Back in my apartment, I had a new window. It was locked, a note taped right to the middle. No charge. But be careful. There’s been some strange people around. Mr. Hanlon.
I thought maybe I should warn him. Yeah, there are some strange people around, and you’ll never believe who they are or why they’re around.
It was beginning to feel like I was stranded again, like my legs were broken and everyone around me was dead. No one to call to. No one to help me. It was unfair that this should happen to me again. I would have given God one hell of a talking to, but I knew better than that. If He existed at all, cursing him out would not have helped my situation. Of course, if He existed at all, why was this happening?
Luckily, this time around I had two friends who were still alive, at least for the moment. Survival is much easier when it’s a team effort.
I got back to my apartment and checked my phone. The light flashed. I hated that fucking thing.
It was Angela. She said not to try to get a hold of her. She’d see me at PEP on Wednesday. Don’t call. Don’t try to find her at the bookstore. Just wait to see her on Wednesday.
She wasn’t whispering, but she was quiet, hushed, brief. Maybe it was more like she was rushed. There was a sense of danger in her voice that made me nervous, and I was instantly and acutely aware that I would have to end this, and it would have to be on Wednesday.
I had no plan. I had no help from Angela.
On Wednesday, this would be over, one way or the other.
On Wednesday, stories would change.
On Monday, however, everything would remain the same. I’d get a phone call from Dick before I was ready to leave for work, and he’d tell me to take the morning off, we had a delivery to make that night.
And I knew who that delivery would be. I’d have to load poor dead Virginia onto a truck, drive her to Gregor’s “research facility”, and carry her into a fucking meat locker. I just knew it.
I showered and thought about the Wari in Brazil. I thought about this tribe that ate their deceased loved ones rather than burying them in the ground. It was better, they thought, to eat them than to let their bodies decompose in the cold earth, to be devoured by worms and time. These people, they loved each other so much that it was unthinkable to abandon their dead. It would be disrespectful. It would show the person no honor.
I ate breakfast and thought about the Aztecs. I thought about this tribe in Central America that would eat their enemies. The hearts of their brave warrior enemies, they thought, would give them more courage. They’d be stronger because the heart of this person they were eating, it was a strong heart. It was just as much out of respect for the fallen enemy as it was out of the desire better themselves.
I thought about Mama Cass, a cat I’d had when I was growing up. This cat, she ate most of a litter she’d had under the back porch. Mama, she ate her own children because she didn’t think she’d be able to care for them well enough, and she didn’t want them to suffer. It was better, this cat thought, that they should die now, before things got bad.
I thought about people in China, during the Great Leap Forward, who were so poor and hungry that they’d sell their children to other hungry Chinese, or just eat them themselves.
I thought about Dahmer and Fish. About these fucked up men who just plain got off on eating and fucking and doing God knows what else to the bodies of the men, women, and children they’d killed.
I thought about transubstantiation. About all these Catholics chewing and swallowing the body of their Savior. These righteous, pious believers who want to get divinity through the absorption of the honest to god flesh of Jesus Christ.
I thought about the Donner Party. The Franklin Expedition. That damned rugby team in the Andes. These people, they’d have died if they hadn’t done what they’d done. If they hadn’t eaten those who were already dead.
I thought about myself. I’d have died, too.
I thought about all those crazy, greedy bastards, obsessed with power and money, who would kill me and eat me for little more than a decent high.
This is some heavy thinking for first thing in the morning. But if you’re going to change what the story is going to become, you have to give some serious consideration to where it’s been.
If you’re going to change where the characters are going, you have to think long and hard about where they’ve been.
And if you’re one of those characters, you better be damn sure about what you believe and why you believe it.
Sometimes the changes are for the audience, sometimes for the storyteller, sometimes for the characters, and sometimes, just sometimes, they’re for everyone involved.
The only problem is, when you’re in the middle of the story, you can’t be sure how it’s going to turn out. Before you set out to change things, you have to accept that the results often have relatively little to do with the intentions.
After my pensive morning, I’d come to the conclusion that my intentions were good enough to risk my life for. In fact, I’d decided that my intentions were good enough to risk Dave and Angela’s lives for, as well.
This guy here, he was the new me. And the new me had a plan.
I called Dave and told him what I needed him to do.
He sounded a little skeptical. “You sure about this? I don’t want to end up in some rich guy’s fat belly.”
“I’m sure,” I said, almost completely honestly. “You’ll be fine. Just make sure you don’t mention me, Adam, Virginia, or Angela. You’ll be fine.”
He sighed one of those sighs that are unmistakably of resignation. “Ok. Where do I go, and what time do I need to be there?”
The fear of death will drive people to do some crazy shit.