2036

February 03, 2036

“Suppose a board was all a girl had, would she have lived long enough to have had the last laugh?”

That’s about how the saying goes. I'm pretty sure the girl was from some really small dinky town. Population: cousins. Even being that far removed from the world, she somehow knew. What would happen. Though she went unheard, and so it did happen. The girl had been stuck at the bottom of this really big dam. A dam that everyone knew existed but nobody wanted to look at. So she just sat there. On her board. Waiting and waiting. For that moment. The moment the walls of the dam cracked wide open, a loud groan into the dark world as the valley flooded with ashes.

This dam is theatrical of course. The real dam was… well I guess I would say it was time. Perhaps ignorance too, but then again, some will always say it was inevitable. As for the rest of us, well we’re not dead yet, we’re just dying real soon. Suppose we don’t have time to choose.

February 22, 2036

So what is my, “Where were you when the world ended” moment? Well it’s funny you didn’t ask, but I’ll tell you. Firstly, it wasn’t exactly instantaneous. Not entirely. Try six years of toxic heat waves before a comet rounded its big bright ass head about half a year ago. The moment is that fraction of a second that it took that ball of fire to enter and leave our atmosphere. This is because within that time frame, the comet had boiled half the population alive. Most people call it the “Rapture”.

So where was I when that happened. That’s your question. Right? Well I was, of all the places to be, scrubbing graffiti off the walls of a cave in Tongue River Canyon. Wyoming to be exact. My older sister drug me there, the little humanitarian. We went into that cave with most of our family still intact (sun burnt but intact) and I came out feeling like… like I was definitely born into a shit luck dimension. Hundred percent.

But that’s okay - because if you’re reading this… then so were you.

March 16, 2036

One of the worst new parts of this new downgraded society, is this whole spatial issue. I grew up with a single mom of three in a house built for two and I thought that that was bad. The world is so much smaller now. Spatially the same, the land mass is just: Zilt. Safe to say there’s been fears of famine. And cannibalism.

April 11, 2036

Lacey is declining in speech. Her memory also seems to lag at times. She forgets we’re in hell. She’d been pretty close to the cave exit when the comet came by. I think maybe her brain boiled a bit. That’s what they say happened to most of us, the people who survived. Our brains no longer work completely right. Some days I find my Texas Tech graduate sister face down in a pool of water, though she always comes up for air. She calls herself “unhuman”. I think she calls me that too.

May 19, 2036

Denial is something sometimes and sometimes very strange. I see it like flipping an image over and over again in your mind. You keep shifting these thoughts and pictures long enough until what you’re looking at is bearable. Then you swallow that image whole and hope it doesn’t rip you apart from the inside out. Like this thing that’s now growing out of my lip.

Speaking of denial, today I, along with a lot of terrible looking people, watched quietly as a building fell… collapsed… carnage… and we said nothing. There wasn't a single gasp. No urgency to help. No urgency to do anything really. Everyone just stood there for a moment before returning to the nothingness that consumes our days. A woman yanked at one of the last few clumps of hair still attached to her head. “Whatever was in there, it was already dead,” she said. Meanwhile, the sun was in so much denial, that it said to hell with it all and it shined anyways.

June 24, 2036

Someone said that the peaks of the Andes are underwater now. Someone also said that the brown thing growing off my lip is cancer. I don’t know if I believe either. There’s a lot of misinformation running through the Grunge. But hey, at least beauty standards are at an all time low. Everyone here looks pretty shit these days. I imagine you find my humor is in bad taste. At least my sister shares it, though she laughs at most things these days. Could be the generational gap.

July 5, 2036

You know what’s absolutely ironic? The fact that I’m literally getting taken out… by what ended the Titanic. A fucking iceberg. A fucking iceberg. Okay, in our case it’s a lot of melting icebergs but still. And sure, yes there was that whole heat aspect of it all and that fucking Death Star moment… but that comet didn’t get my ass. and whatever else that decides to go to shit in the next decade… because I’m getting taken out by a melted iceberg. I’m calling it. Somehow, someway, I’ll drown. Just like Leo.

And you wanna know something else? You probably have no idea what I’m even talking about. Because why would a person living in like 2087 know about some epic movie from the late nineties nor care about what happened before “The Melt”. You’re definitely too busy being a part of the after. If there is an after. Maybe that’s what everyone thinks though, when they’re looking at the end. If there is a 2087, I do kinda hope my old ass is a part of it. Laceys’ too.

Though my biggest wish honestly, is that we’re not still calling this little catastrophic event “The Melt” by that point. If shit goes left, I don’t want to be known as someone who died in “The Melt”. No.

September 13, 2036

Today I traded this elderly woman at the Grunge one of my pens for a rusted old locket. She wouldn’t let me see what was inside. Turns out it was a locket full of toenails in the shape of a heart. I’d call it gross but everyone’s pretty gross these days. Myself included. Especially us at the Grunge. At least we’re not cannibals though, for the most part. I’ll admit it’s not completely uncommon, though not out of necessity but because… humans. I kinda hate us a little bit these days.

The weirdest part of that encounter wasn’t even the human shavings, but rather the croak of my own voice. I doubt I’ve spoken for several days now.

December 24, 2036

Christmas list:

-my own boat

- fresh air

- solid ground

- Something fast food

- the ability to fly

- the ability to walk on air

- the ability to flap my arms until my starvation wrecked and ever pruned body takes flight

- just make me a bird.

January 9, 2037

You know what? Grief doesn’t only belong to the dead. This left behind world is full of it. It’s in everything I can’t touch. It’s in all the places I can’t go. It’s the thoughts I don’t want to have and in the weeks I can’t wake up. I’m grieving time. And memories. And I feel like I’m getting lost in the days that I can’t convince people that I exist. That I’m here. That there was once two girls who had big dreams, delusionally big, but they had them anyways… and just like everyone else’s… they fucking drowned.

February 27, 2037

Today I cannot adapt because today I now know that the only way to adapt is to litteraly sprout fucking gills. Nope, can’t be a bird anymore. Now they’re dying of god knows what. I mean I’d love to tell you but I can’t exactly look this bologna up. Though I’m sure you have all the hindsight in the world, you mole sapien. Yeah, you’re a mole person, because whatever survives through this shit is not gonna be human, I can tell you that much.

March 1, 2037

The Grunge is gone. So are the people. What was left of them. I found my own ship. Guess it’s more of a boat. There’s a book about it. I’m trying to figure out purpose maybe? Breathing? Is that my purpose? Writing? Will anyone be around long enough to care? All I have are questions now, and the wind smells like toilet water so I don’t want to talk to that. What do you do when you think you're the last unhuman left?

I can’t figure that out, not with Lacey knocking against the hull of the ship like she is. Then there’s the smell. The smell of decay that doesn’t fade because the mugginess of the ocean keeps it near. It’s been terrible for days on end, though maybe that’s because I have a hundred-and-twenty pounds of rotting flesh strapped to the bow of my ship. Kinda like a car with a dingy old air freshener. I’m taking her North. I have high hopes.

(The passage above is the last excerpt from the Diary of 2036)