October 17th, 2012 / 6:03pm – Five days until I die
Today I’m writing you from a place where the sun doesn’t shine, which would make me awfully content if the phrase had any literal meaning…but it does not. Yes, The Demon lives here as well…teasing me with the burn of its laugher each day I awake to face the horrors of my reality. They say that monsters come out at night, I say let them. I sympat...hize because now I am one of the monsters, and the rest of the world keeps us at bay with their “night-lights” of fear and ignorance. They sleep with their eyes wide, horrified that I may lie beneath their beds. My existence is waning, and I have the misfortune of living out my final days in a space devoid of love, care, or any other emotion that would keep my deteriorating sense of self-worth on a fragile life-support.
I remember very little from yesterday. The hotel, the bathroom…it all feels like a forever ago. While my mind’s eye was blurry, my intent was clear: I was thirsty, I needed a drink. Badly. As I lay on the bathroom floor, the sap from the tree of life flowing through my veins…things became instantly clear...I looked past the men who surrounded me, past the walls that enclosed us, and even father still, past the invisible gates that serve as the shackles of humanity. I looked square into the face of the moment, and there was a certain beauty in my content as the moment stared right back at me…a tear softly rolling down its cheek. It mouthed a silent apology as I was thrown to the floor and cuffed by the QUIET Team whose mission of locating me had finally drawn to a close. Since myself and The Moment were at such a peace, I fell asleep coddled in the safety of its breast…an attempt to silently sidestep in the danger of my new reality.
I now exist in Quarantine Zone #2, the largest of the purgatories the President had established for people like me who were patiently waiting to die. QZ #2 was home to approximately 220,000 hapless souls…men, women, and children that were showing signs of Triz infection and were then subsequently ripped from the uterus of society and dropped in this zoo so that they could be “rehabilitated”. Such an immense amount of people requires and immense amount of space, so the zone was established in the heart of Manhattan island, with each bridge leading into the island being heavily fortified. There is no escape. Yet.
I find it ironic that a prison camp now exists in a place that was once viewed as a gateway to freedom. However, I suppose Manhattan still represents freedom in a certain twisted way…it represents freedom from the infection. So long as WE exist here, those who exist elsewhere in the world can live in the ecstasy of security. The fact that the infected were not allowed to go on with their lived meant that they actually could. Our imprisonment made everyone else’s freedoms possible. God bless America.
I was brought into the island in the back of a modified school bus. I sat shackled to my seat alongside thirty or so other “escapees”. Apparently Quarantine security was just as poor in the other zones as it was in the one I escaped from, because the George Washington Bridge was bumper-to-bumper with the bright yellow diesel-fueled machines. Once we arrived at the front gate of QZ #2, we were offloaded and lined up single-file, hands and feet still shacked. We were marched by faceless Quiet Team members into what had once been a convention center. Inside, we immediately discovered what America had chosen to be a temporary solution to the problem of us escaping: the cattle brand. I twisted, flailed, and screamed in bloodcurdling agony as they strapped me down to a chair and pressed a white-hot metal rod against into forehead. I could hear my flesh sizzle and pop. I could hear my cries. I could hear The Demon laughing. If they marked us, then we would be more easily identifiable in public. No more vacationing to Four Seasons…
After receiving the mark of the beast, we were marched out the back of the building and released into what had once been a symbol of prosperity and hope…but was now home to everything wrong with the world. Trash, feces and vomit filled the streets. Windows had been shattered and shops broken into and looted, grocery stores stripped to the bone. Violence was rampant as the quarantined infected raped, pillaged, and destroyed each other for the rights to petty belongings, as well as to claim any sense of superiority and self-worth in this lawless wasteland. I took a step forward and witnessed the sanctity and purity of a child being destroyed. I tried to step back but The Demon would not allow it. The next reluctant step had me bear witness to a woman trying to save that child. Another step back when she was forced to participate in the wayward folly. Yet again The Demon would not stand for my retreat. I didn’t want to be here…he didn’t choose to care.
When everyone around you is dying; when every last set of eyes you stare into is streaming tears of blood; when the air you breathe is poisoned with the treachery of hopelessness and despair…there can be no order. There was no room for that. No time. One can call it pure, really. We were not insane; we were simply acting in accordance to how nature intended the human mind to exist…in a world devoid of illusion. There was none of man’s artificial comfort to speak of. There was no bubble to be found. In the Quarantine Zones we exist simply as a species…stripped down to its purest form. No one lies, because they don’t need to, no one coddles, because they don’t have to. All who exist in this kingless land live exactly as God intended. This must have been what it was like at the birth of mankind. Yes, here in Quarantine Zone #2, we live just as the Lord planned all along. Here in Quarantine Zone #2…we are perfect.
