Journal entry: March 23, 2020
March 23, 2020
I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. To a God that might not exist, or to you who may find this next. I doubt it, but if you do, how are you still alive? I certainly will not be. The world has been dark for the past three weeks, and yet all I can hear are the quiet chitters outside this door. It's waiting. I’d run out of time after my sister left this basement pantry a week ago. She told me to stay down here and that she would be back in an hour. She thought there were people out there that could save us. That’s what the radio said, “Stay inside for two weeks and help would be on its way.” She couldn’t have been more wrong.
​
Now all I know now are the metal storage racks and silver cylinders of lunch meats and green beans. Yes, there will be plenty of canned food for an eternity, but the water and electricity has finally been shut off. All I have is a propane lantern for light and an empty plastic water bottle across the room.
​
Above us was once our apartment complex, deep within the inner city. Now I know nothing of the world as my phone is dead. One morning on the radio before I was supposed to go to work, there was an announcement about new restricted lockdowns as there was a public safety concern. New disease was discovered overseas and it spread like a wildfire. Soon after that announcement, my sister started packing the essentials in our apartment, and I never left for work. She had always been a freak when it came to the apocalypse, and of course I thought she was nuts. Everyone did. We had six locks on our front door and our windows were sealed shut. She had every survival book written by some weird finatic off of ebay. She was right, though I don’t exactly know how. Maybe she worked for the government, or had connections with secret scientists, but she always knew something would be coming. No one else was prepared the way she was.
​
God, now I’m losing track of why I even thought to write this. It doesn’t really matter now since everyone might be dead. I will never leave this basement to discover what the world has become. Nothing will matter. I would go back to my dump of a retail job over and over just to know that everything above was back to normal. But as the two week quarantine period is over, no one will come down here to find me.
​
I write this sitting in the kitchen sink because there is nowhere else to confide in. This metal basin full of bits of food, piss, sweat, shit, is all I can call my own. I can’t leave! I can’t, I can't, I can't…I can’t leave after what I saw of my sister when I heard her voice in the hallway after she had disappeared. I heard my name being called after four days alone and I answered the door.
That one time was the only time I had opened the door since she shoved us down in this hellhole. But as I cracked open the steel door, four stories underground, her body laid mauled and bloodied at my feet. The blood was dried and caked to the floor. The skin on her arms and face seemed to be melted like cheap plastic covered in a black tar concoction. Her long hair was knotted and mangled. And that smell. God that wafting awful smell is engraved in my brain. How does one put that into words? I can’t. I gazed down at the oblivion beyond my light to find what appeared to be leaky water pipes and ceiling wires ripped from its panels. The light fixtures had been dismantled and shattered. A leering pair of yellow eyes were watching me watching it from the corridor. Its body blurred into the darkness around it. I can’t tell you exactly what it was, but it sure wasn’t human. The voice of my sister had been a mere echo from the creature that now stalks my cell. I can only assume she had been dead for days before the creature found me too. I will die here, not knowing what will kill me first. The horrors waiting for me outside of this room, or time itself. I will die knowing this unexpected life is not worth living.