Glass shatters in my kitchen; a door is pushed open, and I become future primitive.
The door sticks, as it always did, and a hushed curse—damn it—I hear. It was as if I entered and swore, as I did daily, and my heart startled. I had been too lazy before civilization’s dismantling to do what required my care and presence, but I would soon transform into a raptor shedding its shell, the footsteps in shattered glass were my catalyst. I could also hear the kitty-cat clock’s tail ticking, and it never lied as it swung to and fro. My little girl loved staring at that summer carnival timepiece's shifting, googly eyes as she ate oatmeal each morning topped with banana and maple syrup. I never noticed the windows weeping or her, truth be told, and my eyes, as frantic as the clock, dully ignored the dire reveille from within. My thumbs were in charge, swiping and scrolling. Dopamine, more. Social media, more. Streaming, more. Pornography, more. News feeds, more. Memes, more. Email, more. Infertility, more. Anonymity, more. Retreating, more. Congressional hearings, more. Extreme, more. Screeds and screaming, more. Blasphemy, more. Obscenities, more. Atrocities, more. Secrecy and lying, more. More, more, and more. Feed me.
My brain, goop, steeped, soaked and stowed.
Daddy, I don’t feel so good this morning…
Eat up, honey. It’ll help.
It wouldn’t. We were already dead.
___
It all changed at 10:08 AM, Eastern Standard Time, in what would be renamed Koba Province. I know the exact time because I burned my house down, and with it, that memory and countless others. My last conversation in those doomed walls was with the fresh-made cadaver that I murdered with a Phillips Head screwdriver—I never fixed that off-kilter cabinet door, nor that gummy door, and lucky for it, my weapon was within reach next to the cold toaster. We conferred for a long while, this gaunt man and I, his pooling blood thickening on the bamboo flooring that my wife loved, but she wasted away a week before, so her opinion carried much less weight. Still, she would have disapproved of the slaughter on her floor, a custom order from Floor Warehouse—if you want wood, we got wood! The jingle still tickles my funny bone. Why would I remember that and forget my wife’s scent?
Right is tight, left is loose, and I pushed the tip of my tiny spear through the back of his skull, my carpentry complete, and the flame was lit. In his shirt pocket, I found a letter from his wife and a picture of his two kids, both young boys, who were not much older than my Emma. I used his past life as kindling and warmed my hands over the small fire they ignited. I took that man’s shoes, gun, knife, and the expensive jacket he bought from REI, most assuredly on credit, and began walking, the orange, smoke, and char at my back, the horizon rising, reincarnated, I.
___
I have adjusted to the darkness. The night sky is now my rooftop. The piercing stars and a ruthlessly lonely moon are a predator's luxury, illuminating my journey home, a shallow and muddy foxhole under the considerate canopy of a thick, sweeping pine, my kill house. There are empty cabins, mansions, and sulking doublewides, too, but it would only be a matter of time before more of my kind, roaming wolf packs descend. I cannot risk exposure or be caught asleep on my post, so tin cans, fishing wire looted from Mac’s Outdoor World, and angelic, yearning wind chimes set my perimeter. My last line of defense is a bear trap I robbed from a hunter's pack—and my Glock. The final round will always be for me.
Be not there when they look, and assault with surprise and violence of action when ready. This is today. This is you now. If I could spare the paper, I would write that down. But I can't, so I repeat it repeatedly, quietly, especially during the skinning. I catch my blurred reflection in my knife and get to work. It's awful labor, but I have become a skilled apprentice. I can skin and debone a man of average size in twenty-five minutes. I'm good, but others are better. It doesn't bother me much. Growing up, I remember my Mom cutting my steak into bite-size pieces. I'd be faster today if I paid more attention. Regret? Hardly. Honing a sought-after skill in the failing glow of twilight is an eye-forward commitment. Tomorrow’s unstable ladder isn’t going to climb itself.
Besides, when I reminisce, the serrated blade of that knife is all I can quickly summon. I can't fully see my mother or that bloody sirloin. The air does smell persistently red here, though.
___
Many of us are not welcome in Koba City, despite the sign that states ALL ARE WELCOME. There is no space for the fine print. The font is that blatant in its audacious lie—promise. Row upon row of sleek amber glass and steel buildings form semi-circles inside a much better perimeter than mine.
It is feeding time. Three times each day, the citizens of Koba City soundlessly amble to the Ingestion Center, serpentine lines, khaki-clad ants from a circling hawk's vantage—for those who remember hawks. From Domicile 1, they come. From Domicile 2, they come. From Domicile 3, they come. As planned, each Domicile houses five hundred citizens equally amongst one hundred Respite Quarters. There are 100 Domiciles, plus the Level 3 Respite Quarters for the Mxsters, whom few see. They enter and exit in coordinated synchronicity to ensure citizens are always aware of their presence, not their identity. Over time become easy to spot. Clean skin, clear eyes, and white teeth are difficult to camouflage. Rumor is they regularly dine on tinned tuna, chocolate, and coffee and bathe in warm water.
I am known at the back gate. The cameras fall asleep when I arrive. I dutifully show my badge. It bears no name, only my occupation, Hunter.
Hey, Hunter.
Mike.
Your tag expires next week. I can punch it today if you want.
What’ll it cost me?
How about one of those bracelets? For the wife, you know.
Deal.
Each day I bring my quarry and the pretty things I can rummage from it. When you break down a man, a shopping list of sorts emerges. Inside the city, in the bowels of the place, they grind and dry the meat and offal. I also sell jewelry—pendants, earrings, and bracelets—crafted from bones and teeth. I polish every bauble by hand. I also pick up the remains of any khaki-clad sack that has gone flat, empty. I am full-service, drop off and pick up, and I am punctual.
I am paid by the pound. A man weighing 180 pounds may give 40 to 60 pounds of meat. I never calculated or broke down women or children, though others do. Competition is most enthusiastic in a down market, and shortages stimulate product diversification, but I never took that step. I don’t have a mission statement or creed, per se, but I do have a speck of conscience, and some days I go hungry for it. I used to be in public relations, where the best liars lie best, and now I am a peddler of many wicked things, but lying is not one of them. Don’t eat the meat. It’s the most honest I can be and have ever been.
___
I sleep with one eye open. It can be done. My lousy eye still stings from the falling cloud of chemicals sprayed daily for weeks. At first, it was to cure, but then it was to end all days so the favored few could emerge from the bunkers and the blast-proof caves—the initial refuge that became Koba City. They rebuilt, of course. The plans had already been made, and the blueprints were ready. All that was necessary was tearing everything down, reducing the unfavored to brick and mortar, to nail and board, to concrete and steel, and to build. Old ways became new skyscrapers, each floor an annihilated family, a sacred tradition, a way of life systemically eradicated, then extruded, formed, stacked, and air-conditioned.
Remain in your homes. Help is on the way. It was a common command, and we did, I did, it because I was corpulent, obedient, kind, and benign. I trekked from my soft sofa to my front door for food and tossed meaty scraps to my dog. I burned my eyes to soot on Netflix, Tik Tok, and The Masked Singer. I desecrated my body at Taco Bell, Starbucks, and Krispy Kreme. I drowned my liver with Crown Royal and Coke. I slathered myself in chemicals, fragrances, and paste, my physique a gory temple the moneychangers found irresistible. I buckled under debt from Amazon, Home Depot, Costco, Wells Fargo, Macy’s, Sony, and Audi, and my three-car garage bulged with this, that—meaningless accumulation, detritus in cardboard shrines; we had yard sales incessantly, religiously, and they came, the bartering zombie hordes, a reminder that we were not alone, and we bought pizza and cheesy cheese bread with our takings.
My doctor cheerfully wrote scripts for Paxil, Prinivil, and Zocor—and I chased them down my eager throat with protein shakes (whey, of course), creatine, ketone supplements, pumpkin lattes, imitation ice cream, full-fat ice cream (because I deserved it), gallons of corn syrup, food coloring, and faux vitamins, minerals and all the other supplements needed to keep a body strong, and dependent. I stayed out of the sun to preserve my pallid skin. I avoided people and parks and human contact—for my own good, the party line scraped into my mind, lice in a moldering mattress. I got along to get along. I said yes when I meant no. I complied and paid my taxes and recycled paper and plastic as garbage barges sank in the Indian Ocean. I dropped coins into tip jars and received indifferent slack-jawed service, and I gave blood, dropped off unworn clothes at Goodwill, and signed every motherfucking birthday card at work—even for the people I hated. I stopped reading and learning, anesthetized by smothering nothingness, my day without yin or yang. I woke each morning underwater, lungs bursting, and I chose to drown rather than swim to the surface. I had become a wax candle in a burning room, soft, pliant, and flaccid—infertile of mind, body, and spirit. My pronouns were He/Him. Now, I am nameless.
“Remain in your homes. Help is on the way." Soon the purring refrigerator stopped.
“Remain in your homes. Help is on the way." And the tap water slowed, then quit.
“Remain in your homes. Help is on the way." And the food, first rationed, vanished.
“Remain in your homes. Help is on the way." And the bodies, stacked at the curb, rotted.
“Remain in your homes. Help is on the way." And the ransacking began.
“Remain in your homes. Help is on the way." And then I killed a man in my kitchen.
We never got the whole story. Someone strolled out of a lab with a strand of DNA clinging to the bottom of their shoe—or perhaps it was all intentional, this culling? It doesn't matter now. We're in the gray, the grime, and the filth, and I wear a deer-skin cape and a Carhart hat that I traded for a string of powerfully polished faux pearls. I watch you all from my perch. I am a tree. Then a bush. I am underfoot, the perilous gravel you will travel, the cockroach other cockroaches fear.
I am my fire. My abacus. My zenith.
I am you, but only if you choose to become me, and buyer, beware.
Buyer beware.
___
All these days were to come, and they attacked me in a churning premonition, a cyclone in my first-life kitchen, the bamboo floor dry, spotless, gleaming, my daughter giggling. No one believed me when I told them or warned them. I saw the complete evisceration of the world, my life, in the scant minutes it took to brew my Sumatran coffee. It was the final sunny day of my life. The clouds rolled in on singed celluloid, each frame darker and thicker than the last until the spool snapped, a swollen tongue slapping, flapping against the overheating machine, and my heart reduced to a vicious and viscous liquid. My wife had just left for a jog, and she did not turn her head as she went; my blown kiss missed, and my daughter coughed a tiny exhale from something she picked up at school, and from down the hall, the radio cooed…good morning Las Vegas. It’s going to be unseasonably cool today. Bundle up. Also, the cold and flu season is in high gear, so be alert for fever and upper respiratory issues. The CDC recommends…
At that exact moment, I knew there was the only road for me—no hope, no peace, no compromise, no one.
I could taste the impending mayhem on my tongue, the freedom to be free within reach.