2020 – CELLOPHANE

Fortune 8

2020

This Christmas Day was turning into a very a Long Day. Every fun thing Lucy had planned for this day was already finished; her hot chocolate, her movie binge, she had opened her presents. She walked her typical 4 miles and even put on a dress. Make-up and earrings! She checked the News 3 times. This last activity was not as fun as it was compulsive. The News said everything was the same or getting worse meaning more deaths, more sickness and lost jobs – didn’t these doom mongers take a night off? Lucy wondered. She had always enjoyed the quietness of a shuttered retail sector during the holidays, the irony now was that most of the stores had been closed for the entire year. The quietness of the day was not exceptional or spiritual, it was mundane and lonely.

And she missed her boyfriend. He was one of the last people she was able to have contact with before the ban on all “non-essential contact” went into effect, which allowed only married couples and parents and their minor children to interact “within a 6 foot perimeter”. He had disappeared in June and she later found out that he had died from the virus. Found out snooping around on Facebook.

She prayed that her internet connection wouldn’t go out before the show came on, her final “fun” activity for the day and something she had been looking forward to. There had been ominous signs that there might be disruptions; the yule log video on Netflix had been stopping and starting and when she face-timed with her son the connection was bad.

Lucy felt like she was living on a different planet these days, all the fellow humans turned into hostile aliens, everything familiar become a little odd and possibly dangerous. “The Planet of the Apes” popped into her head and she considered the plight of Charlton Heston and his crew and also the Star Trek episodes where they had explored alien planets. She felt sorry that she had condemned them for being silly cowards! She had lived in the same state her whole life so didn’t even know what it was like to move far from home. What intergalactic wizard had come and replaced the ordinary world with this cruel facsimile?

Lucy checked her notes again and OH NO, that YouTube show was on at 6:30, but was that eastern time? The time zones previously had had little impact on her life, but with all the online activity those details really mattered now. OH NO.

She hurriedly dragged out her lap top and brought up YouTube, punched in “Watch”, (in a panic realizing she didn’t know how else to find it) and suprisingly, a QR code came on the screen. It was 6:25 and she wondered what in the hell she should do now.

She slumped back and stared into space. She picked up her phone and thought about calling her son, but for some reason she didn’t want him to know she what she was trying to watch, and she really didn’t want to call him again, having already texted him several times and facetimed with him as well. How far could she strain the familial bonds?

Her phone opened to her photos so she started scrolling absent-mindedly. “A memory!” Her phone chirped at her. Christmas, 2018. She looked at the photo and saw it was of herself, smiling in front of a brightly decorated tree. At her parents house, where the whole family had gathered, and Uncle Cy had gotten into an amiable drunken argument with everyone else, and there had been food, and presents and people. Happy people. Fairly happy people.

She continued scrolling backward from that point and then a photo of another QR code with a series of numbers under it. From what or where? Why was this here? She vaguely remembered a piece of paper under her windshield wiper, she remembered crumpling the paper and then for some reason, smoothing it out and taking a photo.

“What are the chances!” Lucy said aloud.

She knew more about technology than she did two years ago, so she aimed her phone at the screen of the computer and waited to see where she would be taken.

This is the 8th installment of the series FORTUNE

Fortune -6

2020

Lucy sat in the intense December sunshine listening to Santa Baby on the radio, a vague uneasiness humming underneath her peaceful idle. She wondered why she didn’t feel more lonely, more distressed as the holidays in an ordinary year typically brought on those moods in abundance. There was a sense of loose expectancy in the air; things could go well or really wrong.

She was set to see her parents later, which made her feel lucky as not everyone was cleared to see their families. She had put in her permission slip at the grocery store a month ago and had found out that she had been approved! They would all still be required to wear masks of course and be seated in different parts of the house while they visited. But the favorite streaming service of the moment would help them communicate even though they were literally feet away from each other and could have heard each other loudly whisper.

Berta, Lucy’s mom had told her she was to sit in the former living room, now stripped of furniture and covered in virus-repellant, santized plastic sheets. A comfortable chair would be set out for Lucy, and a tv tray, with a seperate table for the laptop. Maybe they’d add a tiny Christmas tree or some holly to the decor! What fun!- Lucy wasn’t good at pretending to be happy when she wasn’t.

She told herself to be grateful for what she did have – some were spending their holiday in those horrid sounding virus camps, trying to rehabilitate their wasted limbs and their hopeless souls through rigorous computer games and “track-walking”. It was said that catching the virus could lead to a debilitating sense of ennui and self-loathing. But that might have also been a rumor.

No one knew anymore which news outlet broadcasted truth or fantastical tale, it seemed to be a competition as to who could rile the most citizens. Everyone Lucy knew had their favorite source and they believed in that and only that and would only take that outlet as gospel.

And later she had that show to look forward to, although it would probably be a bust, and she’d open the presents she’d gotten for herself. If her best friend hadn’t disappeared in August she would probably have FaceTimed with her.

The sun was bright but not particularly warm or comforting. She contemplated that her strange sense of peace was due to a complete dislocation of herself in this current reality. All of the old mile markers had become unimportant. The future was uncertain and vague. There had always been more guard rails up in life and this was the most altered reality she had ever encountered.

She was pretty excited to use her new hair straightener tomorrow.

this is part 6 of a 6 part series

Fortune – 4

Lucy was determined to be festive.

She hauled a small Christmas tree home and decorated it with pretty, dried fall leaves, moss, sticks, random flowers that were still blooming in December, (mums and hydrangeas) that she picked in the neighborhood. She bought electric lights on Amazon, and because she also got free shipping, she bought 3 of the white lights on green wire and two pairs of icicle lights, one white and one red. It turned out to be rather bright in her apartment but she enjoyed the festive, party like atmosphere it created. She missed being in crowds of people, making eye contact with others up close, laughing, oh the sound of other people’s laughter! When she got it it was like a drug. Had the virus made her co-dependent? What if she were marooned on an island or another planet by herself, would she survive? That would probably be even more isolating.

And there was plenty of food at the store, cleaning products. People weren’t going as crazy stocking up because of random rumors of military enforced curfews and black-outs. None of which happened, but still, the anticipation of such events was fear provoking enough!

Lucy planned her Christmas Day very carefully: She would wake up early and walk, come home and make Mexican hot chocolate, watch as much Netflix and Amazon as she wanted, cook the vegan seitan steak and grill carrots, light her candles, turn off some of the Christmas lights and then watch that show on YouTube.

She had seen a new piece of graffiti while on her daily neighborhood rambling. She lived in an old seaport and sadly this graffiti was on a brick building. It said TheFUTUREiscoming. One word but FUTURE was capitalized. She felt an odd kind of sensation while reading it and it stuck in her brain, so when she got home she looked it up on her laptop. Why not. It led her to a YouTube video, a strangely luminous film of downtown Seattle at night. So empty! And the anonymous camera went into vacant buildings and on roof tops, shooting out into Elliot Bay at night, the wind whipping and moaning over the cameras microphone.

At the end of the video was a date, “12/25/20” and “watch”. So, since Lucy had planned out her Christmas Day in order to subvert the self-pitying loneliness that threatened to appear, wrapped and sitting expectantly under the mini-tree, she also planned to watch the “broadcast” or whatever it was. For a few minutes…it would buy her time before she could hide in her bedroom and watch Hoarders for the night.

this is the 4th installment in the series

Fortune-3

The garlic-y green beans were proving difficult to scoop up with a spoon; Lucy had dropped her fork on the floor and as she was inept with chopsticks the only viable option for transporting food from plate to mouth was the spoon.

She was in the heat of this struggle as the blue-haired girl approached her table. “Oh I guess she’s picked up her food,” Lucy thought as she noticed the stranger drawing near. The girl strode over with her plastic bag of food clutched to her chest. She brought with her the air of a messenger.

She stopped at Lucy’s table, near her right elbow and looked down at her.

“Something’s not right with her,” Lucy thought.

“Yes?” Lucy asked, feeling a bit cornered by this unknown person.

“We will know each other,” the azure-headed girl said slowly, with an implied meaning.

“Huh?” was all she could summon as a response, sensing there was an important event taking place but unsure and wary of its origin or direction.

“In the future…in a different time…when the virus…” she began to visibly struggle, for words, for oxygen, a gasp/wheeze coming from her throat. Lucy grew alarmed and tried to help.

“Here, sit down,” she said, reaching for the girl’s wrist.

“No!” The arm pulled back while she flung the other out to the side, the bag of take out food unfortunately held by that same arm, flung as a projectile towards another table, hitting the pot of soup at just the right angle to make a hot splash, causing those diners to rise screaming, burned by the soup, the management rushing over, other patrons rising and in wonder, staring and afraid.

Lucy herself rose and faced the girl, “What is going on, what’s…”

Before Lucy could complete the thought and before the girl rolled her eyes and through a mouth that was beginning to froth and twist collapsed, she said something Lucy would try to forget;

“Pay attention to your Fortune.”

Then she went down.

This is the third installment of an ongoing series.