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
CELLOPHANE 