A story I wrote for World Lit
The theme was "Tragedy from a first-hand account"
By the time I had stepped inside the Macy’s on the border between Hatherly, my stomach had already knotted itself over enough times to make even the most militant Boy Scout den leader tip his hat and whistle admiringly. And the instant I got hit by what was essentially the Tower of Babel of old lady perfume, my stomach was somehow managing to perform cartwheels AFTER it somehow managed to knot itself into a Reverse Sailor’s Hitch which, I can assure you, is one damn strong knot. This wasn’t going to be a good day.
But, I told myself with a long, sad sigh, you may as well get this outta the way now. Look, maybe she won’t even recognize you. Hell, who’s to say she’s even working today? It’s like 10:30 on a Wednesday. Isn’t she taking classes now or something? Yeah, yeah she said something about getting a major in Painting or Drawing or Philosophy or Panhandling or something. There’s probably just some old Polish lady with a charming accent and big poofy hair and…damn.
My stomach, which until now had been temporarily taking a breather from all of its acrobatics, began crawling up into my upper chest, where it sqooshed my heart against the front of my ribs, causing considerable discomfort and a heartbeat that I SWEAR can’t be healthy. Maybe I should get that checked out? They do walk-ins at the doctor’s, right? I mean, yeah, I’ll bet you anything there’s no one even wai-
No. Just---fucking do it already. So what if she’s your ex? Who cares? A lot of guys see their exes all the time. It’s not that goddamn big a deal. What’s it matter if you’re returning your wife’s scarf? What, she gonna start quizzing you on who you bought it for?
Yes, professor, if you wanna return something, you kinda start to expect questions. That’s sorta how we do things ‘round these parts.
I hate you, brain.
And by the time I snap out of my heated debate with myself, I realize that Myra had already recognized me and was trying her darnedest to look happy. I had to give it to her; she’s such a little trooper.
“Hey stranger! How’s it goin’?”
Big smile for the cameras. “Hey. I’m alright, I guess. You?”
“Never been better.” She made a little wax on, wax off motion between our faces to indicate how she truly had never been better. “I think I’m at that period of my life where I’m going to really discover who I am as a person, you know? Like, it’s now or never. I’m working my butt off here in the morning, and at night I’m taking classes down at the AFC. It’s like a forty-five minute drive, so I don’t actually get home ‘till around 10. Then I heat up a bowl of soup, put on some fuzzy slippers (I’ve still got those ones you bought me, you know, they’re tan with the little flannel inside?) anyway, watch TV for about half an hour, and hit the hay. Then I get up at 7:10 the next morning and do the whole thing over. It’s…it’s great.”
Ah ha! She left me an opening! Seize the day or face the second-biggest awkward pause of your life! “So, you enjoying your class?”
“Oh my class? It’s great, great. Yeah…my professor says I’ve got a real eye for contrast. And depth.”
“Really? Well that’s super. Listen, I’ve gotta make a return here, if you don’t mind, I just gotta send back this scarf. It’s too long. If I could just…”
“A scarf? Since when did you start wearing scarves? I mean, God knows I tried to get you to wear them but you just wouldn’t…”
“It’s for my wife.”
“......”
“......”
“......”
“......”
“...your wife?”
“Yeah, you know, Charlene, you met her back at the Christmas party last year.”
“…so, what’s wrong with it again?”
”It’s too short.”
“How do you order a scarf that’s ‘too short’?”
“Look, I, ahh, I don’t know, she just threw this in my trunk and asked me to return it, I don’t know.”
“I have to ask my manager about this. Wait here.”
* * *
Thirty-five cologne-and-watch-admiring minutes later she comes back with a manager, a plump little lady who looked like she’d really rather not be here. They both ignored me and began fiddling around with the register. After a little while, a receipt began to print out. The plump lady tears it off and smashes it into the counter in front of me.
“Sign this,” she says, eyes to somewhere besides me.
I sign, and because I am a gentleman, wish them both a fruitful evening. In those exact words. Then I dash like a bat out of hell to the exit.
The parking lot outside of Macy’s is a marvel of modern engineering in the sense that, much like the Acropolis before it, is divided into two sections. The Macy’s itself is built on the top of a plateau, overlooking the valley of the parking lot. It’s actually pretty cool; you get pretty much a bird’s eye view of the entire parking lot, and the building planners had enough of a sense of adventure to build a large stone walkway leading down to Carpolis (my name, which sadly never caught on).
But, of course, architecture was the last thing on my mind as I left the store with my sixteen dollars clenched tightly in my anxiety-ridden gloves. “Fruitful evening? Fruitful-motherfucking-evening? Where the hell did that come from? Was that somehow an insane pun that crossed your insane mind when you thought about the majestic bounty you’ll be purchasing from Subway with your sixteen dollars? Or maybe you were just paranoid about looking like a fruit-which you did anyway-and somehow slipped ‘fruit’ into conversation. Or, you could just be an idiot.” I continued walking in silence. The wind was picking up and slashed its razor-like coldness across my exposed cheeks. Now I was really wishing I had that damn scarf. “Well, in any case buddy, look at it this way: What happened was an absolute worst-case scenario. And yet, you somehow survived. And yet, somehow, life goes on. And yet, somehow, you’ll drive home tonight and have dinner with your wife, and nothing will be any different, except you’ll be sixteen dollars and seventy-six cents richer.” I didn’t feel any better, but at least my brain decided to stop being a jerk.
I took pause for a moment to look at all the people in the parking lot. Looking back, I have absolutely no idea why I did, since the wind was at its coldest and most violent, but something told me to tilt my head towards the valley.
And for a split second, I went blind.
Instinctively I threw my hands out, frightened and panicking. I then heard what sounded like lightning, only close, very close, no more than a couple hundred feet away, deafening like the hammer of a furious war god. My vision was already returning, but I was still seeing mostly black. Relief overtook me when I realized I wasn’t blind, but before I could even begin to collect myself did the screaming begin. Not haunted-house screaming, not horror movie screaming, not roller-coaster screaming. Screaming. Pure mortal terror, primal shouts being emitted by dozens of terrified human beings below me. Men, women, children, all screaming and crying and wailing in a single shared nightmare.
I would have joined them, but the blindness prevented me from understanding what they were afraid of. It wasn’t until my vision returned that I understood; there, off in the distance, maybe a mile or two off, was a towering pillar of flame.
I had always imagined in my head that if something like this happened, pandemonium would erupt. I just had these images of riots breaking out, people being raped in the middle of the streets, shopping carts being smashed through the plate-glass windows of electronics stores. But instead, we all just stood quiet. The screaming had ended abruptly, although far below children’s stifled cries could be heard, smothered against the bellies of their mothers.
For about two minutes, we all just stood their in awe, gazing upwards at the shaft of smoke, our panic replaced by uneasy tension. We were alive, yes. But what next? The answer then came to us in the form of a massive shockwave. We could see it coming, leveling the road just beyond the parking lot, but no one knew what to do. Some lied down, some pressed against their cars, some simply stood in the middle of the lot, still unable to comprehend what was next.
In what took no more than two seconds, the parking lot was completely devastated. Those who lied down were relatively safe, but those who sought shelter by their cars were rewarded with a faceful of broken glass. The rest, those still standing, were carried through the air for about a yard or two, some whipping head over heels before inevitably skidding across the pavement like rocks across a pond. Some rose, bloody and confused, chunks of gravel imbedded in their torn lips. Some tried to move, but could not. Others did not move at all. I was fortunate enough to have already had my back facing a brick wall when the blast hit. As a result, I was picked up off the ground for no more than two feet and hurled into the side of the store. My shoulders ached, but I could move them.
Now came the absolute fear of having no idea what to expect next. We were scared, but we knew we had to seek shelter immediately. But how immediately? Will there be another shockwave? Another after that? What if we’re already contaminated? What if the hospitals are all full? How many people did this hit? Should I help that guy next to me? Am I radioactive? Oh God, I hope my son…I hope he’s…not…
Some ran towards the building. Some stayed low. I was still lying on my stomach from the first blast. I really had no inclination to move aside from the constant shouting fear of fallout. What came next made me thankful for my decision.
About two more minutes later, another shockwave came, this one actually moving towards the blast. Those who had moved, those that had risen to help the strangers next to them or those who tried to seek safe ground, were caught in this second vortex and, like the victims of the first, tore through the air before being shredded against the freezing cold ground like a rag doll. Luckily I was spared from this one, because had it caught me I would have been sent sailing over the edge of the plateau and into the parking lot far below.
Now our fears were rapidly being replaced by anger and frustration. Our feeling of powerlessness could not be described in words as we all lay there, having no idea whether we would make it through the day, having no idea how we would spend the rest of our lives, having no idea whether life was even worth living anymore. We were helpless. If we moved, we were struck down. If we stayed, we were certainly dead. There was no hope. None at all. Our last moments would be spent on our bellies, soaked in blood and urine and tears.
It then occurred to me that I was fairly close to the store’s entrance. I tested my shoulders. It hurt to move them, but I had no choice. Standing wasn’t an option. I began to pivot my torso towards the front doors, and began crawling on my elbows as fast as I could. The pain was among the most excruciating of my life, each my shoulders threatening to give with each step forward. Near the end, loud, sickening pops could be heard from my lower scapula. When I was about ten feet away, I got to my feet and burst into a full-out sprint.
Inside, the Macy’s was pitch-black, save for a few flashlights being shone by a man shouting out orders. I assumed he was the manager. I wearily pushed the door open and was met by a chorus of terrified screams and frantic gesticulations.
“Whoa! Whoa! Stay out there!”
“No no no don’t!”
“Sir,” the man with the flashlight said, very slowly but trembling, shining the light in my face, “I’m going to have to ask you to step outside”.
“But…why? I have to…”
“Please, sir”. There was definite sorrow in his voice. “Please just…just stay outside. Someone will be right with you.”
There was no fight left in me. If I continued forward I would have been killed and thrown outside. I wondered if I would’ve been the one doing the killing, if the situation were reversed. Probably.
I curled into a little ball in the store’s threshold, shivering. I wanted to cry very badly. I craned my neck a little bit towards the scene outside. The parking lot was no longer visible, but I could see that it was starting to snow outside. It took me a little while to realize that that wasn’t snow at all. It was fallout. Nuclear winter. All those people out there are going to die.
I thought about my wife, but not once did I think about her safety. My thoughts were instead only of seeing her and talking to her, and her telling me things would be all right and that you’ve just got some bumps and bruises, but you’ll be okay. Then she’d smile and tell me to just stay off my elbows for a little while, and we’d both laugh, a weak little laugh two people that have been through a lot share. I began to cry.
Myra joined me a little later, but only to tell me that I could come in. Apparently there was a scientist or someone who said that as long as no fallout got on me, I probably wouldn’t be radioactive. They took a lot of convincing, she said, but she won them over by claiming to be my wife. I smiled a little.
Once inside, our first duty was to bar the doors. I wasn’t radioactive, but everyone else was, and if they tracked in fallout into such an enclosed area, there would be no question about the fate of every one of us. Barring them was easy; we just put a metal pole from a clothing rack across the door handles. The hard part would be inevitably turning away anyone who came for help. I had these grandiose images in my head of huge swarms of people, pounding and begging to get in, mothers pressing their crying children against the glass and asking “Do you want him to die? Are you his murderer?”. Luckily, we had to face nothing of the sort. There was a long-haired, bearded man in his mid-twenties who walked by, rapped on the glass, and shrugged a little when we told him to go somewhere else. An old man taped his walker against the glass a few times. I think he was trying to break it, but what little strength that had enabled him to survive the blast was now gone. He could barely stand.
Sometime within the next couple of weeks CDC agents came by to rescue us. They were wearing radiation suits, which they removed upon entering the threshold. We all found this odd, but they explained, much in the same manner the scientist did, that the biggest fear was tracking in dust. Eventually, the mall was quarantined, we were decontaminated, and the agents let us go. Fallout was still blowing across country, and would continue to for the next few months, but they told us it’s safe to step outside for a couple hours to get supplies. Don’t eat anything that doesn’t come from a can, and especially stay away from meats, dairies, grains, fruits, and vegetable. In short, pretty much everything.
My wife was okay. She had actually been upstate when all this was happening (hence my not worrying about her), and was relieved to hear I was all right. It took her a while to get over having sent me out that day, but I assured her that if I wasn’t out refunding her scarf, I probably would’ve been off partying at a strip club or something. She laughed.
And me? Turned out my collarbone of all things was broken, but my shoulders were relatively okay. Neither I nor anyone in the store had contacted anything, thank God.
I wish that I could say the same for everyone else. I wish I could say that this was some sort of best-case scenario, that the bomb wasn’t as dangerous as it could’ve been, that it was a weak bomb, that it didn’t detonate right. But I can’t. Millions of people died instantaneously. The entire city was leveled, and probably won’t be rebuilt for many years. There is death in this country and in this state, a palpable feeling of misery and pain. We now understand, more than ever, that mankind’s days are numbered. We have opened Pandora’s box and it will not be closed. If the world were run by sane men, this would serve as a cautionary tale, but instead it will probably only spur many on to using their own weapons before doing so becomes clichéd. And so the cycle continues. Soon, very, very soon war will begin. And who knows what will happen after that?
Well now, I had thought blackly to myself as I sat by the threshold. Nothing like a bit of nuclear holocaust to put one’s day into perspective.
By the time I had stepped inside the Macy’s on the border between Hatherly, my stomach had already knotted itself over enough times to make even the most militant Boy Scout den leader tip his hat and whistle admiringly. And the instant I got hit by what was essentially the Tower of Babel of old lady perfume, my stomach was somehow managing to perform cartwheels AFTER it somehow managed to knot itself into a Reverse Sailor’s Hitch which, I can assure you, is one damn strong knot. This wasn’t going to be a good day.
But, I told myself with a long, sad sigh, you may as well get this outta the way now. Look, maybe she won’t even recognize you. Hell, who’s to say she’s even working today? It’s like 10:30 on a Wednesday. Isn’t she taking classes now or something? Yeah, yeah she said something about getting a major in Painting or Drawing or Philosophy or Panhandling or something. There’s probably just some old Polish lady with a charming accent and big poofy hair and…damn.
My stomach, which until now had been temporarily taking a breather from all of its acrobatics, began crawling up into my upper chest, where it sqooshed my heart against the front of my ribs, causing considerable discomfort and a heartbeat that I SWEAR can’t be healthy. Maybe I should get that checked out? They do walk-ins at the doctor’s, right? I mean, yeah, I’ll bet you anything there’s no one even wai-
No. Just---fucking do it already. So what if she’s your ex? Who cares? A lot of guys see their exes all the time. It’s not that goddamn big a deal. What’s it matter if you’re returning your wife’s scarf? What, she gonna start quizzing you on who you bought it for?
Yes, professor, if you wanna return something, you kinda start to expect questions. That’s sorta how we do things ‘round these parts.
I hate you, brain.
And by the time I snap out of my heated debate with myself, I realize that Myra had already recognized me and was trying her darnedest to look happy. I had to give it to her; she’s such a little trooper.
“Hey stranger! How’s it goin’?”
Big smile for the cameras. “Hey. I’m alright, I guess. You?”
“Never been better.” She made a little wax on, wax off motion between our faces to indicate how she truly had never been better. “I think I’m at that period of my life where I’m going to really discover who I am as a person, you know? Like, it’s now or never. I’m working my butt off here in the morning, and at night I’m taking classes down at the AFC. It’s like a forty-five minute drive, so I don’t actually get home ‘till around 10. Then I heat up a bowl of soup, put on some fuzzy slippers (I’ve still got those ones you bought me, you know, they’re tan with the little flannel inside?) anyway, watch TV for about half an hour, and hit the hay. Then I get up at 7:10 the next morning and do the whole thing over. It’s…it’s great.”
Ah ha! She left me an opening! Seize the day or face the second-biggest awkward pause of your life! “So, you enjoying your class?”
“Oh my class? It’s great, great. Yeah…my professor says I’ve got a real eye for contrast. And depth.”
“Really? Well that’s super. Listen, I’ve gotta make a return here, if you don’t mind, I just gotta send back this scarf. It’s too long. If I could just…”
“A scarf? Since when did you start wearing scarves? I mean, God knows I tried to get you to wear them but you just wouldn’t…”
“It’s for my wife.”
“......”
“......”
“......”
“......”
“...your wife?”
“Yeah, you know, Charlene, you met her back at the Christmas party last year.”
“…so, what’s wrong with it again?”
”It’s too short.”
“How do you order a scarf that’s ‘too short’?”
“Look, I, ahh, I don’t know, she just threw this in my trunk and asked me to return it, I don’t know.”
“I have to ask my manager about this. Wait here.”
* * *
Thirty-five cologne-and-watch-admiring minutes later she comes back with a manager, a plump little lady who looked like she’d really rather not be here. They both ignored me and began fiddling around with the register. After a little while, a receipt began to print out. The plump lady tears it off and smashes it into the counter in front of me.
“Sign this,” she says, eyes to somewhere besides me.
I sign, and because I am a gentleman, wish them both a fruitful evening. In those exact words. Then I dash like a bat out of hell to the exit.
The parking lot outside of Macy’s is a marvel of modern engineering in the sense that, much like the Acropolis before it, is divided into two sections. The Macy’s itself is built on the top of a plateau, overlooking the valley of the parking lot. It’s actually pretty cool; you get pretty much a bird’s eye view of the entire parking lot, and the building planners had enough of a sense of adventure to build a large stone walkway leading down to Carpolis (my name, which sadly never caught on).
But, of course, architecture was the last thing on my mind as I left the store with my sixteen dollars clenched tightly in my anxiety-ridden gloves. “Fruitful evening? Fruitful-motherfucking-evening? Where the hell did that come from? Was that somehow an insane pun that crossed your insane mind when you thought about the majestic bounty you’ll be purchasing from Subway with your sixteen dollars? Or maybe you were just paranoid about looking like a fruit-which you did anyway-and somehow slipped ‘fruit’ into conversation. Or, you could just be an idiot.” I continued walking in silence. The wind was picking up and slashed its razor-like coldness across my exposed cheeks. Now I was really wishing I had that damn scarf. “Well, in any case buddy, look at it this way: What happened was an absolute worst-case scenario. And yet, you somehow survived. And yet, somehow, life goes on. And yet, somehow, you’ll drive home tonight and have dinner with your wife, and nothing will be any different, except you’ll be sixteen dollars and seventy-six cents richer.” I didn’t feel any better, but at least my brain decided to stop being a jerk.
I took pause for a moment to look at all the people in the parking lot. Looking back, I have absolutely no idea why I did, since the wind was at its coldest and most violent, but something told me to tilt my head towards the valley.
And for a split second, I went blind.
Instinctively I threw my hands out, frightened and panicking. I then heard what sounded like lightning, only close, very close, no more than a couple hundred feet away, deafening like the hammer of a furious war god. My vision was already returning, but I was still seeing mostly black. Relief overtook me when I realized I wasn’t blind, but before I could even begin to collect myself did the screaming begin. Not haunted-house screaming, not horror movie screaming, not roller-coaster screaming. Screaming. Pure mortal terror, primal shouts being emitted by dozens of terrified human beings below me. Men, women, children, all screaming and crying and wailing in a single shared nightmare.
I would have joined them, but the blindness prevented me from understanding what they were afraid of. It wasn’t until my vision returned that I understood; there, off in the distance, maybe a mile or two off, was a towering pillar of flame.
I had always imagined in my head that if something like this happened, pandemonium would erupt. I just had these images of riots breaking out, people being raped in the middle of the streets, shopping carts being smashed through the plate-glass windows of electronics stores. But instead, we all just stood quiet. The screaming had ended abruptly, although far below children’s stifled cries could be heard, smothered against the bellies of their mothers.
For about two minutes, we all just stood their in awe, gazing upwards at the shaft of smoke, our panic replaced by uneasy tension. We were alive, yes. But what next? The answer then came to us in the form of a massive shockwave. We could see it coming, leveling the road just beyond the parking lot, but no one knew what to do. Some lied down, some pressed against their cars, some simply stood in the middle of the lot, still unable to comprehend what was next.
In what took no more than two seconds, the parking lot was completely devastated. Those who lied down were relatively safe, but those who sought shelter by their cars were rewarded with a faceful of broken glass. The rest, those still standing, were carried through the air for about a yard or two, some whipping head over heels before inevitably skidding across the pavement like rocks across a pond. Some rose, bloody and confused, chunks of gravel imbedded in their torn lips. Some tried to move, but could not. Others did not move at all. I was fortunate enough to have already had my back facing a brick wall when the blast hit. As a result, I was picked up off the ground for no more than two feet and hurled into the side of the store. My shoulders ached, but I could move them.
Now came the absolute fear of having no idea what to expect next. We were scared, but we knew we had to seek shelter immediately. But how immediately? Will there be another shockwave? Another after that? What if we’re already contaminated? What if the hospitals are all full? How many people did this hit? Should I help that guy next to me? Am I radioactive? Oh God, I hope my son…I hope he’s…not…
Some ran towards the building. Some stayed low. I was still lying on my stomach from the first blast. I really had no inclination to move aside from the constant shouting fear of fallout. What came next made me thankful for my decision.
About two more minutes later, another shockwave came, this one actually moving towards the blast. Those who had moved, those that had risen to help the strangers next to them or those who tried to seek safe ground, were caught in this second vortex and, like the victims of the first, tore through the air before being shredded against the freezing cold ground like a rag doll. Luckily I was spared from this one, because had it caught me I would have been sent sailing over the edge of the plateau and into the parking lot far below.
Now our fears were rapidly being replaced by anger and frustration. Our feeling of powerlessness could not be described in words as we all lay there, having no idea whether we would make it through the day, having no idea how we would spend the rest of our lives, having no idea whether life was even worth living anymore. We were helpless. If we moved, we were struck down. If we stayed, we were certainly dead. There was no hope. None at all. Our last moments would be spent on our bellies, soaked in blood and urine and tears.
It then occurred to me that I was fairly close to the store’s entrance. I tested my shoulders. It hurt to move them, but I had no choice. Standing wasn’t an option. I began to pivot my torso towards the front doors, and began crawling on my elbows as fast as I could. The pain was among the most excruciating of my life, each my shoulders threatening to give with each step forward. Near the end, loud, sickening pops could be heard from my lower scapula. When I was about ten feet away, I got to my feet and burst into a full-out sprint.
Inside, the Macy’s was pitch-black, save for a few flashlights being shone by a man shouting out orders. I assumed he was the manager. I wearily pushed the door open and was met by a chorus of terrified screams and frantic gesticulations.
“Whoa! Whoa! Stay out there!”
“No no no don’t!”
“Sir,” the man with the flashlight said, very slowly but trembling, shining the light in my face, “I’m going to have to ask you to step outside”.
“But…why? I have to…”
“Please, sir”. There was definite sorrow in his voice. “Please just…just stay outside. Someone will be right with you.”
There was no fight left in me. If I continued forward I would have been killed and thrown outside. I wondered if I would’ve been the one doing the killing, if the situation were reversed. Probably.
I curled into a little ball in the store’s threshold, shivering. I wanted to cry very badly. I craned my neck a little bit towards the scene outside. The parking lot was no longer visible, but I could see that it was starting to snow outside. It took me a little while to realize that that wasn’t snow at all. It was fallout. Nuclear winter. All those people out there are going to die.
I thought about my wife, but not once did I think about her safety. My thoughts were instead only of seeing her and talking to her, and her telling me things would be all right and that you’ve just got some bumps and bruises, but you’ll be okay. Then she’d smile and tell me to just stay off my elbows for a little while, and we’d both laugh, a weak little laugh two people that have been through a lot share. I began to cry.
Myra joined me a little later, but only to tell me that I could come in. Apparently there was a scientist or someone who said that as long as no fallout got on me, I probably wouldn’t be radioactive. They took a lot of convincing, she said, but she won them over by claiming to be my wife. I smiled a little.
Once inside, our first duty was to bar the doors. I wasn’t radioactive, but everyone else was, and if they tracked in fallout into such an enclosed area, there would be no question about the fate of every one of us. Barring them was easy; we just put a metal pole from a clothing rack across the door handles. The hard part would be inevitably turning away anyone who came for help. I had these grandiose images in my head of huge swarms of people, pounding and begging to get in, mothers pressing their crying children against the glass and asking “Do you want him to die? Are you his murderer?”. Luckily, we had to face nothing of the sort. There was a long-haired, bearded man in his mid-twenties who walked by, rapped on the glass, and shrugged a little when we told him to go somewhere else. An old man taped his walker against the glass a few times. I think he was trying to break it, but what little strength that had enabled him to survive the blast was now gone. He could barely stand.
Sometime within the next couple of weeks CDC agents came by to rescue us. They were wearing radiation suits, which they removed upon entering the threshold. We all found this odd, but they explained, much in the same manner the scientist did, that the biggest fear was tracking in dust. Eventually, the mall was quarantined, we were decontaminated, and the agents let us go. Fallout was still blowing across country, and would continue to for the next few months, but they told us it’s safe to step outside for a couple hours to get supplies. Don’t eat anything that doesn’t come from a can, and especially stay away from meats, dairies, grains, fruits, and vegetable. In short, pretty much everything.
My wife was okay. She had actually been upstate when all this was happening (hence my not worrying about her), and was relieved to hear I was all right. It took her a while to get over having sent me out that day, but I assured her that if I wasn’t out refunding her scarf, I probably would’ve been off partying at a strip club or something. She laughed.
And me? Turned out my collarbone of all things was broken, but my shoulders were relatively okay. Neither I nor anyone in the store had contacted anything, thank God.
I wish that I could say the same for everyone else. I wish I could say that this was some sort of best-case scenario, that the bomb wasn’t as dangerous as it could’ve been, that it was a weak bomb, that it didn’t detonate right. But I can’t. Millions of people died instantaneously. The entire city was leveled, and probably won’t be rebuilt for many years. There is death in this country and in this state, a palpable feeling of misery and pain. We now understand, more than ever, that mankind’s days are numbered. We have opened Pandora’s box and it will not be closed. If the world were run by sane men, this would serve as a cautionary tale, but instead it will probably only spur many on to using their own weapons before doing so becomes clichéd. And so the cycle continues. Soon, very, very soon war will begin. And who knows what will happen after that?
Well now, I had thought blackly to myself as I sat by the threshold. Nothing like a bit of nuclear holocaust to put one’s day into perspective.