Whenever I’ve been sitting at my desk I keep reading the first page or two of a fiction I had started a few years ago.  I really really like it – like in a, it’s impossible that I wrote this kind of way.  I’m so distracted by that stack of paper (printed for editing and refreshing so I will finish it), that I’m going to put some of it up here.  Here, a few paragraphs from the beginning of 800 square miles:

I was born George Allen Pasternack to middle class parents in what used to be a factory town in Ohio.  That’s how people begin their life stories, right?  I grew up at a normal pace, I went to school, I dated; I was poised to accept my nice clean Rockwellian future.  You get, from the past tense, that nothing ended up the way I had originally envisioned it?  What would be the beginning of my independent adult life and I’m concocting my autobiography to my mirror image.  Reflections of myself are all the faces I’ve seen for a few months now.  There are other people here, trying to live like they were used to, but we avoid each other.  Looking at each other means we have to face up to the fact (no pun intended) that something is changing within us.

Our town is one of many that have been quarantined in order to halt the progression of whatever we have among people further away from the impact site.  We don’t get doctors, other than the ones that already lived among us, and we don’t get information.  Most people stay in their houses all day watching TV programs that have been played over and over again by the only TV station we have left.  We’ve been relieved of the responsibilities of work for the most part.  We take turns doing the few jobs that require an insider, like keeping the library open and manning the grocery store for the days when we aren’t getting shipments from hazmat suited government truck drivers.  We keep the shades drawn and move about in shadows.  Our aversion to the sight of each other and ourselves is a little extreme, I think, considering how little our appearances have changed, but the changes make us different, and its hard to be afraid of something alien to you when its you that is alien.

Compared to some other people in town, I have it pretty great.  I live alone.  I can look at myself or not, and there is no one else in the house to remind me if I don’t want to think about it.  There is no one whose heart will break when I avoid them in the hallway on the way to the bathroom; no one to ruin my escapist moments and propel me into insanity.  Sometimes I wonder why we are fed so well and sometimes provided with more TV shows on disc to keep us amused and distracted.  It would be better to die in riots of hungry chaos then to spiral slowly through this darkness without knowing the only bits of information that I want to know most.  What’s happening to me?

Continue reading So what do you think?