Being an accounting of the recent and continuing pandemic and its various circumstances, from the perspective of an inhabitant of the regions lately called the Lost Quarter. Dates unknown.

Day Forty Five

I stumbled through the day with low-lidded eyes. A jaundiced stare. What evil lies in the hearts of men? All of it.

There’ll be no mercy once you fall. They’ll swarm upon you like locusts on the field. Ravenous and rapacious as a banker smelling foreclosure.

We’re all of us still yearning, desperate to get out of our own thoughts. Miserable and vicious. A sword called vengeance thirsts for blood.

I rested easily for a time, but then I awoke in the night to find myself surrounded by tangled vines whose flowers bowed heavily, the weight of their poison filling them up. Having taken the cure, I drank my fill.