Colorado Mountains:

It had been raining that day too. I remember the steady drip drip drip on the kitchen window sill was irritating me. The window had jammed again and I wasn’t strong enough to force it either up or down. It would have to wait for Richard to get home. He was tall, my raven haired husband had more than enough strength to force the window closed. I had felt myself cringing even then, when I was alone. Richard had the strength to do more than close windows. The icy fingers of fear closed over my heart even now as I thought of how panicked I became then, standing in my kitchen, listening to the drip, drip, drip, knowing that I would be blamed for the damage to the window sill even though it was the rain. Even though I knew it wasn’t my fault I knew that it would be, it always was. Before I knew what I was doing I had heaved my five-foot frame onto the counter, and standing on the sink was shoving with all my might on the window. I slipped. My damp with sweat left hand slipped off the wood frame and I put my arm through the glass.

I rubbed my arm now where the glass had cut me, months later the faintly puckered scar and the muddled memory of the pain were the only remaining evidence. I walked to the window in my room to examine the other scar, the one that stood out on my right arm.

My mind drifted back to that fateful day, as it always did when it rained. I was trying to clean up the broken glass and the blood when I heard the front door close. Richard was home. You’ll never get it cleaned up fast enough, I heard in my head. You can’t mend glass. “I know.” I had grumbled. Some people thought voices in your head made you crazy, but mine had always been there.

“Talking to yourself again my little Irish Witch?” Richard had entered the kitchen behind me and hadn’t yet noticed the mess.

I gave a shaky laugh, my back still to him, and told him I was just cleaning up. I don’t know what tipped him off, I think he saw the broken window through the lace curtains, but I can never be sure. He was suddenly behind me, a handful of my dark red hair wrapping around his wrist, craning my head back painfully.

I rubbed the back of my head in memory, feeling that fear again for a minute.

It was then that he saw the blood and the broken glass in the sink. He immediately jumped the wrong conclusion. “What’s the matter little witch, did I interrupt, first the aliens and now a crazy wife. Let me help you since you can’t seem to do anything right.”

He had me pinned against the counter and picking up a large chunk of glass, he slashed at my other wrist.

I remember the pain. I remember his heavy breathing in my ear. I remember his talk of aliens and having no idea what he was talking about. I remember the paramedics arriving with their lights and sirens even though I have no memory of their having been called. Most strangely of all I remember being in the hospital, tied to my bed, sedated, and everyone seemed to be talking about the aliens. It took me a few days to figure out that Richard had told them I had tried to kill myself. He had finally gotten the full control he always sought by locking me up here; Mariska under lock and key, Mariska under glass. Now he could be the tragic, long suffering hero with the crazy wife. My reputation now firmly, and forever, in tatters

My dreams during those weeks consisted of broken glass and the drip, drip, drip, of the I.V., so close to the dripping in my kitchen that it gave me nightmares. I dreamt of the little green men from the movies coming to fix my window and talking Richard away with them. I drifted in and out of consciousness. It was hard for me to know when I was awake as everyone seemed to be talking of aliens getting closer.

I was in a different kind of hospital now. They said I was sick. That well people didn’t try to kill themselves and well people didn’t hear voices in their head. I didn’t argue with them about the voices, I knew it would be no use. They weren’t just ‘voices’, they were people, people who had once been alive.

During group therapy they made snide remarks that had me choking on my laughter. Yes darling, you’re perfectly sane, We all think that the houseplants should have backstories and offspring Delilah would mutter to the batty woman in the fluffy pink housecoat who firmly insisted that her plants loved her and would visit soon. Delilah had a flare for drama and called everyone darling. They should keep the loony birds in cages, Franklin would whisper, as if everyone could hear him, not just me. Maurice would repeat every inanity in a high falsetto while pretending to sip tea with his pinky finger out.

When I couldn’t sleep they kept me company. When I cried Suzette would sing me to sleep, she had been a Parisian Opera singer and even in death she was magnificent.

I wandered the halls now, in sweats and socks with little grippers on the bottom. I paused in my rounds at the nurse’s stations, which were all behind thick plastic embedded with fine mesh cages. They were always watching the news, never any soap operas or game shows, just the news. I knew that they weren’t supposed to be, the news could upset some of my fellow inmates. It felt odd knowing I was perfectly sane in house of nut jobs.

Tisk-tisk, more news, how obsessed they are with something of which they can do nothing about. I heard Delilah’s familiar snicker in my head, Aliens indeed. She was right of course. If they came, well, they came.

We obviously weren’t their first priority.

After I had been in here for just shy of eight months I realized I preferred it here. In here there was no Richard to pull my hair and hit me where the bruises wouldn’t show. Here I had my own space, my own thoughts, my own friends. The Brookside Sanitarium was my home now.

I had earned the right to walk the grounds and surrounding wooded area unaccompanied. I would often take a blanket out and lay in the grass to stare at the stars after dinner, as long as I didn’t leave sight of the building after dark. At first it was just me, well, me and the voices in my head. Martha, the sweetest of my voices, and my friend through the darkest times was always with me then, but after six months of solitary star gazing others began to join me. First it was just a trickle of the curious, and then it was a flood. There were dozens of us, even some nurses with tipped back heads resting in plastic folding chairs. None of us ever said as much, but we were all looking for the supposedly huge alien ship. It was easier to believe we could maybe see it than dash the hopes of my fellow watchers with the realities of space and distance. Sometimes one of us would gasp and point, but it would just be a shooting star or a crazily weaving satellite.

It’s there. The voice in my head whispered. I turned my head to look in the direction it indicated. I thought I could see something that seemed at once bright and dark, which made no sense. I knew it couldn’t really be the ship, but my imagination and my common sense rarely got along. Would it land here? Take us away? Kill us all? I could feel my heart accelerate, my breathing speed. I knew at once that I was terrified. They won’t come here. Stop worrying so. Martha’s voice insisted, I felt a feather light stroke of my hair. Knowing a spirit was touching them would be enough to send most people to, well, the crazy house, but seeing as how I was already here…

The weeks went by and according to the scientists we were the only planet left to be explored. I kept hearing the oddest and most wrenching stories on the news. People building fallout shelters just like during the Cuban Missile Crisis, people forming cults in preparation for the aliens to come take their souls, people spending every free minute in churches to prepare for the upcoming rapture, worst of all, people killing their own families to keep them from the horror and torture of the aliens. I see now why the nurses aren’t supposed to watch the news.

The formerly, but barely, stable of my fellow inmates began to rapidly deteriorate into quivering, huddled, crying masses of humanity. The nurses were finding patients hiding in closets, patients praying at the odd pattern in the common room wallpaper that looked like Jesus in a clown wig. One woman was found digging a hole in the garden with her bare hands, her nails bloody and torn. When asked what she was doing she began to scream, long terrified screams.

I watched them helplessly. I asked Martha why she and the others couldn’t help comfort these poor people? Do something? This is not for you to worry about love. They are in a place that will care for them, with others that will soothe them. They have their own people my sweet girl. Their own Guides and Guardians. I suppose some of them can hear, these poor souls with broken minds. But they don’t know how to listen.

An immeasurable sadness settled on me in that moment. I couldn’t imagine a life without my family, even if they were a family only I could hear and see.

I would worry about myself from now on. It was not my job to fix everything. Every night I still went out to watch the sky. The nurses continued to watch the news with a fervor bordering on obsession. Images from a space telescope showed the ship clearly on every news report. Huge and glinting maliciously, it seemed to me like a small moon. The malicious part may only have been in my imagination though. It was frighteningly, devastatingly beautiful. Like staring death in the face, but death had the face of an angel. As I pondered what it could have in store for us, I also wondered why no one had made any provisions for us. Were we forgotten here on our mountain? Surrounded by trees and streams, in our castle like a prison in the clouds? We must be, Martha whispered, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing will happen to us, trust me, I know. We’re safe here. “But how can you know?” They aren’t interested in inhabited planets; we are like ants to them, inconsequential.

Huh.

“But how can you know for sure?” I just do. “But HOW” I have been told that I cannot tell, suffice it to say that just like a game of telephone, I have been informed. “But who is holding the other receiver?” Martha glanced up at the never ending velvety blackness of the sky and said nothing. Delilah, Franklin, Suzette and Maurice joined us. We spent hours staring at the silvery stars. Martha had eased my fears and we laughed and sang long into the night.

“Is Mariska out there still?” Nurse June asked.

“She is,” Nurse Leanne sighed, shaking her head, “The poor dear, so sweet and beautiful. They would have set her loose before now but she persists in talking to herself. They medicate her but it doesn’t seem to help. Poor thing isn’t a danger to anyone, but she just isn’t right either.”

“Did you see on the news that the ship seems to be moving away from us?”

“Oh, pray that it goes away and leaves us be.” Leanne crossed herself.

Both women looked out over the lawn as they heard Mariska laugh at something only she could hear.

“Her husband called her his Irish Witch.” June said.

“He’s also the one who beat the living hell out of her. The one who put her here and never looked back.”

“I could be wrong, but I think she prefers it that way.” Leanne smiled as she watched her favorite patient point at the heavens and laugh along with another joke no one could hear. “She seems so carefree and happy, the rest of this lot are terrified of their shadows.”

“Maybe she knows something we don’t. Maybe her voices are better informed.” June mused.

“Maybe so,” Leanne conceded. “Little Irish Witch indeed.”

Mariska’s laughter once again floated over the lawn just as the news blared the report of the alien craft shooting away from the Earth, away into the darkness of space.

Saturday, May 2

May Day. No more trips to the store, or anywhere. The entire country is now effectively under house arrest. I was able to load up on dried foods, spices, and plenty of garlic. Looking forward to making some new dishes. Thank God for the Internet. It’s a lifeline.

Wednesday, May 20

It’s hard to get exercise without walking. I miss the fresh air and the park. We got word that my sister and her family were sent to a quarantine camp. No news yet, but we remain hopeful. Next door, the Crowders were lounging on the deck Herb built last year, enjoying the fine spring weather. Becky was wearing a bikini and Molly made a joke about me putting my eyes back into my skull, laughing and swatting my fanny. It was good to see the old smiling Molly again.

Tuesday, May 26

Further restrictions have been announced. The days of unlimited internet are over. It’s been too slow to stream anything for some days now, so perhaps it’s better to have it gone altogether. Plenty of books. The food is holding out nicely, and the National Guard has started twice-weekly deliveries of ration boxes.

Wednesday, June 10

There was a notice on today’s ration box that we’ll now be getting one a week instead of two. The contents have changed, too. We were getting brand name canned goods like Chef Boy-Ar-Dee and Progresso, but now it’s white government cans and military MREs. The quality is poor, but I guess I shouldn’t complain. Our tax dollars at work.

Monday, June 15

Molly has been awfully quiet. I have to coax her into eating, even when I use the best remainders of our pantry such as the jar of pesto she bought in Naples or the organic bone broth from Whole Foods. She spends long hours staring out the window, hands in her lap. We hardly talk at lately, my pale attempts at conversation lapsing into stolid silence.

Sunday, June 21

Molly says she hasn’t seen the Crowders on their deck in a long time. We had a few days of rain last week, so I just figured they were staying indoors. The sun came back out Tuesday and I guess I forgot about them. I wish we had some way of reaching out. It’s impossible to keep track of people since the cellphones went down, even our next-door neighbors. We dare not go outside with the Guard watching. They’ve been announcing zero tolerance through the loudspeakers. I’ve even heard gunshots, though far away.

Monday, June 22

I woke this morning to the sound of Molly sobbing downstairs. She told me she’d gotten up before dawn and gone next door, using the key Becky gave her when we watched their cat last Christmas. She said the Crowders lying on their kitchen floor. Apparently they’d been dead for several days. I risked the Guard and walked over to their house to hang out the red flag they gave us for emergencies, crossing the yard with my hands in the air like a newly freed hostage. Even though my mission was grim, it was so nice to be outside again.

Thursday, June 25

The guard finally came for the Crowders this morning. Molly stayed in our bedroom. She’s inconsolable. After the bodies were removed, a hazmat team came and boarded all the windows and doors. I saw a vapor escaping from the roof vents, so I guess they fogged it. The stories about that are true.

Sunday, June 28th

Molly is hot to the touch. She smiled and told me she feels like a loaf of fresh-baked bread. Her breath rattles like a boy running a stick along a picket fence.

Saturday, July 4th

The quietest Fourth I can remember. Molly seems better. Coughing less, and she took a little soup for supper. I went out on the front porch and lit a sparkler in celebration, but a National Guard Humvee drove by and slowed down when they saw me, so I quickly put it out and went back inside.

Thursday, July 11

We used to love walking the dogs together. Now Molly just sits in her rocker, pale blue eyes staring out at nothing. Her fever has returned and her cough is worse.

Monday, July 20

I heard a surveillance drone hovering over the house last night. I once heard they had infra-red cameras that can see through walls, but I’m pretty sure that’s just paranoia. I know for a fact that they are equipped with super-sensitive microphones, so I hope they haven’t heard Molly coughing. It’s so loud now I can even hear her when I’m in the basement. All day long I kept peeking through the curtains to peer up the empty street, jumping at every noise real or imagined.

Tuesday, July 21

The Guard came to the house. Molly was upstairs, coughing and coughing. I told her to keep quiet, cover her face with a pillow, but she was only semi-conscious and didn’t understand. It didn’t matter anyway. I went downstairs and met them at the door, thinking I would try to bluff them. They weren’t fooled and forced their way past me, their boots thundering up the stairs. I stood in the bedroom doorway while two of them held her down and swabbed her nose and throat. She struggled wildly, then went so still I wondered if they had killed her. I moved to stop them, but one of the guards pushed me against the wall with his baton. I stared into my own face reflected in the silver of his mask and wondered if they intentionally designed the respirators to look evil. After they left I sat and held Molly’s hand. She was sobbing and coughing but eventually fell asleep. I sat a long time thinking. The incident had reminded me of something. Finally, I remembered. When I was sixteen I spent a summer on a Montana ranch. One frigid morning, the rancher told me they were going to geld the male calves to make them into steers. The terrified animals were herded into a corral where a bunch of local boys stood waiting. One would throw a rope around a calf and throw it, then another two jumped on it to pin it down. The rancher came over, squatted down and expertly slit its crotch with a curved blade. He yanked out the stringy testicles and dropped them steaming into a bucket, then cauterized the wound with the electric prod dangling from his belt. Throughout the ordeal, the animals invariably were stunned to silence.

Saturday, September 26

The first of the leaves falling. It’s more than a month since they took Molly away. The guard has been by twice a week to draw my blood and make sure I’m not infected. I must be in the clear since they haven’t been back in at least ten days. I found my journal under a pile of old clothes and read back through the entries. I was almost done by the time I realized I was weeping. I know now that my wife is dead. Somehow I am still alive. Why?

Sunday, September 27

I’ve always thought of a journal as a series of letters to a future version of myself. By continuing to write entries, I therefore assert my belief that such an individual will exist, that I will survive all this. That it will mean something. Right now, I don’t know if any of that is true. The day outside looks the same as any other, save for the lack of people and cars. There are more birds and the occasional feral cat passing by my window. But there are also the armored Humvees that deliver the weekly ration boxes, men in camouflage suits with the wicked mirrored respirators and weapons at the ready. Once or twice I’ve heard the distant exchange of gunfire. I am alone in every way, and I don’t know if I want to live in such a world as this. I lack the conviction for either suicide or survival. It is a true dilemma.

Tuesday, October 6

This morning I saw myself in the mirror while changing clothes, so thin I resembled one of those photos of Holocaust survivors. It shamed me. Those people endured. I can too. I have decided to keep living, so I resume writing to my future self. Tell me, how does this turn out?

Wednesday, October 7

The power went off this morning. I wondered if it was permanent until an N.G.Humvee drove by. They don’t leave notes anymore, instead playing recorded messages through loudspeakers mounted on the roof. Usually it’s something about how the infection is almost over, how the president has done this or that. Today I was informed that to conserve resources we will now be allotted two hours of electricity per day. Our time is from ten AM to noon. Nothing about the other utilities.

Friday, October 8

Spent the day cleaning. I waited until 10 to vacuum, then spent the full two hours of power trying to fix the damned belt. I’ll try again tomorrow.

Sunday, October 10

Gave up on the vacuum and swept instead. Interesting thing. We’ve not had a dog since I gave Jounce away back in February, but there’s still an amazing amount of dog hair. everywhere, great balls of the stuff. I didn’t think of the dog at all while I swept it up, detached as if I was cleaning the house of a stranger. I also found Molly’s favorite Tiffany earring which she lost two years ago after a New Year’s party. Like the dog hair, it elicited no nostalgia in me at all, no feelings of any kind. I put the earring and the sweepings in a garbage bag and set it on the pile out back. I guess my heart is now officially sealed over.

Wednesday, October 15

The cleaning project is over. I wound up taking everything upstairs except the books and couch. It made quite a pile, filling the bedrooms and hall completely. No need to go up there ever again. I have blankets enough to stay warm, and a dresser full of durable clothes. I’m so glad I put in a gas water heater because hot showers are my one enduring luxury, though I imagine my consumption will eventually be noticed by the utility companies.

Sunday, October 18

A big storm blew through last night, the wind shrieking across the rooftops and ripping the bright autumn leaves from the trees. I woke to bare branches and streets covered with debris. One of the plywood sheets on the Crowder’s came off, leaving the black window behind. It looks like the house is winking at me. I was never a churchgoer, so Sundays aren’t special to me. I wonder how religious people are coping with this. Maybe they believe God is everywhere. I can’t see how they can now.

Monday, October 26

Kendra’s birthday. I came close to getting out her senior picture this morning, but decided against it. Best let sleeping dogs lie. When she was killed that horrible summer so long ago I never expected that I would look at the accident as a blessing. It is only because she and Molly are both gone that I can resign myself to this, whatever this is.

Wednesday, November 4

Frost came early this year. The Guard has been late with their ration boxes again. I’m sure sick of beans.

Wednesday, November 11

I’m not sure why I keep this journal up. When all this started I had ideas of how it would be, but none of it seems to matter. Every day is the same, so why even bother? But today I thought I’d write an entry because it’s Armistice Day. I’ve always called it that since I read Kurt Vonnegut as a kid. He thought it was more sacred than Veterans’ Day because when he was young most people believed that World War One really had ended all wars. I wish I could tell old Kurt that now finally managed to really do that, but not the way he hoped.

Thursday, December 17

Bulldozers have been through the neighborhood knocking down all the Red Flag houses and putting the wreckage into dump trucks and carting it away. The crews aren’t National Guard, but civilian workers in bright green suits with full respirators attached to their hard hats. It looks like my house is one of three left on the block. Interesting that they’re leaving the trees, as though someday they’ll build again.

Sunday, December 20

It’s been so long since I heard anything other than the loudspeaker announcements. I keep thinking I’ll drag out the record player, but I just don’t have the energy. I don’t even talk to myself.

Friday, December 25th

My grandmother told me that when she was little they draped all the mirrors in the house in black fabric whenever somebody died. I’d planned on doing that with the holidays, shrouding them and walking past without looking, but was astonished when I opened the front door to find not the usual Guard ration box but a Dean & Deluca holiday basket containing a tin of smoked turkey, several boxes of crackers, chocolate, hard candy, cans of Danish Cheese, and even a canned Virginia Ham. Best of all was an unopened fifth of Johnny Walker Red. I never was much of a drinker, but I went right away to get a glass from the kitchen and poured myself a generous knock and took it right down, feeling the delicious warmth spread through me like the fountain of youth. I had some crackers and cheese and a bit of the ham. It’s salted and should last a few days. The kitchen is almost as cold as a refrigerator anyway. I have no idea who left this treasure for me, but God bless you.

Friday, January 1

I should mention that there were no elections last year. That should be obvious to the reader, assuming history is still being written. From my window I can see the enormous billboard of his face superimposed against an American flag that towers over what’s left of this neighborhood. The loudspeakers now broadcast in the president’s voice.

Monday, January 18

Fever these past two weeks. It broke last night. My chest feels like a horse is standing on it, but I can somewhat breathe now.

Tuesday, January 19

Perhaps I am going live after all.