Pandemic: We’ve Run Out of Toilet Paper!
Copyright © Declan McCreary 2018
Day 14: Two weeks into the worst pandemic modernity has seen and I’m pretty bored. The electricity went out after the first week so of course with it went the internet and my prime source of entertainment. The next week you can only meditate and read so much before you simply crave information or some kind of human contact. I’ve got enough food and water to last me another 2 ½ months, I was prepared supplies wise, though I always figured it would have been some kind of water crisis which kept me cooped up in my place. The couch barricades the door, so I just decided to stay put until the virus ran its course or a cure was found. There wasn’t a lot of information that first week but I could hear people leaving and screaming from their apartments, there weren’t even government emergency camps that I know of. And now I’m realizing that all the food and water still leaves me ill-prepared, a lack of social input is paralyzing my mind and dragging me down into an existential malaise which no whisky can remove. Time stretches, each second expanding longer than the last, each moment a deranged glimpse of the next—the only thing that is real is watching the water slowly run low. I can measure my achievements by the empty bean cans, empty fruit cups, crushed beer cans, and the used candy wrappers. I figure I’ll stay here until I have a couple days’ worth of food and water and then take off, look for my family, my girlfriend, anyone who isn’t trying to cut me up.
I know my neighbors upstairs are still there, I can hear them chattering in low whispers on occasion, but it’s their footsteps which really give them away. I hear the crackle of a radio, must be battery powered, and it might also have news, information about the outside world. My interest is piqued, giddy even but afraid to go and contact them. They could be armed; maybe they’ll assume I’m a marauder. What the hell is a marauder though and what would I even want, I just want to know the news or anything really. I’m also reticent because I don’t want to buddy up to them, I’ve got plenty of supplies and they might not have any, that’s the only reason I haven’t went out looking for people. I just didn’t realize the intensity of the human pull.
I put my Santoku knife in my belt behind my shirt on the backside, just in case. Damn thing isn’t even very sharp, and it’s a terrible stabbing knife, my reckoning however is that it’s a lot more terrifying to go up against a man with a knife than one without so may as well. I’m mostly muscle, lean, not large by any standard but I’m fast and when I squint my eyes I kind of look like a less badass Clint Eastwood. I head upstairs slowly but with purpose imaging what I’ll say and how they’ll respond. I imagine first them screaming, then bullets blasting through the door and they scream, “Get the fuck out you mother fucker!” I knock on the door. Silence, I knock again, crouch and say, “I’m from downstairs, I heard your radio and I just want to know what’s going on, if there are any points of interest or army camps setup.”
“We don’t have any food or water, go away,” I hear somewhat muffled.
“I don’t want your stuff, I just want to know if you heard anything on the radio,” I respond thinking this might be a bad idea. I stand there starting to sweat, it runs down around my eye and I start to really feel the heat out here, it’s been absolutely brutal without A/C, now add not having the water running for the past week and you got yourself a fine mixture for feeling real pretty. Anyways, the silence goes on so I knock again and repeat my request.
“All we’ve heard is survivalist nuts making racist jokes and saying you’re all fucked, this is god’s punishment, bullshit like that. Do you have any food or water?” they yell through the door.
“That’s it? No, I only have a couple days’ worth left. They didn’t say anything about which cities are still functioning, any reports about the virus, casualties, cures, anything else?” I reply taken aback.
“That’s it, go away, leave us alone.”
I head back downstairs through the thickness of heat, rotten food, mixed in with what I can only imagine is a rotting carcass behind one of these lucky doors. I haven’t really stopped to think about it before, but the misery and complete lack of anything good has become palpable, you can smell it in the air. Life hasn’t even smelled like this before, it means something, it smells as if a new age has arrived—I’m not the religious type but there is a categorical difference here.
I unlock the door, I’ve always been a stickler for locked doors, but only now has it actually become a life and death matter. An unlocked doors means you get raped and robbed at night, or so I imagine. Before all the fun and games it might have been your elderly Jewish neighbor wandering in asking for some sugar. O’ how interesting and deathly without levity things have become.
Day 19: 626 steps if I walk only along my walls, I’ve counted 58 times now. I’ve counted the floor boards in the hardwood floors, 1,283. I’ve taken the television apart and tried to put it back together, I’ll never know if I succeeded though. Food and water looks different, there’s less of it. The bathroom is like a place if you took all the hipsters of San Francisco, put them inside of a dog kennel, fed them the worst organic diarrhea inducing burritos for a week and had them all shit on the same toilet at the same time. I don’t even sit on it anymore; I just sort of crouch over it hoping to god my body doesn’t touch it anymore. You can’t flush when there’s no running water. Before this all went down I used to imagine it and it sounded fun, I legitimately thought my life was so boring that it needed a veritable global pandemic to make it interesting. I was so egoistic that my boredom demanded a global crisis to alleviate any existential ennui. Now that I’m finally on the greener grass side of the fence, I have to say, it really sucks and I say so unabashedly. I was wrong before, I prefer dull and clean to dull and rotten. My beard is getting pretty gnarly; I can smell my balls without even having to take my pants off, even in a standing position. I’m constantly itchy, my head is like some kind of ant hill of activity without the bugs, I fantasize about removing all the skin, just tearing it off so it would stop fucking itching. Eating only canned beans, fruits, peas, chili, tomato sauce, cold soups, and various packaged goods like dried ramen gets old fast. I was never a gourmand; in fact I made fun of my yuppie douche bag friends who obsessed about food but this has taken me to a new level of desire. Just a simple fucking sandwich, with turkey, tomato, cheese, lettuce, mayo, and some solid non shitty bread-a freshly made sandwich-what I would give for it. I’d kill my neighbors for it, maybe, probably, certainly, maybe not.
Humans evolved to run, jump, and move. All I do is pace which is better than nothing, but not enough. The only things keeping me sane are Anna Karenina, one of the few books I have in my collection that I haven’t finished, meditating, and looking out my window. There’s nothing to see from the window, it’s essentially a small plot between apartment buildings with your usual assortment of junk and plywood. As if the universe had in mind a very particular assemblage of various shit that all plots of land of this variety must have, a strange occurrence. I also write, I’ve been writing some erotica, to which I later jerk off too. I wrote one called Sexy Sorority Robot Time Machine Dinosaur Adventures. I figured I may as well make it funny as well, I haven’t really laughed since all this started except the usual chuckle at the absurd, it helps prevent suicide.
Day 38: 2, that’s how many shits I used to take per day. Now I just shit diarrhea constantly throughout the day. There are no known words in existence to describe the bathroom anymore; I can smell it throughout the entire apartment if the door is open. I’ve started to just shit and piss in a bucket and throw it out the window, fuck the police I say. They never did me no good anyhow and I don’t bel
ieve in victimless crimes anyways, so fuck order and sanitation, pretty much nothing matters anymore. I’m pretty sure there’s a new ecosystem growing on my balls, and I’m afraid to look at my asshole in the mirror for fear of finding intelligent life; my fear isn’t the life itself, but that they might be Klingon types who start to wage war on me. I don’t hear my neighbors upstairs anymore. A couple of nights ago I heard screaming upstairs, a door slamming, and then silence. I feel terribly lonely, I can’t shake a heavy feeling in my heart but it’s actually become quite difficult to discern various emotions at this point. Everything is mired with a kind of nausea, from the shitty food but also from facts; the fact of the world, the fact of my isolation, and the fact of my profound ignorance of what is currently happening anywhere else but here. My entire scope of reality has been severely limited to a studio apartment, my body, and my disordered mind. It’s a new kind of myopia, not medical, but pandemic. I look at the gallons of water I had collected before all this, I might have miscalculated before, or maybe not, I don’t really know, but it looks like I’m over halfway through the water, and water is more important than food. I try not to drink too much, but I find that I have constant headaches either way.
I’ve finished Anna Karenina, I won’t spoil it, I’ll just say it was a solid read and if you ever find yourself in a global pandemic, check it out. I can’t meditate anymore, you would think that having all this alone time you would get really good at it. However, it’s pretty damn hard when you are indescribably itchy, nauseated, headaches, stomachaches, and constant anal fallout. I amuse myself by singing songs that I don’t know the words too, giving speeches to high-schoolers about the value of the humanities, or yelling more intently at people for their voting behavior pre-collapse. On the bright side I haven’t had to answer any emails in the past month, or worry about work which is completely and thoroughly awesome. I suppose I never have to pay taxes again which is pretty sweet too, and I never get spam anymore-in fact I don’t even have to check my mail box. Overall though, I think these are small prices to pay for being able to shower and go outside. But you got to stay positive and negative. Between optimism and pessimism, both extremes serve to confuse the mind, one must use principles from each depending on the situation. So you might ask, what am I optimistic about, well I answered that, no more emails.
You must be wondering, well how does pessimism help, well that’s a great question. I always thought humans were completely fucking stupid and their underfunding of the CDC and the WHO would bite them in the ass, and when it finally happened I wasn’t even mad. Seneca urged us to imagine all the terrible things that could happen to us each day, to steel ourselves against the worst of it, so when it finally happens your mind is able to take it in stride. Well no matter how much you prepare, you cannot be ready for how itchy your asshole will be when you can’t stop projecting shit from it all day every day. I’ve also run out of moisturizing lotion, The Walking Dead never dealt with the real issues. I have half a year left of Claritin, but my eye drops are donzo’. Now in addition to all my other joys, itchy, runny, red eyes are a new constant.
Day 45: My grandma always told me that one of the defining traits of people is that they always adapt. I’m not sure I’m adapting well to be honest, I’m just eating and drinking more and more. Going outside isn’t an option unless it’s absolutely necessary, I hear the occasional murder screams-no thanks. I spend hours just sitting on my couch fidgeting looking up at the ceiling. I’ve chewed all my gum, trident orange flavored one, though I didn’t let it go to waste. I stick them all on my wall as a reminder of all the great things capitalism brought us in the days gone by. What could they sell us now?
It’s not the smell of my body or the loss of hope and decimation of any dreams I had for my life, but the incredible soul crushing loneliness that’s recently become my new raison d'être. In the absence of any pleasures and devoid of meaning, a little bit of sadness swirled with the desire for human touch becomes the thing that lifts you up—reminds you what you’re about. My family, my brother, my girlfriend, my friends, what’s become of them? I was so consumed with my own survival that it’s only just occurred to me. I walk over to my drawer in the hallway between the kitchen and living room. Probably mahogany but I never learned the difference. Opening the top drawer I take out a map and bring it to my writing table, shitty one from Ikea, and spread it out. I’m in LA, and Cleveland is pretty far. I’m completely useless at navigating without a GPS, technology ruined us all. I study the map, I-80, I-40, or I-70 seem to be my options, but I don’t have a car, though I have a feeling I’ll find one outside. I take out a sheet of paper and jot down things to bring, knife, backpack with the remaining food and water, spare clothing, and some other weapon. I’ve got a broken Swiffer stick which I duck-taped to a broken broom handle to extend its life, I guess that’ll have to do as my make-shift staff. May as well do this Mad Max style, you know, when in Rome. Better look the part, I make four pony tails with my shoulder length hair and decide to keep the beard, I once read some study that women find men with beards more aggressive; maybe it applies to men too. Anything to give me an edge, I’d rather not get skull-fucked because I cut my beard, you never know these days. I’ve got what looks like 13 days left of supplies, so may as well leave in 9, I can carry about 4 days’ worth of food and water in my backpack.
You’d be surprised the difference a plan can make. That’s the strength of people-imagination-we feel accomplished as long as we write things down; you can see it right here on this sheet of paper. It’s not ridiculous to ponder that maybe, just maybe that’s why humans are terribly awful at dealing with things when they don’t go according to plan.
Day 54: Viral pandemic check, crazy hair check, smell like shit check, knife check, backpack with supplies check, shoes tied tightly check, broken Swiffer/broom handle duck-taped together check, ready to fuck shit up, we’ll see. I open my door cautiously and the smell from before is gone. It’s been replaced with something truly atrocious, I stagger back inside from the scent slamming the door. It smells like a fat man who threw up on his own dick after running a 5k. I try again but this time run out my door, fly down the stairs, and jump over what in hindsight was a bloated corpse of the dude who must have ran the 5k. The feeling of the outside air and the sun on my skin is sexual, relaxation and hope vibrates down from the crown of my head to my toes—this feels good. I look up at slowly at the sky and note that the clouds are still there-trash is everywhere. First step, find a car with keys in it because let’s be frank Frank, I haven’t a fucking clue how to hot wire a car.
I step out from the buildings awning and look down the street. It hasn’t even been that long but already grass has started to take back what was once its own realm. A few cars are parked at odd angles. Some in the middle of the street, broken glass scattered here and there, I look up at the building across the street which has sheets streaming down from the windows, trash all along the side of the building.
“HEY YOU,” I jumped back frightened. I see a woman lean out of her window with a broom and she says “You got any food, put it on the ground and you don’t get shot.”
My mind reels back, calculating what’s happening. Is she crazy, has my vision gone, I squint, maybe it’s a laser rifle, no that’s dumb.
“Are you insane?” I scream back at her. Taking out my own Swiffer/broom combo and aiming at her, “I’ll blast you the fuck out of that window you dumb cunt!” giggling to myself.
A pop zings out as the ground at my feet explodes. It was my vision—I lurch forward sprinting like I’m back on my high school track team, 200 meters to get the hell out of her sights. I hear another shot and see the concrete flint right in front of me and I jump for cover behind a car.
“Drop your gear son, and you won’t get shot,” I hear faintly. I wonder if I knew her before things became awesome. I feel pretty panicked but I’m curious, maybe I held the door open for her when I went to the corner deli. What an asshole.
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��I helped you before, just let me go!” I yell out, totally a wild card.
“How do you figure?” she asks.
“I held the door open for you.”
And then I bolt running as fast as my legs will carry me and round the corner. My heart feels tight—the adrenaline pumps do that, the feeling of fear is overwhelming. I see an Audi, looks like a model from 2002, the doors unlocked, hot damn. I get in, drop my backpack on the passenger seat and throw my “rifle” in the back seat. The seats are soft, leather, beige, and it has a nice used car smell, like new shoes but a little gentler. I lean the seat back and breathe in deeply, my stomach grows, chest expands and I release a long breath slowly. I’ll have to keep in mind that my vision might not be perfect anymore. I check my pockets for my eye-drops, empty, anger bubbles up at how itchy my eyes are. I used to compulsively check my pockets for my wallet, keys, and gum. Now it’s time for a little gift from god-the car keys. I check the glove compartment and I’m not making this up, first times a charm. I start the car and see that I have about a quarter tank of gas. I drive out and the feeling of accelerating forward isn’t exactly novel, but it certainly brings shivers to my spine. It’s wonderful, I floor it and get pulled back into my seat and my spirit soars; a feeling of jubilance cascades over my being like a cool waterfall.
I open all the windows and scream out, “Wooo hoooo!” laughing hysterically that I almost got shot for a backpack with water and food-oh how things have changed.
As I drive down the street swerving left and right to dodge the various debris and detritus I switch through the radio, static, static, static, and then I hear a voice, “And that’s what you call a three-fingered salami,” I think this is the survivalist nut-job talk show my neighbors were talking about, the guy rants about taxes and road kill for the next 15 minutes but it’s strangely soothing, just to hear the sound of a voice no matter how deranged.
Pandemic- We’ve Run Out of Toilet Paper! Page 1
