Meta this, Meta that. Zombies here, zombies there. What is human life - if without care, we stand, no where…?
In a sea of mist toned cement cities, a blooming galaxy of pulsing in-worlds of virtual escapism, technocrats in their shining armor sighing into blood soaked head-cradling palms of burden, in the fields of those who were too innocent to protect themselves in those first months, in the grasses and sands of eternity ticking away the last of our collective post-cataclysmic timeline, in the collapsing and rebuilding of whole nations, where do we lie…us, but little flies? Dragon flies…or Barn flies? Do we spit, or do we take flight? I think about that in the silent of night. Are we here now, solely to witness the carnage of our nations… are we but caught in the web of the Iracundi, with no room to wiggle?
The fevered gnashing of the vile-speckled, slimy, broken teeth of them can be heard several feet away once you become accustomed to constant vigilance, and in them, I often think that I must be hearing the sound of our earth’s current heartbeat. The beat of it raging into the incubating space of violent hatred that we created when it dropped into their ribs. The rhythmic vibrations of their bones clattering against those guttural, nerve grating grunts that echo when they first start eating, a sign of happiness ringing out as a cat would purr standing over a treat, makes one want to genuinely claw their ears out. As many have, curling threads of skin under their nails like carrot peelings. Of the memories I chose to wipe, those were the first…
I believe that the psykhosis of Natura, the unraveling of our globes psyche into an even crueler pit of war, can be found in those sick, heavy noises. The noises of people, animals, and even things, being torn apart as our country was in those first days after the Cataclysm, as I termed it. Life has begun to be one large case study in apocalyptic trauma, and though I do what I can, it is wearing on me, this game of cat and mouse. Of hiding and running when standing and fighting fails. Of biting my tongue so hard it bleeds walking past towns where I know I cannot bust in and burn down for their atrocities… I am starting to envy the simple, full belly having lives of those creatures, of those of us who succumbed to the disease… the virus…the toxin? We don’t quite understand what it is yet.
Far simpler is their way of life. Gnawing, breathing, roaming, never bemoaning their circumstances again… What are debts, loans, bills and insurmountable hills of soul crushing economic stagnation, against those powerful maws? Against the soft, luring tone of their voices in my clients heads as I lose more and more to their pleas of salvation… Salvation from a species capable of more evil than them, who kick survivors in the face relentlessly. It is getting more difficult each day to reach the isolated settlements and lost towns. Harder to save the beautiful cul-de-sacs filled with the heedless that we drive through on our routes.
And yet… fate is an enigma in itself, intertwining horrific tragedy with purpose and growth. As you can imagine, at least from the more remote parts of the country I have travelled and the small number of adjacent isles, nature is taking back some strides of territory. Gaining some manner of health, becoming more robust. The broken and the damned have found a way to their own families, their own caravans and pools of camps where trade meccas have sprouted. Society has split into a multiverse, with bands of their own laws and ways. It is unfortunate, that so much of the sky and our loved ones had to be cracked open to force change in the world… [but that, must be a tale for another day should I be able to move forward here.]
There have been more clients than I would like to admit whose life happenings genuinely improved after the beginning curve settled, having found pockets of the world they could call home and relation. Blood sworn clans of communities have formed in many places, healing the land and people around them in an effort to be an oasis in this densely haunted landscape. I walk among them, collecting their tales of woe and celebrations of survival. I sit and I create space for them to tell me at their own pace, what life has been like for them for the past 2ish years. Exchanging words and sorrows is not only for healing though, it is also for preventing, for saving, for evading… The more we gather data and map info, the safe we all are. The further we can clear and gain back acreage. I and my cohorts, my family, and my vast web of clients and loved ones and friends and adversaries do what we can to do damage control on an ever darkening Apocoscape that we cannot escape, without a combined effort. Survival has taken on a seas worth of forms in the fallout of the cataclysm, and I try my best to be proactive in saving who I can, when I can.
But, oh, oh is it taking a toll on me.
I know that those here reading this are alive. I know pockets of the internet itself are still here, humming along tentatively but with relief to have not lost service and a sense of normality. Even two years later, I still see new posts cropping up. Art has been half of what has saved our race, allowing us somewhere to curl up into and away from outside.
I’ve thought long and hard about releasing my tales. Of sitting down to pen out my experiences with this new reality, and of the millions of strange little unsettling things that I have encountered over my time on the road… But what always stopped me was a few things; I deleted most social media along time ago, unable to endure the wave of suffocating posts and ‘lives that blew up in those first weeks. It was enough to see the carnage outside my door… Also, I have always been an oral traditionalist I suppose. As by nature of my work, I am not apt to release demographics. As by nature of who I am and how much we have to travel for work, I tend to be a conversation by the fire with coffee type. I have never gotten down in writing a time line, a bulleted map, or anything in terms of narratives more comprehensively grouping my experiences by region. That has been something I have wrestled with for some time now, but my people have won and they are right. I do need to get this out, to find if anyone other professionals are searching for solace in solidarity, or warn of what I do know is hunting which areas in the states I have visited.
There is an entire corner of the web devouted to the crisis, on the practical side of things. News and journalism bulletins and sites still run for the most part, emergency broadcasting and weather and safety information is relayed by military towers and web-channels. There is a lot of sighting posts, warning where to go and not go. My point being, I have always felt it unnecessary to clog that part of reddit and social media with reports of things spookier and deeper than the flesh squelching monsters walking past our fences. Who to believe me? And is it really my place at all, bypassing hippa laws and morality in general, to tell the intimate heartbreaking confessions of my clients to the public?
Me thinks it may be time to put aside my moral compass and remember that names can be changed, and towns not spoken of who do not give verbal consent. Everyone urges me to, so I suppose I ask you;
I am a clinical mental health counselor, with a focus in trauma, alternative therapy, and I train people to resist the l’appel du vide. The call of the void, the nibbling at their earlobes by the alarmingly soothing rasps of the Iracunia. These things that I call zombies. But I also, counsel and treat for a spectrum of increasingly strange and sometimes horrific happenings.
~ Am I welcome to pour over my case notes?