Stories From a Dead World, No. 7

FROM VARIOUS JOURNALS [AUTHOR: RUST?]

I hate this feeling. The feeling like I’m hollowed out and there are maggots in my spine. I get this feeling whenever I look at dead bodies, and I look at dead bodies much, much more than I really ought to. I wished I didn’t have to, but for the moment, I’m working as a coroner; It’s a pretty easy job, because all I do is point out something that everyone had noticed already. It’s funny how death works now. 

I think death used to be a bad thing. It used to be something that everyone was afraid of. It’s different now. Nobody wants to die, but we don’t care if they do anymore; we don’t really feel anything but a sort of helpless uselessness, and if they had a descent pair of shoes or a good jacket, a pang of utilitarian apology while you stuff their things where nobody can see them. Death is an opportunity, not a fearful specter or lurking abstraction. He doesn’t hide in the shadows; he brings people out into the light. Death is visible, sometimes tangible…

I often wonder where my mind goes when I’m not thinking. I get confused sometimes, and sometimes I wonder if the box on my back makes me think differently. I don’t feel as though it does, but I felt backed up and surrounded. I feel like the world is closing in around me at every second, and they only way to keep from being crushed is to run. Sometimes I kill instead of running. I try to run, I do, but sometimes it seems as though there’s someone trapped in my way and they won’t move and they can’t move. 

I wish I wasn’t the way I am. I wish things weren’t they way they are. I wish things turned out differently from the way they did. I can’t stand the status quo, because its very nature is to be unchangeable. I hate remembering that we may never go back to civilization. We may never rise up from the ashes of a hundred generations. We may never be as strong as we need to be, but I can hope, wish, and pray. I might not believe in anything I’m saying, but it has to make a difference.

I hope so anyways.