Day 134: Fear & Hope Team Up to Torment

I’ve tried in vain to rent, borrow, or buy wheels. I offered friends free shelter in the second bungalow, but no one is interested. They sure want masks though.

I’m on half-rations until further notice because I stashed so much food upstate. Sneeky is noisily aghast at my failure to pinpoint Round Two’s arrival after predicting it for months. I paid for this with a black eye and a very sore nose that remains indented from the mask’s edge. I feel like a cop who got mugged on duty.

LET’S HOPE IT DOESN’T COME TO THIS: A NYC RIOT IN 1863The city seethes with fear. A lot of people are sick. There has been looting almost everywhere, though the streets sound quieter tonight. There probably isn’t much left to steal … in the stores. I’ve come to hate the sound of footsteps and voices in the corridor. Silence never sounded so sweet.

My audience has mushroomed. Welcome back! I’m sure to be more entertaining and informative tomorrow.

I feel so alone. I don’t know what I’d do without Sneeky, my loyal friend. While he senses the disturbance, his gaze says: “We’re still here, relax.”

I’ll be OK. When I was a kid my parents dragged me to see what I expected would be a terminally dull operetta, Dialogues of the Carmelites, about nuns who wind up getting their heads chopped off during the French Revolution. I liked it. That night I dreamed that everyone I knew was lined up at the guillotine. When I tried to join some kids I knew, the guards told me to go away, I wasn’t supposed to be executed. I felt really left out, dejected. The way Crusoe did on bad days, I guess—condemned to survive alone.

Maybe I’m destined to outlast you all.