I hate the morning. The sun's bloody teardrops fall from the sky li...ke a demon that God got fed up with. A demon that streaks through the dark blue ocean of the night and tears its way through the clouds, ripping and roaring through the celestial realm and streaking toward the mortal world with a burning vengeance. It's angry. It didn't intend on leaving the leisurely droll of the Heavens, but God Himself saw it so fit to damn him. So now in his misery, the demon descends onto the silent and the still of our world, lighting a fire that burns an entire hemisphere of the globe. By the time the fire reaches my eyes, it melts away the tears of yesterday...not out of pity, however, but to simply make room for the new ones that will flow once I am cursed to begin another day. I can hear him laughing, the demon. He's laughing at me. He's laughing at you too. He's laughing at all of us. He's thankful that God allowed him to have one more bout of fun before being swallowed up by the next inevitable night, just for the cycle to begin anew twelve hours later.
My name is Victor Emmit Voloshin, and each day at dawn I lie awake with my eyes tightly shut, doing battle with the demon of the day while begging to God to recall the Demon of the Sun…so that the peaceful night could last for just one more hour.
Like yesterday, and the day before it, God ignored my prayers. It is October 15th 2012, 5:36am, it is daylight. Yesterday's tears have all dried, and the demon is forcing me awake.
Sorry, I got all abstract on you, didn't I? My abstractions keep me sane, they help me to deal with the pain. I'm an aspiring writer, so the whimsy of my pastel colored thoughts-turned-words keeps my mind off the horrors of my reality. What you are reading is a detailed chronicle of my last days on Earth. I'm due to die in one week. I'm an addict, you see…an addict who happened to have the luxury of trying the most amazing drug in the world. I've done them all...coke, dope, weed...but nothing hit the spot like this new stuff that just came out…and guess what? It's completely legal. It at least it WAS anyways. The government calls it Thytrizamine...I call it love (and sometimes “Triz” for short). Want the recipe for love? Want the ingredients for wonder? Want the building blocks for happiness? One vial of Thytrizamine shot directly into the vein is a kiss on the cheek from your mother, it's a gla** of warm milk at night, it's everything you'll ever need.
I took a few hits and you won't believe what I saw.
I saw the universe painted across the face of God. I bore witness to its static majesty. And you know what? It was an eternity beyond what any of us can collectively fathom. I cried. I cried so hard…for you. I cried for you because I wanted you to see it. I didn't know you, I had no idea that you were even a grain in the fabric of forever, but I knew you existed, I somehow knew everything about you. I knew everything about everyone and everything. It all came together right before my very eyes. That moment of clarity was so powerful that I physically broke down. My mind couldn't handle it. It was shutting itself down, and my body was going along with it. I always wondered why we as humans can't use our full brains. I wondered why we were doomed to die with 95% of it completely unused. Well, I know now, I do. Knowing would k** us. If we could understand everything, if we could see it all, we would be overloaded by the enormity of processing, we would die. Me, I got to see that. For a short while I got to see it all, and it was so awfully omnipotent that I couldn't live with it. At that moment, as I was experiencing existence in its purest form, I wanted to both live and die in the exact same instance.
And it seems I'll be getting my wish. I live, for now…but I'll be dead in a week's time…so says the government. As fate would have it, Triz was railroaded through the FDA by lobbyists looking to add some more silicone to the breasts of their trophy wives. The drug was approved prematurely, and it wasn't long before the story broke that Triz has a rabies-like effect on people. It makes them brain-dead, volatile…and contagious. The President declared a pandemic and a state of emergency here in New York where the first batch of Triz was released to the public. Each and every soul showing signs of “infection” is forced into quarantined “treatment” zones: entire city blocks that have been sectioned off to house the infected so that they can live amongst each other in their vile disease-ridden wretchedness…a Sodom and Gomorrah that probably should have been burned to the ground by the Demon of the Sun. It was in one of those zones that I was first told I was going to die. I was told by a quarantine doctor (complete in a full HAZMAT suit) that I have about two weeks until the nasty side-effects of the drug completely take me over, that was about a week ago.
When you are told that you are going to die, something changes inside of you. You no longer care about anything except your own personal happiness. If I only have two weeks to live, I'm going to live it how I choose. So I left the quarantine zone, it wasn't hard, with a quarter million people already showing signs of infection, the national guard had a their hands more than full which left a few weak spots in the zone's perimeter. They are telling the public that everything will be alright, but I know that it won't. And you know what? I don't even care. When your world is coming to an end, when you know for a fact that you won't survive to the end of the month, you don't care about the world and its problems, all you care about are your own. All you care about is making your last moments the best that you can for YOU. So here I sit, alone, checked into the most expensive hotel that I could afford, pretending that my world won't end. I took a hot shower, I ordered room service, I turned on the television and watched the President tell the country that everything is going to be fine and that the quarantine zones will do their job until a cure is discovered. My very existence contradicts that lie. And now…I'm writing you.
I don't know you. You and I have never met, if you are reading this then that means you probably pried this journal out of my cold dead hands. Right now you are looking through a stained gla** window into the past. And even though I've never met you, we are now on this journey together, you and me, and because of that fact alone...I am in love with you. I love you so much, because I can feel you here with me, existing in the still of this very moment. You are next to me and you have my hand. Because of that, somehow, though the complexities of time and space...I am not alone. Thank you for spending this time with me, thank you for agreeing to cry with me, to laugh with me, to love with me. I need you now more than you will ever know. I didn't leave the quarantine zone for freedom, I left so that I could be loved…by someone…by anyone. I'm not a disease, I am a human being with a week's worth of breath still swelling my lungs. I only wish that I can touch you, I only wish that I could feel you, but until I can, I'm going to continue injecting myself with Triz, because right now, it's the only thing that I can feel. The very thing that I take to feel alive is the same thing that will k** me. I love Triz, and I love YOU. If you are reading this than I am surely dead, and if right now you see me at your feet, if at this very moment I lay deceased in front of you, please look me in the eyes...and tell me that you love me too.
I pray to God that the sun doesn't rise tomorrow. Allow me live in the absence of light dear Lord…because if tomorrow never comes…then I'll never have to die.