ENVY

The land lay in waste. Wars have left us in a nuclear winter, and I feel responsible. The birds no longer sing in the mornings, and I don’t get to hear the coyotes howling in the late hours of the night. I don’t hear the grasshopper chirping in the summer, or the owl that settled in the tree beside our house. It’s just white noise, the sound of electricity from the distant city. I canI smell the stale arid air, and I blame myself.

I was just a child, when it happened, barely a teen, when ignorance prevails the most. It’s the time in life when you don’t care, and you don’t listen to your parents, or your teachers. You stay up all night on school nights just to say you can. I know there was nothing I could have done, so why do I feel guilty? I feel guilty because I could have done my part. I could have given the five dollars to that charity, and I could have bought my clothes from a sweatshop free environment. There are countless things I could have done. It’s not my fault, but it becomes your fault when you don’t act, when you don’t try. You assume your government knows what’s best for you, you assume your safe. You assume that when I break my arm I can and will be treated.

Assumptions.

Now as an adult approaching death, I see the mistakes I’ve made, and I don’t pity myself. I don’t feel alive. I lay in this bed waiting for my time to come, waiting for the mask to go over my head and my vision to blur.

It is cold in the quarantine room, and it is dark as well. There is a small window behind me in my small hospital bed. I can see the room light up a bit during mid day. However, for the most part it is dark all the time. I have been out of my “cell” only a couple times. The doctors, and specialists allow me to have a stroll in my wheel chair every now and then, only accompanied by another doctor, nurse, or specialist. I don’t particularly like it. The outside world is dead.

As a child I remember green grass, and blue skies. So the grey brushlike turf and dark sky is unappealing. We can only stay outside for a few minutes at a time. The air is toxic from the pollution from the war. A typical day for me is for me to lie in my hospital bed, strapped in when unattended. I either read stories from the Teleprompter, or watch films from the Teleprompter, or listen to music from the Teleprompter’s speakers. I guess it is nice, and I benefit more than some, but I don’t care about me anymore. I am unselfish, I did this to me, it’s the price I pay. I ask the nurses, when they come in every day for my check up, how life is. They don’t answer. I feel like a foreigner, in fact I am in a way. I have no clue where I am. I have the feeling that I’m not in the United States. I can only imagine what the States even look like. New York City, rubble, looking like a sandbox filled with toppled sand castles.
As I eat my toothpaste they try to pass as food, my nurse enters. She asks me how I’m feeling, how the food is. I lie and say that everything good. I ask her where we are and, she doesn’t respond. She just tells me that it does not matter. I sink lower in my bed, which is on a slight incline so I can eat in comfort. I envy her, she has almost no authority in this facility, she’s one level higher in the caste system, And yet how I would kill to be her. So, foolishly, in my frustration, I hurl my toothpaste meal at her and start screaming. The temper tantrum does not solve a damn thing, and yes is rather childish, but boy, it felt refreshing; i liked taking my pent up anger out on her. Even though she had nothing to do with the whole secrecy bit. She was just doing her job. She tapped a red button on the wall, wiping the gunk off of her white uniform. An intercom sounded and she reported the issue. Twenty seconds later I was in restraints.
I keep waiting for the day, the day where the mask will be put over my head, like every night. I keep hoping that the mask will flow carbon monoxide, or some other lethal gas into my lungs. I want out of this world I can contribute not to. Frustration will never cease to exist in me, will never leave my befuddled mind. I am the lowest of the low and will never ascend up the ladder. The nurse, that’s all I want to be, Someone of just a little more purpose. Until that happens I will just sit here and blame myself, for all that has come to me. How easy it is for someone with a little bit more control to take their own life, how simple, Just a razor blade, just a small rope, just a pill, how envious I am for those people.

THE END...