apocalyptic dreams, take x+2

June 18, 2007
I'm living in a post apocalyptic coastal town. Power is out except for a string of street lamps along the boardwalk. No one can explain why those particular lamps are lit as they are not connected to any generators. The survivors try not to think too much about them. At night they cast an eerie glow over the boardwalk and the marshy edge of the ocean.

Some places in the world are still broadcasting radio and TV signals, but the trick is to be able to pick them up. There is a TV cafe in the town: small black and white televisions with round screens are set into tables along a wall. You sit at a table, drop some coins in a slot next to the screen, put on the big headphones and look down at the angled table top to watch the screen. The sets are powered by some sort of generator in the basement of the building.

The cafe had been boarded up until the incident that changed everything. Since it's reopening the sets have been running as well as can be considered without anyone who really understands the old technology. The place is dusty and filled with debris. Some of the units don't work.

When trying to get one of the units to take coins, I jimmy one open. I can see a variety of items people have tried to use to get the machines to work (old coins from a variety of countries, flat buttons, bits of metal, etc.). I clean out the jammed coin slot and with some fiddling I am able to get the unit operating. A grainy picture of a dark haired man flickers on the round screen. The old woman I was helping smiles at me toothlessly as she puts on the headphones. She turns away and looks blankly down at the screen.

I'm not interested in news from the outside world.

Before the incident my family had been wealthy local lords. Since the incident I felt it best that none of the survivors know of my previous status. Our estate was in the country a few miles inland from the town in which I now lived. I spent a day going back to the house to collect a handful of personal items I had left behind - trinkets that reminded me of my mother who was now lost.

I was in my mother's ruined bedroom picking through jewelry when a rough looking woman entered. She was another survivor picking through houses looking for things to possibly sell for food. She mistook me for a scavenger like herself. I think she would have fought me for the jewelry but she didn't look terribly healthy. I'm certain I would have won a fight if one had occurred. I only wanted a few of the cameos as they meant the most to my mother and didn't think a fight was worth the trouble. I haggled with her long enough to maintain the appearance of a scavenger. Grudgingly she agreed to split the stash of jewelry I had before me.

Back in the coastal town I'm eking out a living with my younger brother. We share a small flat. During the day we join other survivors to go down to the water's edge and use nets to catch fish and crabs. The ocean has receded since the incident and to get to fish-able waters we have to cross a stretch of marshy ground. The walk out to the water is slow and arduous. The mud clings and with a slucking sound pulls away as you lift your feet to walk. Once at the water's edge, the blackness of the ocean frightens us but we need to fish to eat.

At night in the flat I sew and knit clothes and items for other survivors. There aren't many other survivors.

One afternoon we see a bright light cross the sky as if a great star is falling. We're reminded of the incident of a year or so ago. It may be nothing but then it may portend the end of the world. Many people abandon their work for the day to go home to be with their loved ones just in case it is the later.

My brother has a different idea. He runs away into the woods following the path of the falling star. I have to go and find him.


June 27, 2007
The phone rang; it was the police. They wanted me to come to a remote police station to collect the remains of my friend Jackie. I was too upset to ask how she had died but they made it seem as though she had been dead for some time. I made the long and difficult trip to the station where they silently handed me a large sack.

I took her home and struggled to decide where in my house to bury her. I stood crying in my bedroom uncertain as to which side of the room to dig her grave. There were other rooms I would have preferred to bury her, but they didn't have a dirt floor like my bedroom. I considered ripping out the wood floors of the music room.

All the while I was angry with myself for not asking how she had died. The absolute need to know what happened to her began eating away at my heart. I tried calling the police but they wouldn't answer my calls. As the day wore on my frustration grew. I decided I had to return to the police station and see them in person.

As I left the house I passed by the sack. Earlier, I had left it in the middle of the floor while looking for a place to dig. I walked by and the sack fell open. Jackie's head rolled out on to the floor. Her skin had turned a brownish green but her hair was same as when she was living; long and lustrous brown waves. I didn't know if her skin color was because she had been dead a while or had something to do with how she died.

I ran out of the house to find the police who had found her.