The Greenland Diaries: Day 51
Snowy and I watched the trees today. I’m still a little shaken from the other night. I can’t hide forever. The world’s moving and changing. It might be easier to go outside if I didn’t have Snowy, if I wasn’t worried about her getting hurt. The monsters have absolutely no interest in dogs or animals. Like I’ve said before concerning the devil’s disinterest, I’m jealous. It might be safer for her without me, but Snowy wasn’t raised to be independent and scour for food and water like a stray.
She’s always been a dependent little wiener dog. I hope she never changes.
Besides the few eviscerated people who I encountered a few nights ago when venturing outside, not a single refugee has passed through the neighborhood in weeks. I imagine most survivors have stopped themselves from leaving areas of safety. I wonder if any of my family still breathes and walks. The wonder is a physical pain. It aches slowly and distant, but occasionally slips through in elaborate throbs. My family always flashes before my eyes the moment I wake up.
Always in the mornings, they’re always in the mornings.
I’ve never written this much, or this consistently, in all my life. I feel like I’m always repeating myself, but the days scarcely change without the Drum. Plants blooming and wrapping the world in a sick pastel green. Seeds playing the hot air in idle drops and clusters. Cicadas buzzing arrogantly in the heavy eves, unchallenged by the echoes of our past civilization. The repetition of my journals syncs with the daily sun and moisture. I can’t help but settle onto these images.
They’re all I ever see.
I’ve started to read Hard Times by Charles Dickens. It was in a pile of old college literature books, which had been tipped off the bookshelf by the monsters. We really need to think of a name for them, something fitting. Anyways, the book feels poorly lit, dark, and ripe with economic toil, a concept distant from me now. Living, surviving, walking day-to-day, these are the current problems. Hard Times feels like nothing in comparison to the Drum and the faceless ones. Apparently, Laissez-faire capitalism was a driving thematic force inside the book according to the intro. I remember reading about it, but for the life of me, I can’t remember what it might be. It can’t be a very fair system of economics, or else Charles Dickens wouldn’t write about it.
Snowy and I have acquired a favorite spot to sit in the hot afternoons. Right in front of my house, ever since my grandmother lived here, a birch tree has endlessly molted its paper skin. The shade feels good, and the ground’s soft at its white roots. I can usually read a few sentences before worrying about the night and thinking about my family.
I’ll need to start scrounging for resources soon or set up a system to capture water. The plumbing finally stopped, and I filled up as much water as I could in storage jugs and hid them throughout my house. Only one decent rain in the last fifty days, just another frightening thought to add to my growing inventory of fears. I’m all stocked up these days.
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