Excerpt from "2012/21," the First-Draft-Completed-Editing-in-Progress-Novel

This is not where I truly belong. This is a nightmare of epic proportions, the kind of bad dream brought on by late night drinking and total despondency. 

The smell is the first thing to hit me, followed by the sight of bodies stacked as high as the eye can see. I shouldn’t be able to smell anything in this state and I for damn sure shouldn’t be able to handle such a smell without gagging. That means I’m being allowed to experience the stench of death and decay without becoming overpowered. Unlike me, the living walk around in those yellow containment suits you see in movies when there’s been some type of outbreak. 

Somewhere not too far away, somebody cries. It is impossible to tell the sex or age of the person because the despair they express transcends any of that. The grief stretches throughout the street as refrigerated trucks are loaded with body after body. The loaders aren’t even using gurneys, they’re just grabbing the dead people from both ends and tossing them inside the truck into the storage beds like sacks of wheat.

Someone yells, “Christ, Craig! This one’s still alive!”

I can’t see who said this or who they are talking about, but the flurry of activity points to one of the trucks further down the line. 

“What the fuck, Craig?” a female voice says. “How many times do I need to tell you to check them before you shuck them?”

Craig utters a sheepish, “Sorry.” 

That’s the last thing I hear before the scene shifts to what appears to be the outside of a hospital where, if I’m not mistaken, a group of angry people are brandishing protest signs and yelling at medical staff. What could these people have possibly done to incur such rage?

“Fucking crisis actor!” the big guy in the red baseball cap nearest me says, spit flying from his mouth.

The woman in scrubs standing like a statue before him wears a surgical mask and says nothing as he keeps accusing her of lying to the American people and calling her a pedophile.

Where the hell did that come from?

None of the medical folks are reacting to the angry men screaming in their faces like demented toddlers. It’s probably the bravest thing I’ve ever seen, except I don’t know what the hell is going on.

Where is my guide? I don’t care how hideous it is, I would welcome its presence right now. It would be far less nightmarish than what I’m witnessing from my fellow human beings. 

I decide to walk on, past the unmoving medical staff, past the angry, mostly unmasked protestors, past the news crews who are obviously eating all this shit up. I need sanity, peace, something that makes sense. I find the exact opposite on the next block.

Pamphlet-waving, saliva-spewing men and women beckoning all of us who pass by to come hear what they have to say. Most of them want us to sign their petitions for this group or against that group or for no group at all. They have markedly different beliefs but they all somehow sound the same. This whole scene feels less like reality and more like metaphor, but there’s a gritty realism to the whole affair that stubbornly keeps me from dismissing it as such.

Ignoring the shouting would-be activists, I glance to my right and stop dead in my tracks. On the side of an abandoned brick building, somebody has painted, in giant red letters: THE MAYANS WERE WRONG!

It’s all too much. I don’t feel myself hit anything when I pass out, but everything goes black

 

My Letter to Governor Whitmer

 Below is a copy of the letter I sent Michigan Governor Whitmer regarding her abrupt about-face in light of a pandemic that has actually gotten worse since last year:

Governor Whitmer, With all due respect, I feel that you have abandoned your constituency. Last year, when the pandemic was new and you sided with logic and reason, your decisions were sound and your unwavering support of mitigation measures was an inspiration to those of us dealing with the science deniers and gun-totin' extremists. However, since your ability to effectively order lockdowns was taken away by an opportunistic Republican legislature, you have slowly begun acting as if the pandemic has become little more than a minor inconvenience. Gone are the briefings, the recommendations to MDHHS and, frankly, any real acknowledgement of what you so fervently supported in 2020. It is as if you were replaced by an imposter. All I see now is your smiling face in photo op after photo op, dancing amidst the flames of reality. Michigan is worse off now than it was last year. Your tone deaf refrain about vaccinations is meaningless when we already know the latest variant isn't halted by the vaccine. And for those of us who have several months to go before we qualify for a booster, your flippant attitude feels like a betrayal. There are only two things that have changed since last year, and anyone with the ability to observe can see them both. One, Donald Trump is no longer in office. While this is a positive change and President Biden is indeed taking the pandemic seriously, he is also facing a resistant Republican effort to curtail his intentions. Second, you are facing reelection. In fact, you have been in reelection mode since the end of 2020. I won't speculate on your motivations because that would be arrogant, but I doubt my suspicions are too far off the mark. Governor, we need you more this year than last. People are dying in greater numbers and hospitals are full. Please don't try to spin these deaths as only the unvaccinated because that is a patently false claim. My wife's vital surgery was rescheduled because of this latest variant. She was one of your most ardent supporters but now I fear you are close to losing both of us as well as many others who once stood behind "That Woman From Michigan."

Thank you for your time~

Dispatches from the Coronavirus Days #6

Don't Stand, Walk, Lurk or Exist So Close to Me: I waited a few days to do another Dispatch because this thing has apparently taken off in some small way and I wanted to let readers catch up before I started again. As we all should know by now in these days of global pandemic, staying home and maintaining a distance of six feet from others is the recommended way to slow down the virus's progress. Slow down, not stop. There is no stopping it yet. This thing is the ultimate invisible predator, able to live on surfaces and in the air. But it can also be killed with soap and water and bleach. However, those things aren't going to curb its advance so stop going to the fucking grocery store with your entire family, unmasked, un-gloved and not maintaining distance!

The Few, The Masked, the Aware: Naturally, I have a real-life example or two because I try not to pull things out of the virus-infected air.  Today at a certain higher-caliber supermarket, I was one of five people in the entire store wearing masks. Even the staff was walking around without gloves. And nobody was maintaining a six foot distance. In fact, one woman seemed to be everywhere I wanted to go, standing either right in front of me or to my side. So, I'm not proud of it but I started coughing in my mask. Suddenly social distancing seemed to become her number one priority.

Brief Scare: The night before last, my asthmatic wife who has been dealing with an upper respiratory infection we're almost positive is not Covid-19 had an excacerbation. In case you're unfamiliar with what that is, read all about it. The last time she had one this severe, she wound up in the hospital for a week; that was when her chuldhood asthma became chronic. Back then she didn't have all the equipment and medication to treat it. Despite all that, it still looked really bad and normally we would have taken her to the hospital, but the pandemic has made that nearly impossible right now. Also, since her pulmonologist says I can't be in the room for three hours after she uses her breathing treatment, I slept downstairs. The next morning, I heard sirens nearby. That's not unusual because of how close we live to a hospital, but when they suddenly stopped and it sounded like the vehicle stopped right outside my house, my first thought, "Oh, no. She called 911 from upstairs." But I was wrong. The EMS was across the street at the grocery store, where I saw someone being wheeled out on a gurney. You can probably guess I didn't shop there like I had planned.

Finally, the Writer Makes a Literary Reference: I didn't create the image above. The attribution seems to belong to a librarian named Louise Darlington. Frankly, it couldn't be more accurate. I mean, we've reached a point where nearly every title listed is a plausible outcome both for the U.S. and the planet. In fact, I could easily see most of these combining into one big fat dystopia. I've been telling people for years to listen to the science fiction writers. Now we're living it.

Some Heroes Don't Wear Capes or Masks: Italy isn't only Ground Zero for the pandemic in Europe, it's also a prime example of what can happen in America if we don't handle this outbreak properly. Five more Italian doctors have died  fighting this thing. Two of them were 70-year old retirees who returned to the field to help out. Lack of supplies such as gloves and masks continue to take a toll in Italy, where over 8% of its medical workers have died from the virus. Meanwhile, in the Hoarding States of America, our own medical professionals are posting frantically online about how they also don't have masks and gloves. Dr. Oz even called it our "patriotic duty" to not hoard masks and, in fact, to go without them.

Beach Blanket a-gone-gone: Finally, after allowing way too many people to potentially infect one another on its beaches, America's Wang's governor ordered them shut down. Governor Ron DeSantis (R) said, "The Party's over in Florida" after video of idiotic springbreakers proudly defying the CDC recommendations in the name of partying and being stupid went viral. Too little, too late.

Shit Just Got Realer(er): As I was writing this latest Dispatch and about to end with the current trend of teenagers licking groceries and videoing themselves, I heard voices outside and walked over to the window to investigate. A large SUV sat at the stop sign with its emergency lights flashing. Assuming the person was having car trouble, I went back to writing until, a few minutes later, I noticed red lights reflecting off the wall over my wife's head. We both went to see what was happening and there was a EMS, the second one outside my house today, parked with people working in the back on someone. I could see one of them wearing a mask. When the other one emerged from the back, he got behind the wheel and they drove off slowly. The SUV was nowhere to be seen. Obviously it could have been anything that caused them to call 911 but the liklihood that it was Covd-19 related is too high to ignore.

I think I'll stop writing now~



Read the previous Dispatch here.

Dispatches from the Corona Virus Days #2

This Just In!: One of two things learned today while standing on line at Aldi came when a woman expressing shock and dismay at all the perceived last-minute stockpiling of food, etc. mentioned that she had just heard about this whole global pandemic thing yesterday. She was all decked out in a surgical mask and shower cap and was surprisingly young-looking.

Storage Options May Vary: Lesson number two came from the same woman and was learned by another woman in line to whom she was speaking. When the other woman said she always had lots of food stored away in her freezer and pantry, the woman who'd just heard about the quaranting a day ago said, "Yeah, but don't everybody got no pantry." Never assume was the lesson, but also that double negatives are sometimes the least of the grammatical offenses.

To the Bars, the Idiots: Just like the rest of the state's schools, Michigan State University was closed by official governor's order. However, that didn't prevent many among its student population from immediately running to the bars in town to congregate in close quarters and cough and sneeze all over each other in the name of "fun." This trend infected other portions of the state to the point where Governor Whitmer has now ordered all restaurants and bars to close and only provide "to go" food orders.

Long Lines Will Save us: According to this article in The Texas Tribune, long lines of people being delayed due to the virus are just a'sittin' around, cramped together, coughin' and sneezin' within inches of one another because the best way to halt the spread of a virus that is transmitted those ways is to better ensure that hundreds of people are unable to spread apart!

Church Bells Ring, Can't Help Listenin': Since yesterday, a nearby church has been ringing its bells every hour on the hour. It is both comforting and maddening. They just started back up while that previous sentence was being typed. End of Days much?

Welcome To 'Murica: In the other countries dealing with Covid-19, the citizens know they will not have to worry about getting paid while they are practicing social distancing. Italy has even suspended mortgages until the crisis is over. But here in the country that apparently hadn't been great for a long time until a red hat told us it could be great again, many of us don't know if we will continue to get paid. As usual, everyone discounts those of us who interface with the public for a living and assume working from home is an option for most of us. A bill was introduced to provide continuing pay but the Republcan senate shot it down because it didn't remove federal funding for abortions. Yep. Even now, they're playing politics with our lives. And while another bill has been sent over, it is a watered down version.

Morons with Fingers: No dispatch would be complete without at least one tale of a wretched twit making assinine comments online, so of course here are two such tales:

• One guy making Michigan proud he lives here cried "fake news" at the undeniable fact that Governor Whitmer has ordered the closures of restaurants.
• The other prize winner took humbrage at a post detailing Trump's many failures regarding dealing with the virus by trying to make it appear as if the "liberal presidents" in other countries did nothing to help their citizens. Forget that this shouldn't be about liberal vs. conservative as seen through narrow American prisms. Instead of accepting that his glorious leader made mistakes, this guy was more interested in "whataboutism" and interpreting facts as "taking shots." 

More to come~

(Read Dispatch#1 here)