing me, unconscious, to the shore. When I open my eyes, the lake is empty once again, and the waves are receding. Although the water is warm, I am shivering, but when I try to hold myself I recoil in burning pain from my wound. There is nothing I can do but stare at the reddening water.

The evening started fine. He picked me up wearing something from the back of last month’s Details and took me to some new Italian restaurant, nothing spectacular, but expensive, which was the best I expected from Topeka anyway. Then we saw a little rep company do something awful to American Buffalo - I was genuinely embarrassed for some of the actors, but he seemed to get something out of it, at least I imagined he did. When I told him that I'd only heard Damien Rice in Closer, he was appalled, and insisted we stop by his apartment so he could burn me a CD. So we did. And he did. And while the CD was burning, we sat in perpendicular thatched love seats and talked about nothing in particular. I finally felt like our first date awkwardness was melting away. He got up and poured us each a couple fingers of sweet herbal liqueur and brandy, then put an Elliot Smith album on in the background before sitting down again.

And then, for the first time that night, something seemed wrong. His face froze with a sip, and he as he swiftly placed the drink on the table he grimaced a little before covering his face with his face and beginning to softly shake. I was completely caught off guard. I quickly put down my drink and leaned forward in my chair, flattening my skirt, unsure of what to say or do.
"What's the matter?"
He scraped his hand across his face, pressing against one eyebrow while his eyes darted to me. He held a look I thought was angry at first, but soon decided was scared. I got up to go sit by him, but he darted out of his seat and into the corner, leaning against the outside wall with one hand and his bedroom door with the other. I considered walking myself home to give him some space, but I was genuinely worried about his wellbeing. I followed him to the corner, leaning as casually as possible against the doorframe, placing a tender hand on his right shoulder. He shivered from the contact, and then turned to look at me. His tear-streaked face opened slightly, and he embraced me. After a long period of silence, he finally let go.

Somewhat calmed, he let his arm fall casually on the doorknob and turned it. He opened the door to his bedroom, which was laid out much like the rest of his modest 4th story apartment – mainly faux-vintage furniture sitting beige walls sparsely decorated with framed modern art prints. When the door was opened, I noticed how intently he was gazing at me, and instinctively averted my eyes.
"Thank you so much for being here for me.”
"Is everything alright in your life? Do you want to talk about anything?”
He paused for a moment, then walked into his room.
"Come here a minute."

It's hard to explain my feelings at this moment. While I was certainly not wanting anything intimate that evening, I still had a great deal of innate trust in his decency, and feared that it would be a bigger insult to his pride to turn him away now rather than later, after I'd had a chance to show my hesitation in more subtle ways.
"What is it?" I asked, slowly walking into the room. His footsteps matched mine in the opposite direction, as he walked behind me to his bedroom door and shut it. By the time I was in the center of the room, he was sitting near the head of his bed, leaning on the wall with his legs draping off the side.
"I'm not ready to say goodnight yet. Stay with me a few more minutes."
He reached for my hand, and I took it, again not wanting to hurt his feelings. He gently pulled me to the bed, his arm around me as soon as I sat. I turned to look at him, and his eyes bore into mine, darting to my lips intermittently, until finally embracing me rather unenthusiastically. He kissed me, and I briefly kissed him back, but all energy quickly left his broad shoulders, and his kiss was restless and uninterested. I pulled away with polite and intentional punctuation, taking both his hands in mine and locking our fingers. He hung his head for a minute before trying to kiss me again, but stopped when he sensed my disinterest.

He dropped onto his back and stared enigmatically at the ceiling, red eyes beginning to water. I thought again about leaving. Suddenly his eyebrows began to quiver, and his hand clenched mine. I let out a little shriek as he violently pulled me on top of him, and before I had time to think he had rolled on top of me and begun to roughly navigate my neck with his dry mouth. I tried to move, but I couldn’t overcome the massive force of his lower body. I was hyperventilating. I felt his hand rip down my tank top, angry mouth following. I felt the breeze on my thigh. I was screaming louder than I have ever screamed. The rocking paused momentarily, but quickly resumed much more violently than before. Everything was wrong. I tried to concentrate on flexing my toes, or the pain from my twisted underwear cutting into my flesh, or the hair he was tugging at, but no matter what I tried to think about, my whole mind was filled with a tearing, a devastating, searing cut deep into the center of my flesh, ripping me apart from within.

And then it all stopped. He was leaning out his window, smoking. And then he wasn’t. I was following him out even before he hit the ground.




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When I Die

I was speeding. I shouldn't have been, I know. Kids, other people on the road, drunk drivers, but I was.
So what.
What's done is done.
Drop it.
Driving is a responsibility. Isn't that what they tell you in driver's ed? A responsibility. But it's not a responsibility like cleaning your room, or doing your homework, or feeding your dog. You're not required to drive. The implication is that when you drive, as you inevitably will, you are to drive responsibly, ie in the way that you take care to feed your dog so nothing bad happens to him. Drive like that. Don't speed.

When I was young, my best friend's grandfather died. Cancer or old age or something. Something that old people generally die of but young people are, for some reason, exempt from. Probably cancer. Anyways, he died, and my friend was sort torn up about it. And so was I really, I mean, I didn't know anything about death. All either of us really knew at that point was that now, his grandpa wouldn't tell us stories about fighting Germans anymore. We would never hear that gravelly, old voice of his as he yelled at his wife to “get us growin' boys some cookies,” never see his San Andreas fault like eyes wink at us when the tray came out.
He would tell us the same story over and over, but it never got old. The blood was still fresh every time he told us. His smell of old and tobacco attacked your senses like the western front, and you were assaulted by his very presence.
And then he died. Not in a war, like he should've, not living the life he always talked about living, but in a chair, his head tilted back. No agony, no destruction to speak of, just a slow and silent fade from life, and he was gone forever.

The freeway this time of night has nobody on it for miles and miles, it's just you and the road and the occasional clump of yellow trash cans filled with sand to keep you from crashing into the concrete support for an overpass. When I was a kid, I used to think that those were for putting your trash in on long road trips. I thought, “Gee, people must get a lot of trash out here on the road,” and that's what I thought till I got arrested for trying to put trash in one. Well, interrogated. Serves me right for being an American after 9/11.
“Were you puttin' a bomb in there?”
“No. I was putting a bag formerly containing Sun Chips in there.”
“You know those aren't trash cans.”
“I do now.”
“Terrorists want to blow up our bridges while we're drivin' over 'em.'”
“Why?”
“Take away our sense a' security. Obviously.”
Serves me right. I should've just littered.

At the funeral, I watched my friend in the front row, and God did I feel sorry for him. He sat there, staring in horror at his dead grandfather crammed into a box three feet in front of him. You could see the loose skin pulling back on his face from lying down so long, the liver spots like cancerous potholes infesting his face, his mouth slightly contorted since they had to wire it shut. But the family wanted a pretty corpse for the funeral, not some dead old man with his mouth wide open revealing his already partially rotted tongue (I read that in a book, somewhere). You could even see that the funeral guys had used blush on the man.
Poor guy. You fight in a war. You kill a German with your bare hands to stay alive so you can see your high school sweetheart again and raise a family. Then you die and some funeral home director puts powder on your face because your family is disgusted by your pale, oblong, and cold visage. They put glass marbles in your eyes so it looks like you still have them. They wire your jaw shut so you look serene, like it's your greatest joy in life to be packed into a box and shipped one-way to heaven. Or hell if the Germans were right. And your dead, for all eternity, with make up on your face.
I saw it. My friend saw it, too. We cried because we knew him and we knew that's not what he would have wanted. And when we asked our parents about it, all they did was wipe the tears from our faces and say, “one day, you guys will have to learn how to deal with death.”

Street lights fly by and my interior flickers like a heartbeat. The lines on the highway pass in a blur of white and pink highway light.
In the car, driving 126 miles an hour, the lines look like their only a couple feet long. But I know that every one is actually more like 12 to 14 feet long. Nothing is as it seems, and especially not at this speed.
I knew the offramp was coming pretty fast, but I decided this time, I'd see if the yellow signs were necessary or whether they were just warnings.
45 mph. Let's try 130. Just a little more gas.

I went outside to feed my dog, Charlie, the next morning, and I sat there and watched him eat for a good half hour, until he was done. And I went and got my friend. He wiped the sleep out of his eyes, after all it was only about 8 o' clock on a Saturday morning. I always was an early bird.
He got dressed and came out to play and we went to my backyard to play with Charlie.
He had caught a bird and was shaking it like it was one of his chew toys. We went up to him to make sure he was ok, because there were feathers flying everywhere and you couldn't make out what was going on. He was moving like a blur. And I'll never forget that first time he snapped at me.
He was just doing it to keep me away from the bird, but he got my hand and I started bleeding a little so I kicked him in the side. He dropped the bird immediately and ran into the corner, whimpering like I had stabbed him. We looked at each other from across the yard, me nursing my bloody hand, and him with a look of terror and confusion plastered on his face. My friend didn't say a word. I got up and went inside.

The first thing that happened when I hit the barrier was the radio stopped playing. Replaced by glass shattering, metal striking cement, and then I must have gone slightly deaf because the sound afterward was all very subdued. I had no control of where my body was going, forward, backward, side-to-side, and I could taste blood everywhere. It was like my skin had taste buds and I just knew that my blood was all over me. I knew that in some time and place not where I was right then, my car was still moving, but I was in a river of inertia. I was the center of the universe.

I came back out with a knife, my friend confused and scared, my dog the same way.
I grabbed his collar and I stabbed him in the side, over and over again. And every time I pulled the knife out and shoved it back in, there was less resistance than before. It got easier and easier until all the red, red blood and guts had spilled out on the green, green grass and I was covered in it and all I was doing anymore was stabbing an empty skin. Stabbing what used to be my best friend.
That's when my dad came outside.

I could feel the car stop moving like it was a part of my body, like I was watching my hand become paralyzed. The seatbelt was wrenched around my neck. Glass was everywhere. I had no idea if my car even resembled a car anymore, or if I resembled a human. I couldn't move, nor did I particularly want to. The only thing I was certain of was that a fire was growing somewhere around me as the light flickered in my interior like a heartbeat.
This is how I wanted to go: in a burst of flame and glory. A shot of violence then it's off to the afterlife. And as the flames climbed inexorably toward the gas tank, I thought, “Serves me right. At least they won't put make up on my face.”

When we buried my dog in the backyard, I had never seen my dad cry so hard. And I had never been so confused about life and death. Read more...

Event 0

The road was empty just like a thousand others in this left-for-dead town, lined with empty houses, empty cars, an eerie calm settles. It's not right for a neighborhood in a city like this to be so quiet, but what's right and wrong has kind of been up in the air since Event 0. But there's no reason to think about that anymore, the only reason left is surviving one more day. So when I mark the long empty houses on this quaint neighborhood drive, I don't see the happiness of children on swingsets in backyards, or the day-to-day bustle of people returning from work, or even the inevitable fights between parents; all I see are possible non-perishables and shelter for the imminent night. Thinking for the present, nothing for the past.
I had ransacked a few houses with a little luck, and night was coming quickly, so I started looking out for a safe place to camp. The best were two story houses with most of the doors and windows. At least then you could barricade yourself upstairs to keep any animals from coming in. I had spotted a good possibility when I noticed something further down the street, a tree appeared to be glowing. Things like this make you cautious. You get to know the truth really well. Animals run rampant, people are few and far between, and trees don't glow, when something breaks these, there's cause for alarm. Animals kept in cages means somebody put them there, and there's a chance they could decide you're an animal. Running into people is like running into the devil, they'll do anything to survive. Since the event, the race for survival had become much closer, and we were all fighting not to come in last.
I decided to check the tree to see what was there, maybe it was a survivor's camp. I had heard cannibals talk about them, saying they were better than buffets. Maybe they hadn't found this one. Only one way to tell.
I sneaked down the street, making every attempt to not be seen. When I got close enough, I could see that the tree was glowing because of a light emanating from within a house, second floor, but this was not candlelight like we've all grown accustomed to, this was real electricity. I hadn't seen electric light for months, with its warm incandescence. You could watch the light flow from its source to its target, and you learned to appreciate that once it was gone. Something about electric light, maybe the fact that it is so organized and easily controlled and so unlike the environment I'd been living in, mesmerized me. I couldn't take my eyes away from its stream of particles splashing so radiantly onto this tree. It was like controlling the sun, in a way. I was led, trance like, to the front door where I stupidly stood and knocked.
Immediately sensing my idiocy, I leaped into the bushes, dried up and withered though they were, in an attempt to hide and prolong my life a little bit longer. Luckily, I am a very small person. This may come as unexpected news, but it's very logical that in this world, the big, bulky people are the first to go, not having the necessary nutrition or if they're lucky, getting eaten. A two-hundred pound man could feed a small village.
While I hid, I heard the door open and saw a small shadow framed in the wondrous electric world that the door opened into. Like a portal to another, more beautiful dimension. Once again, I became delirious and left my safe place, meandering out into the open, in plain sight.
The girl in the doorway had a small frame and looked well fed, about my age: 13 or 14. She wore a smile, which was as rare as finding food, and beckoned me to come in saying her name was Katie. Still mystified by the oddities that surrounded her so naturally, I followed her into her house.
Electricity flooded the place. It was everywhere. For this reason alone, if she had said she was God I would have believed her. Electricity didn't exist anymore. It just didn't. This is truth. And if this is truth, then breaking the pattern of the truth was inevitably a bad thing. I asked her how she had electricity. She explained that her father was a brilliant inventor and had made a sort of generator to keep electricity going when the power went out. It was originally designed for short black outs, but it had stood the test of time pretty well.
“8 months and counting,” she said happily, with her fingers crossed. She spoke like a bird, like there was nothing holding her to the ground. Like gravity didn't exist to her. I asked where her father was, and all she could say was she didn't know. Damn it. An intelligence like his would be useful, although it didn't concern me too much. Teenage boys are really only interested in sex. Even in the face of the apocalypse, all I could think about was getting to repopulate the earth with Katie. Then she introduced me to her twin, and all I could think about was sex and more sex. Who needs repopulation when you have two beautiful women at your disposal. Her twin looked exactly like her, standing next to her and asking me if I wanted anything to eat.
“We have meat,” one of them said, and I nearly died of joy.

I basked in the beauty of electricity while I waited for my meal. They had left me alone to wander the labyrinthine two story house. It figures, I thought, an inventor would have a house like this. It somehow reflected my mind, twists and turns leading to empty rooms. There were floors below ground going who knows how deep, like an iceberg. Soon I heard Katie call my name. Dinner was ready.
We ate in a traditional dining room, and I think she could tell the excitement on my face. I couldn't believe how much her house was like walking into the beautiful past, the days before the event when nothing mattered. When we stayed alive just by remembering to breathe every now and then. The glory days.
The twin had apparently gone to bed early, not wanting to impose on a possible romance between Katie and I. I said nothing about my thinking on the matter, but ate my food cheerfully. The meat was fresh and tender, much better than the canned non-perishables I had become accustomed to. These days, it was hard to find fresh anything, let alone something as delicious as steak. It just didn't exist anymore.
We made some amiable conversation, then she showed me where I would be sleeping. She even kissed me good night, and left with a glamorous smile and a wink. With the light behind her, she had the halo of an angel. I let the worries outside the house drip away like wax, leaving just my own little flame of love and lust, and in my mind we were dancing down deserted streets together, only stopping to breath the beauty of life into each other before we laugh and run onward. Armageddon was starting to seem like a Saturday in the park.
I was still so enchanted by the thrill of electricity and the beauty of these small particles cutting through the curtain of night revealing the wonder of the play, so I decided to sleep with the light on for the first time in months. That was how I knew something was going on.

Somewhere around midnight, the light dimmed like it does when there's an immense draw on the power. Once the light had dimmed, the blinding beauty did also, leaving just the truth: electricity does not exist. So what was going on? Possibilities stretched through the afternoon glow of the electric sun and out my door, so I followed them and began my exploration of the house once more.
There was a low hum coming from downstairs. I made my way from room to empty room until I came to the kitchen, where the hum seemed loudest. The wall seemed to come alive from the grinding, horrible noise and the flicker of the dim bulb and the rattle of dishes. I cautiously walked to the refrigerator and put my hand on it. I could feel the vibrations through the door, so I pulled it open to find that it was not a refrigerator at all, but a doorway opening into a dark stairwell. I can't tell you if it was my curiosity or stupidity from all the electricity that night that led me down that stairwell. I can't even tell you what I saw until I tracked the sound to its source. It was like walking through a dream of purgatory, and just like a dream, when you wake up, you only remember pieces: the inexorable walk, the deep darkness, and the grinding sound looming ahead. And the end of the journey downward, when you actually reach hell.
Katie stood at a control panel. She was the first thing I saw, lit up in all her beauty by a wonderful blue light. I almost asked what she was doing, but then I traced the source of the light. There was a machine in the center of the room glowing and breathing, flexing in its own light. A large, metal cylinder, contracting and expanding, breathing in the darkness. Katie was staring intently at it and so was I. The grinding grew louder and louder, but Katie's gaze never changed, she just calmly watched her machine do its magic.
It finally began slowing down, the grinding became a whir, and eventually the thing stopped making noise all together and the lights brightened to their original glory. The door opened, and Katie emerged, naked and beautiful, looking straight at me. Well, I guess Katie's twin emerged, but she looked like Katie in every way. She stared at me, not moving, seemingly not even breathing, and Katie moved from the control panel to take a closer look. She examined her twin, looking at her from all angles. But I was distracted by the things all over the floor.
The returning brilliance of the lights illuminated the whole room revealing what had been hidden: body parts. Dismembered arms and legs. Heads. Katie's head. It was close by, it was right next to me. I bent down to pick it up. Katie's head. It stared at me in horror, its tongue ripped out, its soft, brown hair caked in blood. Aghast, I screamed, and Katie noticed me.
“What are you doing here?”
“What the hell is this place?”

Then I must have collapsed, because I don't remember leaving. But I woke up in another house nearby, one that I had raided earlier. And on my chest I found a book from Katie and a note that said, “Don't come back. Please.” I opened the book and found a diary. Katie's diary.

June 5th (the day before the event)-
Today we bought a dog from the kennel and named it Charlie and brought him home. Dad said he needed him for an experiment but that when he was done, I could have him. Jil was jealous, but Dad just smiled and winked at me and said it was all our dog. But I knew the truth. He was going to be my dog. And I was going to love Charlie because he was mine and he was just like me. Like when we went into the yard and played and I put him in the swing and pushed him. He really smiled, I saw him. Everybody says I'm lying but I saw him smile at me.

June 6th -
I got in trouble today. Dad locked me in the fall out room and said I couldn't come out until I learned my lesson. Don't hit the dog, and don't hit your sister. Lesson learned.
The dog had bitten me. I was feeding him and he bit me and it really hurt so I kicked him and he yelped and Jil made fun of me so I kicked her too. She's a little brat.
I heard a noise, but I can't get out to see what's going on. I just heard a noise and then nothing and you never really hear nothing. I'm worried, but Dad said he would let me out...

I skipped ahead.

June 28th -
I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely...

I skipped ahead.

July 14th -
I found Charlie at the bottom of the stairs to Dad's lab. He was dead. But in the darkness away from the elements he hadn't rotted that much so I ate him. And he made me sick, but I ate him anyway. And I found the machine that Dad had wanted to use on him, had wanted to try out on him. And inside the machine was another Charlie. Exactly the same. Dead. So I ate him too.

July 15th -
I can't take another day of being alone. I've decided to use Dad's machine. I'll either die or there'll be another me. Either way will be better than how I am now.

July 15th -
I couldn't wait till tomorrow because it worked! I have a friend! I have a little me! It's so great! I'm teaching her to speak!

I skipped ahead.

July 20th -
Feeding two people is worse than feeding just me. We're both so hungry...

July 21st -
I found me dead in the bathroom today. I opened the door and she was lying there, not breathing, just like Charlie. Just like everybody. And she was dead. And I was hungry and I ate her and now I'm back where I started... Hungry and alone. So I went back downstairs and I made another me, and this one will be different...

I read her diary front to back, and I learned her story. Her parents were killed in Event 0, and she was spared because she was in trouble. She should have died there with everyone else, but instead she continued surviving, more by accident than anything, her clones dying of natural causes, then her eating them. Eventually, she started killing them when she got hungry, starting to think of them more as a source of food than anything.
Her diary stopped 3 months ago, who knows if I had talked to Katie or one of the thousand clones she's made since the event. Whether she's dead now or not, she's killed herself enough times to say that she's no longer alive.
I kept the diary to remind myself that I'm still alive. That no matter how depraved I get, if I reach the point of absolute delusion, where I can no longer justify not killing myself, I will do it with no questions asked, because when I die, I want to know I'm dead.
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