Fiction: Pandemonium Blues, Part I

Nicole

Nicole is pulling goddamn fucking field bindweed out from her bed of arugula and bok choy when her mostly zen garden time is interrupted once more by thoughts of apocalypse. Her hands and fingers are tamping down the earth and grasping scissors to cut fresh arugula and place in it a colander for washing. Her mind is in a bright red nightmare of a burning sun, blistering skin, unstoppable viruses and fires—and then her vision shakes, as she imagines the biggest earthquake rumbling beneath her feet. She wasn’t always like this. Like many Americans, she thought that face masks were for surgeons and people who lived in highly populated places like Asia, and truthfully, she never even considered the purpose of these masks or why normal citizens would even wear them. It is safe to assume that before the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, Nicole was the opposite of a germophobe and, also like most Americans, thought that predictability, certainty, and a comfortable standard of living were all assured. In the back of her thoughts, however, even before the pandemic hit, was a secret fear that everything would come crumbling down.

Nicole is now tending to her feverfew bush, which has been taken over a bit by the huge adjacent purple sweet potato patch, at her home in Eugene. The city of Eugene is in Oregon, and at one point, the population of the entire state of Oregon was smaller than the metropolitan area of Phoenix, Arizona. In recent history, one could have referred to Eugene as Heaven and Phoenix as Hell (due to the weather). Now, though, everywhere you go is drier and hotter. In Nicole’s opinion, though, Phoenix is still hell on earth. Her mom and brother still live there, feet firmly rooted in a state of denial, while there has been a large exodus of people from Phoenix in the past couple of years, with the temperatures staying above 105 for more than half the year, topping out at a high of 135 last August. The previously ridiculously bursting at the seams city went from a population of 5 million to 1.5 million in just a few years. Most went north, some left the continent entirely, and others played their hands in the midwest. Places like Portland and Seattle were overrun for awhile, but then refugees spread around a bit. Nicole’s black cat is inside, pawing at the window and staring that wide eyed stare that only black cats can give. She meows lightly and gestures at the plant below the window. Nicole remembers to gather some fresh catnip before she goes back inside. Her mind is calmer now, both cat and garden soothing the brain waves, and she begins to think about her long list of self-sufficiency projects. The grey water system still needs to be installed. She and her wife Lucia have yet to get solar panels installed. She thinks about how great it would be to have a date of collapse (DOC?). To know (ahead of time) that on [the DOC] , authorities will find out that a version of ebola that is spread via airborne particles is burning its way through countries all around the world. Or that on the [DOC], the overdue Cascadia  earthquake will register on the richter scale at 10.0, level most of the coast and western Oregon and activate the San andreas fault, causing all volcanoes in the ring of fire to erupt. Or even on [DOC], when Trump or Putin or Kim Jung Un or [insert sociopathic homicidal maniac’s name here] will unleash a nuclear missile attack and start a very short, very radioactive World War.

Without certainty, things have gotten a little wonky. In most public spaces, there is a palpable energy of rage, hate and blind assumptions that boils into the air and settles, ready to be ignited at any moment. Online, it’s worse. People who believe in science and have common sense (or, “Doomers”, as ignorant denial junkies would call them) are ridiculed and sometimes physically attacked (or killed, as in the Protest For Climate Action ’25) for simply stating the obvious and suggesting a way forward. Refusing to deny the facts and being willing to face the reality of our lives is now considered bad vibes, and in some circles, straight up psychopathy. Nobody wants uncertainty, but it’s here. Really, it’s always been here, but Americans could afford to insulate ourselves from it. We banned Aqua Net in the '80s, made the widespread switch to recycling in the '90s, and called it a day. Fell right back into our consumerist rabbit-hole, and shopped, built, and fucked our way into the overpopulated, resource-drained climate hell that we now live in.

Nicole takes a deep(ish) breath through her P100 3m respirator and looks up, trying to ground herself. The sun is tinted a burnt orange from the smoke of fire season, but at least the sky has a hint of blue in it. The air quality is still considered extremely hazardous, so gardening can’t take too long, if these filters are going to last.

Micah

Micah needs ammo. The world seems to be imploding right now, or at least his world, Portland, Oregon, the liberal outpost of the Pacific Northwest, the home of “keep Portland weird”, a slogan actually stolen from Austin. But isn’t that what hipsters do, steal stuff and mold it, stick something ironic on it and call it theirs? No matter, though, shit’s gone crazy out there. The anti-fascist white people and the Nazi white people went from clashing at protests to all-out premeditated violence, and like other black folks in the area, Micah’s just keeping to himself and fortifying his defenses. It seems more literal now, but being black in modern America is just that—trying to somehow not look threatening, to not look like a thief, or a rapist, or a gangsta—trying desperately, every day, every minute, not to get arrested or dead (or both at the same time, cuffed, knee to the neck). Fortifying our defenses.  But now, it is 9mm ammo he needs, and everywhere he calls, everyone’s out. He got this gun after things started to go batshit in 2020, with a shooting lesson here and there, but guns aren’t his thing. I guess now they have to be, he thought, pulling up his laptop. Okay, Craigslist. Already tried that, nothing but redneck bunker weirdos, and I don’t wanna end up in someone’s basement. Reddit? He closes his laptop, frustrated, and stares at the beige wall in his apartment, the too-small third floor window, the 9mm Ruger laying on his bed as if to challenge him. If you can’t find ammo online or locally, you have to reach out to people—but they can’t be white. Not now. No way to know who to trust. But he just got here a few months ago, and Micah has yet to meet anybody. In his experience (limited as it is), Pacific Northwesterners keep it polite, but not friendly. Polite is smiling that robot smile (that doesn’t stretch towards your eyes like a regular smile,) and then sidestepping any invite to hang out (tea, beer whatever) and disappearing into the foresty mist. Polite is chatting all day at work like you’re  best friends but then making excuses for not being able to do non-work socializing so no actual friendship can form. So yeah, people in Portland are polite. There’s one place, though, where he might be able to get some leads, and he smiles as he thinks of it. The black barbershop. There are four in town, two fairly close to him. Black folks are hard to find in Portland, but the black barbershop is like a secret haven—a men’s club just for us, and a place where he might be able to find someone who is willing to sell him some bullet-shaped security.

Trent

The heavy thumps of dark EDM music pound through the small dive bar, the bar darker than it should be at 9pm, still light outside in July in the northwest summer night. Trent wipes the black bar down and throws the towel in the laundry bin, reaching under the bar to check, for the second time tonight, for his 45mm pistol next to the spare shot glasses. He exhales as he feels the wood box, a lock on it left unlocked, ever since the looting and riots started. Most bars are closed for business because of the supply chain issues and the new pandemic, but he loves this place, couldn’t have it empty and quiet and dark, like the loneliness of lockdown, the violence spreading like the virus, angry and desperate and hollow. He lives in the apartment upstairs, besides.  He moved to Portland in the '90s when he turned 18, and he’d been goth since before then, even in his little town east of Dallas, where wearing black makeup and leather pants got him a good ass beating at least once a week. It toughened him up, though, and once he moved to Portland, a place he’d heard was fast becoming a haven for young weird artistic types, he quickly met other people like him (not necessarily goth, but open to and interested in the dark side of life). He worked at cafes and bookstores and other places that hired tattooed weirdos, saved up money, and eventually made his little dent in the culture of Portland, The Black Hole. Of course, he got the big boost in cash when his long-estranged dad died, and his mom sent him half of the life insurance policy payout. Death pays well, he thought at the time . . . He used to be a big drinker, but owning this bar turned him off to it. Over the years, coke and pills quickly turned to Pabst Blue Ribbon and forties of malt liquor, and then beer and whiskey until that became water, kombucha and working out. He’d been Portlandified.

And for what, he thinks. Now it just seems like everything is going to hell, so he might as well be drunk. But he really has no desire for the stuff anymore.  He keeps the Black Hole open on weekends, but the only people that stop by are a few regulars and his friends, mostly to shoot the shit and drink for free. He has air purifiers running constantly, which means the place is open sometimes, but patrons have to knock to be let in. Often, they’re decked out in a steampunk-looking gas mask they probably used to just pull out for parties and festivals. Even with the viruses and fires and the desperation of it all,  he spends two hours every morning doing calisthenics and lifting weights in his apartment, having quit the gym during COVID. Now, with this new pandemic, plus the barely breathable air and every hopped-up maniac on the street looking for a fight, staying healthy and staying strong are his highest priorities. His perfectly-curated jukebox (one of the only ones left in Portland) starts blasting a Darkstep mix of an old Ministry song, and he smiles. His moment of nostalgia is interrupted by a sharp, fast knock on the door, and he looks up through his greased black hair, cocking one eye towards the entrance and grabbing his respirator as he moves from behind the bar.

What brings you to the Black Hole this fine evening?” he says loudly, repeating the question he asks to all visitors. Anyone who follows his online feed knows the right answer (they were quizzed upon joining, so he could avoid troublemakers just looking for an open bar to trash, then given the password to enter).

A woman’s voice answers, east coast with a bit of a Boston edge to it.

“I’m a friend of the dark (she pronounced it Daaahk), looking for a place to hide.”

He opens the door, and Tina, one of his regulars, slides in, a smoky trail following her in.

“Hey Trent, how’s it do? Glad I could make it in before you hit capacity, eh?”

Trent pulls her in for a one-arm hug and walks with her to the bar.

“Tina… glad you could make it. We’ve got gin and… gin.”

Tina, a six foot tall tough punk chick with bone-straight black hair and a black mask to match, sits down at the bar, tossing her backpack onto the stool next to her.

“one gin on the rocks, no ash.” With liquor way up in price and so hard to get, Trent started making his own, and since he is unofficially open, no authorities caught wind of it yet. And because he owns the bar and the apartment above it, no one is around to complain. So his two cocktails on offer are gin (literally bathtub gin, made  in a tub he cleaned and only uses for this purpose) and gin on the rocks—no ash means the water used for the ice was purified and not tap, since ash is a big problem in the water supply. The sound of a muffled explosion  comes from outside, and Trent and Tina look towards the windowless wall on the street side. There is nothing to feel, just a numbing sense of dread and of exhaustion, a silence that laces the moment between wishing it were over and knowing that, for at least this period in time, it is just beginning.

Ellen

The paisley in this room is overbearing. She is sitting quietly in a sun-soaked space in her own home, and it is the first time she’s noticed. There are paisley-like shapes in wall hangings, rough and raised on old pillows, on cloth napkins and even sheets. The paisley in this house is endless and meaningless.

She is sitting in her home, like any other day, but today she feels nothing. Not “nothing”, per say, but a deep and stretching grief. Her life up to this point, having been so full of seemingly significant moments, now looks as empty as the sky.

She never leaves this house, except on errands, except for the one time, the time just weeks ago when she flew to Ohio to see her sister, just the once. And of course, she despises her sister. This Ellen, the one who sits and looks at nothing and patterns—Empty Ellen. The persona she wore so hard that she fooled herself—the housewife, the mop, that perpetual smile.  Old Ellen (young Ellen) was empty too, but not in the same way. She drank whiskey in high school hallways and pitched her mother’s vase against the garage wall, the sweet crunch and splash of victory, the glory of rebellion, until her true smile was dimmed, first with Prozac, and then Thorazine, and later, Valium, Clomipramine, Trazadone, Clonazepam, even now. But today, that prescription bottle is full of vacant space and nothing, last refilled before her trip, and never again. Ellen was the kind of wife who smiled through the daily routine, laughed at TV shows with her husband, spread her legs, did what was necessary. And then, the type of mother who kept a child alive, not with love, but with food, shelter, water. Only that which was required. Her daughter was six and her husband, 32. They would never get older. Empty Ellen is 28, and her emptiness is now one of potential, a golden question mark, an exquisite open window. She does not regret her Ohio trip—no, because that sickness, the new one spreading faster than COVID, is what her daughter and husband caught (at a movie theater, no less), and just 8 hours later, both were in a hospital heaving with the sick, 4 beds to a room. Less than 12 hours later, her daughter passed, and soon, her husband. So, she is alive. Along the edges of her daydream, this phantasmagoric experience of grief and exhilaration, lies guilt, an old friend. It's true that Tom (that rotting bastard) never hit Sarah—never his daughter, only his doting, numb, broken wife. Yet, had Ellen died instead, Sarah would have been raised by a sadist, sure to become his next victim. Things are better now, despite the grief for her child. Calling from her sister's house, Ellen arranged for a neighbor to let in a junk disposal company, and when she returned home, she entered her house with an N95-mask and rubber gloves on. The psychiatric meds were the first to go. She buried them in the yard like a dead pet. She disinfected the whole (now empty) place—windows open, bleach burning in the air, had a wooden kitchen table delivered, and grabbed the camping gear out of the shed. For almost two weeks, she's been sleeping on the hardwood floor in a sleeping bag next to the fireplace. Her bare, monotonous routine has been calming, in a way. The bruises have healed and the silence has been a soft kiss goodnight. At once, she realizes that this goddamn paisley wallpaper, paisley everything, these remnants of a time when this was all women were made for, cooking, and cleaning and fucking—it was holding her back.

Iris

It’s difficult to remember who you are—that deep, undeniable space underneath your smile, your outward personality, what you do (as in "What do you do?" at cocktail parties and in awkward social situations, meaning nothing but money and status) when your job, your home, all security and familiarity drifts away. Just a half-year ago, Iris had a government job so secure she took it for granted—she was an administrator in the Forest Service, had been for thirteen years. The prior administrator retired after a 25-year stint, with a cushy pension and a plan to road-trip around the Americas until his RV broke down. She was so proud when she got that job, just two months into her transition, hormones running wild and that Peter Brady puberty-voice thing going on. She contacted her Jehovah's Witness parents (the ones who kicked her out at 15 for being a "godless homosexual boy", the ones with all of the prayers and hidden sins and whatnot) to tell them that she now had a Government job, because at that time, in the early aughts, Government jobs came with a capital G. That meant job security. That meant respect. That meant triumph over the trauma and injustices of the past. They hung up mid-sentence, of course. She thought of them now, wondering if they were alive, if they ever thought of her, if they paid for their neglect of their only child. Her job, though. That went from a capital G to a common lowercase quickly, when the authoritarians in the white house decided to "trim the fat" from important government institutions to save money, to fire without prejudice thousands of government employees. At first, she assumed that they had found out that she was transgender, but after calling every Forest Service office in the state, she soon saw that this had been a random culling of a very necessary workforce. So, resumes went out en masse. At one point, Iris was sending out an average of 400 resumes a week, Seattle being big enough to have a good job market, but nothing. Well, not "nothing". Of course, there were the "We're sorry to inform you..." And "Due to the high number of applicants...." responses, but nothing else. Crickets. The kind of quiet that almost always precedes a storm. And then foreclosure on the new home she had purchased a few months before the firings. And stress, and working at fast-food joints and gas stations to try to stop it from happening. Selling everything she owned, until she just had her bike, some camping gear, and a week's worth of clothes left. She slept on friends' couches until it became too much of a nuisance for them. She tried the shelters, but after a few beatings and an almost-rape, she left the city and hiked out into the forests, determined to survive out there, somehow. She forages for herbs, berries and greens and eats bugs, squirrels, or rabbits if she's lucky, drinking boiled water from a stream downhill from her camp. A tattered book of foraging and wilderness survival from the '70s barely held together, that is her bible. Friends come out to visit sometimes, to bring some extra supplies or food, or just to shoot the shit. For the most part, though, she's alone out here. This very fact is the reason she tenses when she hears a twig snap somewhere on the edge of her camp's perimeter. A tall, lanky white woman with a haircut shaved on the side and a bright pink shock of wild curly hair on top smiles a crooked smile as she approached. Iris relaxes, knowing that woman anywhere.

"Ames? What's up dude, what are you doing out here?" She exclaims as she gets up and skips in for a hug.

"How did you even find me?"

Ames steps back and drops her pack in the dirt, making herself at home on the makeshift log-couch next to the fire pit. "Thomas of course," she says, a little out of breath.

"Drew me a fucking map and everything."

Iris hands her a metal cup from her stash and pours in some water that has been cooling in a pot on a flat rock next to the fire. For the next hour or two, they catch up, and Iris finds out that Ames has been forced out of her apartment due to a new law that protects landlords' rights to raise rent prices so high that the middle class, unless they have a way to purchase a home, are essentially banished from the city, and the working class as well. As a result, there are a lot of pissed-off, down-on-their luck people who have all the time in the world and nothing to do but riot, loot, steal and burn shit. Because what else can you do? The rich folks chill up in their high-rises or in their multi-million dollar estates, the tech bros and CEOs, the Real Housewives of Seattle.

"People are either getting out or getting armed," Ames says, reaching for her backpack, pulling out a 45mm pistol, and setting it next to her. She smiles wryly and pats it. "I did both."

Iris tries to hide her fear, but she visibly recoils, staring at the weapon like it's a 6-foot long python

"Chill out, it's not loaded."

Iris visibly relaxes and settles back into the boulder behind her.

"I... I don't totally understand... If it's that bad, then..."

"It's the fucking apocalypse dude, society is collapsing for real. And it's not just Seattle. Portland, L.A., New York, Chicago..." Ames sits\ back, taking some big gulps of her water.

"So I'm out here for good. Naked and Afraid with Ames and Iris."

Iris laughs, shaking her head. "Yeah, not Naked. And let's hope you brought more than one thing with you."

Ames jumps up, immediately emptying her huge backpack on the ground and relaying its contents to Iris, one by one. Iris has to hand it to her, Ames has everything that Iris either couldn't afford or hadn't had room for. Even three boxes of 525 rounds of ammo, which must have made her bag extremely heavy. Waterproof matches, sleeping bag, fishing wire, a flashlight, walkie talkies, and about 20 days’ worth of Mountain House family-size meals.

"Thomas told me what you had, so I brought the stuff you didn't have, because even if it's shitty ground beef macaroni and cheese, it is still goddamn macaroni and cheese. I can practically see your ribs. You still eating bugs and rats?"

"Hey, bugs and squirrels."

"Yeah, what I said. Rats."

To be continued in the next issue...