Day 14 - Part 4

Make something microscopic. How small can you work? Can you make something that requires a magnifying glass or microscope to see.


Please note: the following entry doesn't really touch on the topic above, but after reading the prompt, this is what I wrote. This misdirection was completely involuntary. I apologize but the writers words cannot always be controlled.


It was still pitch black when Jamie and I left his apartment. I had expected to see the sun peaking above the horizon by now, but it seemed as if today the black clouds would overpower the sun. And yesterday I had thought summer was arriving. That’s Seattle weather for you. Everything seemed oddly still as we pulled out of the gravel lot and found our way to the highway. Jamie was driving slowly, cautiously in his tank of a vehicle. Was he thinking the same as I?

At one point he reached over to turn on the radio. Our eyes met as it gave a static blare and voices flipped in and out. “this. . . become. . . put. . . place. . . possible. . .how many. . .”He pressed scan but all we could hear was the same static reception overtaking the waves.

The highway was dead, empty, vacant, like a house prepped to be fumigated, only all the pests had left as well. Somewhere in front of us were break lights. Where were all the people, the police, the bugs, the birds? Where was the sign of life?

Jamie had turned on his windshield wipers as it started to rain. They scraped across his front window in desperate need of replacement. How could he live in Seattle and not have decent wiper blades? The rain fell in big dark blobs smacking at the windshield breaking the silence.

“Something’s wrong,” Jamie said confirming the suspicion in my mind. He picked up his phone and called Bart. He placed it on speakerphone.

“Jamie! Man, is that you?” The reception was shotty and we could barely make him out.

“Man, whats happening?” Jamie responded, but Bart couldn’t hear him.

Bart mumbled something we couldn’t make out, we heard the word highway and frenchy’s and then we lost connection. Whatever had made everyone disappear had interfered with cell phone signals as well. Jamie whips a u-turn in the middle of the highway.

“What the fuck Jamie!” I scream.

“I gotta go back to my place and we gotta get off the highway, find another route.”

“Jamie?”

“Look,” he said halfway looking at me halfway looking at the road. He lit a cigarette and handed one to me. I took it, inhaling slowly the medicine that I hoped would calm me down. “You know how I am always talking about shit going down, like economic, political, and governmental shit, like utter collapse, like chaos, like hell.” The ash on my cigarette fixed itself to the tip as I smoked, creating the most perfect cylindrical ash. How were my hands so calm? They are never this calm. “ Well, Kate. Something has happened. I don’t know what, but it’s something along those lines. Something serious.” He took my cigarette from me and tossed it out his window. I had been holding the butt end for some time now.

When we got up into his apartment he started running around like crazy pulling things out from everywhere. Books fell in mounds on the floor as he tore through looking for specific items. A hiking pack, sleeping bags, batteries, an am/fm transmitter radio, a black and white picture of a man and woman with a dog, a few heavy jackets, a changes of clothes, and a first aid kit. I picked up the picture and placed it inside of the inscribed Jane Eyre book and placed them in my purse. Then I began to stuff bags with the items Jamie was piling on the floor. I looked through the kitchen for food, but found nothing. Jamie told me not to worry about that, Frenchy’s would have all the food we needed.

“We’re going to Frenchy’s?”

He stopped dead in his tracks, came up and took both of my hands, “You are the only person I have seen since we came here last night. I don’t know what has happened to everyone, where have they gone? I know Bart is alive. I heard his voice. I have to go with him, see what he knows, and then we will decide from there where to go. I understand not wanting to leave, but we can’t stay in this city, we wouldn’t survive. Kate you have the choice. You don’t have to come with me. I hope you will, but I completely understand. You have family, I have none.”

“But your mom?”

“My mom died last year of cancer. When I speak of her it’s because I miss her dearly. I have no one, but you and Bart and Genie. They were so good to me when Mom died, took me into their family, fed me, kept me alive, helped me get through her death. I have to go to them.”

I nodded, “My dad, he lives in upstate Michigan. He always told me to come there if anything happened.”

The city remained dark on our way over to Frenchy’s. We took the back roads watching the street lights blink yellow or not at all. We stopped by my apartment for me to grab a few things, two of which were Wallace and Grommet. Jamie urged me to leave them, that they could fend for themselves, but he could see the hurt in my eyes, when he mentioned it and said nothing more.

It was pitch black on the outside and inside when we got to Frenchy’s. We parked around back and let ourselves in through the backdoor. Jamie held my hand and led us with a flashlight. It was eerily quiet in there. A stark contrast between how it normally is and now, the freezers didn’t even hum with life. Jamie’s flashlight showed disaster, as if someone had vandalized the entire kitchen. Dishes everywhere, cabinets open, everything astray.

In the corner something banged against a loose bowl. Jamie shown the flashlight in that direction and we heard a cock of what sounded like a pistol. Jamie stepped in front of me. “Who’s there?” spoke a female’s voice from the darkness.

“Genie?” Jamie said dropping my hand as he started to walk towards the stranger. Genie emerged into the light, her dark hair in a frizz around her face. She waddled towards him, the bulge of her belly guiding her. She was pregnant. They embraced each other. “You scared the shit out of me,” he said into her curls. He let go of her embrace and he rubbed her belly. “How’s baby Diego?”

“Grumpy,” she replied and turned to me embracing me with a hug. Genie worked in the restaurant with me, so I knew her well, as a co-worker. I had never hugged her. She smelled of lavender and frankincense. “Sorry about the gun,” she said to me, “Bart told me to shoot anyone if they came in here.” She turned to speak to the both of us, “He went down the street to see if others were alive. He should be back shortly.” She guided us into the front of the restaurant, stepping carefully over the astray objects. She sat down in a back booth. A candle was lit on the table, everything else was dark. We sat down in the booth. The pleather seat sticky from use. Jamie went to the bar and filled two pints with dark stouts and another with ginger ale for Genie before joining us.

“You can put these on my tab,” he said with a smirk as he sat down.

I took a big gulp of my beer, noticing that Jamie had done the same. Would this help relieve any of the stress?

In the kitchen we heard the door bang open and then the rustle over the pots and pans, “Genie, it’ s me love,” Bart said bursting out of the door. Genie lowered her pistol. “Jamie man. You’re alive. I couldn’t hear you on the phone. I didn’t know what to think.” They embraced each other like brothers. Then he turned to me and bear hugged me, “ Glad you made it through the rapture Cat.”

“Rapture?”

Bart kissed Genie on the head and joined her in the booth. Jamie brought him a beer.

“That’s what they’re calling it,” Genie said. “We heard it on the radio in the car over here. People all over the city are just,” she paused, “dead.”

“Homeless people on the street shot to death. Nursing home, orphanages, schools, university dorms full of thousands bombed. It ain’t no rapture,” Bart says, “It’s military genocide.”

“Only it’s not targeting one group, it’s targeting everyone,” Jamie speculated. Bart took a big gulp of his beer, in the silence you could hear his adam's apple move up and down as he swallowed. We all remained silent.