My flash story The Recovery Room (formerly The Pandemic) is now online at Brain Harvest.
Enjoy!
Showing posts with label pandemics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pandemics. Show all posts
7.28.2009
5.06.2009
The Pandemic
By the time Rosita and I got to the Recovery Room the Pandemic had already begun: all the hip young bods dancing in their tightlegged latex, the girls sporting the new antimicrobial kid gloves, in varying shades of neon like floral radiation warnings, clapping and waving in the sterile blue lights. DJ Grippe was spinning the latest off N1H1 Records, Afro-Iberian dance beats that’d make your heart skip, the club the perfect vessel to blend all the strains of young international health into one rollicking party. You can see it in the eyes, every one of us still living, not like the alleys full of victims we had to pass on our ride here, choking and swelling in the endless dry winter, spreading the disease molecules with even one careless breath.
We got drinks – thin-necked bottles sipped through straws like delicate proboscises – and found a table with an empty table on either side of it so we could breathe freely within the current World Health Organization regulations. Rosita made sure to swipe each surface with a sanitary napkin before she sat down. Without actually touching anything I gave the appearance of leaning against the wallpaper, velvety winged pigs this month, the design sported by all the bartenders. It would all be burnt tomorrow and decontaminated for next month anyway. The owners of the Recovery Room tried to keep up with the latest fashions, since the first club to host the Pandemic fell into quarantine for hosting what would have been an ironic barbecue, except everyone fell sick. You couldn’t get kicked out of here for anything faster than an errant cough or sneeze. And everyone was watching, because the latest fashions were swathed around our faces.
I pointed them out to Rosita: The Japanese folkpunks in their austere Kabuki and Kami prints, several clowns and mock-stars (famous politicians, actors, etc… the Barack wasn’t so popular this season after a failure to provide national healthcare), it seemed the abstract contingent had done away with representing the mouth altogether in favor of Mandrian-like lines. There was even some old rocker sporting the Rolling Stones lips over his own, everyone with their projected desires plastered like smiles across their plastic faces. Rosita sipped discreetly through the side of her mask while I explained how the first international influenza pandemic wasn’t nearly so colorful, at least, you didn’t get your vaccine in a shot glass at the door. It’s all a big blast, don’t you think? Not as contagious like the Red Death, now that would be some gala!
What about her? Rosita asked, pointing a violet trembling glove across the room. Wandering through the crowd, stumbling as if actually ill, and leaving a wide empty void around her as she moved, was a girl clearly breaking some taboo or illusion of sanitary. We could hear it in the whispers behind the masks around us. Look at that shaved head, so last century, so chemo-chic. And those eyes, gaunt, horrific, what does she think she’s carrying? And then she turned our way and we saw what was causing the stir. Of everyone in the Recovery Room, this girl alone was not wearing a protective facemask. But no, it was something else, a thick scar running along the exposed collarbone as if some vital gland had been removed, and there, at the base of her thin-necked throat, a growth like a rotting blossom, dead set on consuming the otherwise unblemished skin from within.
Does she want to catch the flu? Rosita asked as the girl moved away, her delicate ungloved hands trailing on every dirty countertop, a pariah in this land of hermetically sealed emotions and collisions. She couldn’t go home like the rest of us and wash away the germs and be well again. I couldn’t get my mind off that tumescent flesh, so real, so malignant. I’ve never seen a neck so smooth and sorrowful. A reminder of the anarchy trembling at the cell walls of each of us, an endemic that can’t be hidden or held off by any pretty face. No, I sighed, that’s cancer. Don’t worry it’s not contagious. Ugh, Rosita shuddered, I wish they’d kick her out anyway. You ready to dance yet? Hold on, I said, and then brazenly pulled off my mask to drain the rest of the bottle, even though people stared at my own naked uplifted cheeks, pallid from months without sunlight or fresh air.
We got drinks – thin-necked bottles sipped through straws like delicate proboscises – and found a table with an empty table on either side of it so we could breathe freely within the current World Health Organization regulations. Rosita made sure to swipe each surface with a sanitary napkin before she sat down. Without actually touching anything I gave the appearance of leaning against the wallpaper, velvety winged pigs this month, the design sported by all the bartenders. It would all be burnt tomorrow and decontaminated for next month anyway. The owners of the Recovery Room tried to keep up with the latest fashions, since the first club to host the Pandemic fell into quarantine for hosting what would have been an ironic barbecue, except everyone fell sick. You couldn’t get kicked out of here for anything faster than an errant cough or sneeze. And everyone was watching, because the latest fashions were swathed around our faces.
I pointed them out to Rosita: The Japanese folkpunks in their austere Kabuki and Kami prints, several clowns and mock-stars (famous politicians, actors, etc… the Barack wasn’t so popular this season after a failure to provide national healthcare), it seemed the abstract contingent had done away with representing the mouth altogether in favor of Mandrian-like lines. There was even some old rocker sporting the Rolling Stones lips over his own, everyone with their projected desires plastered like smiles across their plastic faces. Rosita sipped discreetly through the side of her mask while I explained how the first international influenza pandemic wasn’t nearly so colorful, at least, you didn’t get your vaccine in a shot glass at the door. It’s all a big blast, don’t you think? Not as contagious like the Red Death, now that would be some gala!
What about her? Rosita asked, pointing a violet trembling glove across the room. Wandering through the crowd, stumbling as if actually ill, and leaving a wide empty void around her as she moved, was a girl clearly breaking some taboo or illusion of sanitary. We could hear it in the whispers behind the masks around us. Look at that shaved head, so last century, so chemo-chic. And those eyes, gaunt, horrific, what does she think she’s carrying? And then she turned our way and we saw what was causing the stir. Of everyone in the Recovery Room, this girl alone was not wearing a protective facemask. But no, it was something else, a thick scar running along the exposed collarbone as if some vital gland had been removed, and there, at the base of her thin-necked throat, a growth like a rotting blossom, dead set on consuming the otherwise unblemished skin from within.
Does she want to catch the flu? Rosita asked as the girl moved away, her delicate ungloved hands trailing on every dirty countertop, a pariah in this land of hermetically sealed emotions and collisions. She couldn’t go home like the rest of us and wash away the germs and be well again. I couldn’t get my mind off that tumescent flesh, so real, so malignant. I’ve never seen a neck so smooth and sorrowful. A reminder of the anarchy trembling at the cell walls of each of us, an endemic that can’t be hidden or held off by any pretty face. No, I sighed, that’s cancer. Don’t worry it’s not contagious. Ugh, Rosita shuddered, I wish they’d kick her out anyway. You ready to dance yet? Hold on, I said, and then brazenly pulled off my mask to drain the rest of the bottle, even though people stared at my own naked uplifted cheeks, pallid from months without sunlight or fresh air.
9.30.2007
bees in birds and bugs in brains
Seussian nightmares.
The other day I was walking up the street and looked down to see a dead bird in the gutter. This wasn't disturbing in itself, even with its guts splayed open to the morning sun, but there swarming about in the bird's chest was a handful of bees, not just flitting about with an idle buzz but actively digging into the avian. It was actually kind of beautiful, and if I hadn't been so shocked and on my way to school I would have gotten my camera to take a picture of it. In hindsight it seemed an odd thing for bees to be doing, last time I checked I didn't think bees ate flesh, and beyond colony-collapse disorder I wonder just how else the environment is effecting wildlife.
Perhaps more disturbing was a news report I stumbled on (via posthuman blues) about brain-eating amoebas that have killed 6 people in southern lakes this year, an unprecedented spike in the number of deaths by the brain-eating amoeba, which if you splash in a still, algae-covered lake and get water up your nose, will crawl up to your brain and eat till you die, in two deliriously painful weeks. That this is real disturbs me, that the amoeba's thrive in hot water and the scientist studying them thinks we'll only see more of this as global warming continues disturbs me. That the symptoms of having your brain eaten by an amoeba are a stiff neck and headaches disturbs me (because that's how I've been feeling for the past week, though I think I'm suffering more from spending too much time looking back and forth between my computer and books for this research paper). I think what disturbs me the most is trying not to imagine these creatures somehow getting into a city's water supply. Actually I am more frightened by the possibility of spiders crawling into my ears and laying eggs, which I'm not sure is really possible but I still don't know what happened to that big mother who was crawling around the corners of my room all last week.
I actually have more important things to say, but they are being quietly consumed by the massive amount of research I'm doing to interpret the Ṛigveda myth of Indra slaying Vṛta for class. Having not done a research paper in years I'm actually quite excited. It's like an enormous jigsaw puzzle using information as the pieces, and with no final picture but what you want to make it. Of course, I also love organizing information, a trait that seems to run in my family, and hopefully I'll actually get around to writing the paper before it's due in a week and a half.
The other day I was walking up the street and looked down to see a dead bird in the gutter. This wasn't disturbing in itself, even with its guts splayed open to the morning sun, but there swarming about in the bird's chest was a handful of bees, not just flitting about with an idle buzz but actively digging into the avian. It was actually kind of beautiful, and if I hadn't been so shocked and on my way to school I would have gotten my camera to take a picture of it. In hindsight it seemed an odd thing for bees to be doing, last time I checked I didn't think bees ate flesh, and beyond colony-collapse disorder I wonder just how else the environment is effecting wildlife.
Perhaps more disturbing was a news report I stumbled on (via posthuman blues) about brain-eating amoebas that have killed 6 people in southern lakes this year, an unprecedented spike in the number of deaths by the brain-eating amoeba, which if you splash in a still, algae-covered lake and get water up your nose, will crawl up to your brain and eat till you die, in two deliriously painful weeks. That this is real disturbs me, that the amoeba's thrive in hot water and the scientist studying them thinks we'll only see more of this as global warming continues disturbs me. That the symptoms of having your brain eaten by an amoeba are a stiff neck and headaches disturbs me (because that's how I've been feeling for the past week, though I think I'm suffering more from spending too much time looking back and forth between my computer and books for this research paper). I think what disturbs me the most is trying not to imagine these creatures somehow getting into a city's water supply. Actually I am more frightened by the possibility of spiders crawling into my ears and laying eggs, which I'm not sure is really possible but I still don't know what happened to that big mother who was crawling around the corners of my room all last week.
I actually have more important things to say, but they are being quietly consumed by the massive amount of research I'm doing to interpret the Ṛigveda myth of Indra slaying Vṛta for class. Having not done a research paper in years I'm actually quite excited. It's like an enormous jigsaw puzzle using information as the pieces, and with no final picture but what you want to make it. Of course, I also love organizing information, a trait that seems to run in my family, and hopefully I'll actually get around to writing the paper before it's due in a week and a half.
10.02.2005
emergency broadcast
this is frightening, very frightening: (and yes I know it's been posted at american samizdat but I read it in the paper this morning since I'm down in dc with my folks and this was my immediate reaction).
"Biohazard sensors showed the presence of small amounts of potentially dangerous tularemia bacteria in the Mall area last weekend as huge crowds assembled there, but health officials said they believed the levels were too low to be a threat." (via Washington Post)
I need to do more research on this, but it sure sounds like the US Government released a biological weapon that it created on the anti-war protestors who assembled last weekend on the mall. They claim it's not contagious person to person, and yet almost everyone I know is suddenly sick with symptoms that sound an awful lot like those of the released disease, tularemia.
please keep in mind this may not be true, but the article does not go into great depth of detail. Either way, the mere possibility that our government is attempting to infect protestors, or endanger the lives of its citizens in any way is enough to make me sick, and could infuriate people nationwide. Reminds me of the last big protest there where several people died of menengitis.
Please spread this information, and if you have came in contact with anyone who was in dc last week and you are showing signs of this disease, please seek medical attention.
"Biohazard sensors showed the presence of small amounts of potentially dangerous tularemia bacteria in the Mall area last weekend as huge crowds assembled there, but health officials said they believed the levels were too low to be a threat." (via Washington Post)
I need to do more research on this, but it sure sounds like the US Government released a biological weapon that it created on the anti-war protestors who assembled last weekend on the mall. They claim it's not contagious person to person, and yet almost everyone I know is suddenly sick with symptoms that sound an awful lot like those of the released disease, tularemia.
please keep in mind this may not be true, but the article does not go into great depth of detail. Either way, the mere possibility that our government is attempting to infect protestors, or endanger the lives of its citizens in any way is enough to make me sick, and could infuriate people nationwide. Reminds me of the last big protest there where several people died of menengitis.
Please spread this information, and if you have came in contact with anyone who was in dc last week and you are showing signs of this disease, please seek medical attention.
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