6/6/66

04/12/66

“I remember when the moon was whole, and I reminisce about both of your faces. Grandma used to say that she remembered a simpler time growing up. She was right, things were complicated when I was young. Everything was up in the air. I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted to do with my life. I kept screwing up relationships over and over again. Bad news was all over the tv that I watched too much of after getting home from a bad date. A lot of my dreams sat in a drawer next to a bottle of anti-depressants. God, I miss all of that. Things were so complicated then. I don’t get to worry about a single thing I used to. Bad dates, drinking too much, cheeseburgers, depression, trying to pretend that you’re interesting to impress someone you met online when you’re really just a fickle piece of trash, I don’t have any of those blessings anymore. I don’t get to yell in traffic. I don’t get flipped off anymore. Things are simpler now, and I hate it. I absolutely hate it. And I can’t not miss you.

At first, I missed holding you, the way you made my heart fill up and the feeling I got laying next to you. That feeling like you belong right there in that moment, like you could be there forever. God, forever means something entirely different now. Screw forever. Life’s more of a one-night stand/ don’t call me situation. Now I miss everything, absolutely everything. I’m so damned lonely. I used to hope and pray that you’re still alive and that I would find you one day. But then I realize how horrible that would be if you were still alive in this shit hole too. You always told me that I was selfish, and I am. I still miss you so much. I still wish I could see you. I’m sorry, Im sorry I’m so selfish. I pray that I see you. I never believed in God, but I do now just for fun. It’s so much better than just talking to yourself. I’d say I’ve read the bible too many times to count. But I know the answer is two hundred and thirty-seven. And I still hate it. I think that’s why I started writing. Or journaling, or whatever it is you want to call this. I had some idea of someone discovering this far off into the future. I feel like it gave me purpose. It gave me a hope for a faraway time when somehow everything was better. But slowly it’s become more and more of me thinking of you. Now I do it because it feels like I’m talking to you in a way. It’s the closest thing I’ll probably ever get to you again. It doesn’t get to me all the time anymore. I’ve been doing much better, I think. I hung in there for a long time.”

Starya was interrupted by the alarm. She stayed up all night again. Still wired from traveling so far. She quickly shut it off and decided that today was going to go however she felt. That meant it might not even start at all. Her days were sharp recently, and they left her bleeding out in the evenings. Too drained and devoid to move, and too wired to sleep. Little vapors of him touching and coiling around her. “He would have held you closer and grazed his lips on your neck. That’s what he would have done”. But it had been almost six months now. She didn’t want to think about it anymore. That’s why she traveled all the way out here. “Those journals are too much for you right now”. She remembered Lan say. “Don’t push yourself overboard right now with this. I know they’re old, and it’s your job, but don’t you think the subject matter might be a little heavy on the heart right now?” That was Lan though, she both loved and could not stand him for it sometimes. However, one thing reading all of these has done is made her thankful for friends.

She couldn’t put these journals down. It had become her fixation. She flipped the page when her hand returned from telling the alarm the news. These journals were written right after the Cancellation era. All she can ever think of when she hears that term is the time when Lan called the Cancellation “Hammer Time” and started break dancing. Grateful to have friends she thought. Ever so grateful. Especially historian friends, the only thing having something annoying stuck in your head, is having something annoying and antiquated stuck in your head. Somehow it seems classier. Still, that memory keeps the vapors of him at bay. She was learning to let laughter and love protect her. So maybe that thought wasn’t so annoying after all. She returned her head to its tilted position.

06/26/66

“It’s been a lot louder out there lately, makes me wonder if. Makes me wonder what!? I don’t know what it makes me wonder. Certainly, something. My mind wanders off to so many places these days. I don’t know which way its headed. By the time I do its already up and gone onto the next thing. What I mean is, the human ones are riled up. Like someone found a stash somewhere and they’ve got high blood sugar. Which is all bad. Being well slept and full of food puts me at a disadvantage. It makes me wonder if I’ve missed anything. If there’s more out somewhere maybe I should make another go at it. But I really start to get worried the later it gets. When the not so human ones come around. They’re starting to make noises I’ve never heard before. Out amongst them, ones stand out. Nightmares against nightmares. It seems to scare them away. The not so human ones. I refuse to call them that stupid awful nickname they adopted. And I’ll never use the Z word. That’s how all this started to begin with. It could have all been different.

But people began to have fun with it. It became more about politics and extremism than the world. It became humane to be inhumane. If we would’ve seen the drug for what it was, we would’ve been fine. But it got too big. Everybody started doing it. And everyone LOVED to go after the real addicts. After what it made them do, all strung out on that stuff and what it turned them into. But everyone loved the hunt. Even I did, I thought it made me look good in front of you. I felt like I was doing the right thing. The strong thing. But I wasn’t, none of us were, and it did us all in. The problem is we have never been in control of anything. Not our emotions, not our fear, nothing. And we walk around thinking we’re superior. Superior to who? We are no better than rats.”

The coffee maker turned on its usual hum. Radiating its smell. It seemed the world was saying “too bad” to Starya’s prior decision. “If this guy can do it so can I” she thought to herself. She still hadn’t named the man who wrote these. She never received that part of the journal. Still, the things she had read, though some of it was a bit drivel and dull, had more questions than information. “I remember when the moon was whole” made sense because of the date. She still was so curious what they looked like then. They must have been terrifying, the “not so human”. She had not yet gotten the chance to review the images. She was caught on him, always right around the corner. That became the only thing she could absorb after a while, how much he missed her in the journal. It made her miss him so much more.

Starya even thought about reading this journal in bed together with him. He would run his fingers through her hair occasionally. He’d make faces when he got bored. Or ask if she thought an inkling would be another term for a baby squid. She always snorted when she remembered that. That happened a lot back then. Laughing, to the point where your sides hurt. She could still feel them residually echoing through her. Like muscle memory, like your sides try to resist you for a moment. What a good pain that was. How she could feel it mixing with all the somber draping around her. Like a warm hug, from a close friend on a cold day. She never thought of what it would have been like to live in that time until she was assigned here. Watching the Moon split apart like that would have really been something. Or when the first of the Eaters came. That’s what they call them now at least. She couldn’t help but think about what she would be doing if she were in this guy’s position. Somewhere between alive and dead. Only your head as a safeguard against insanity sometimes.

Starya poured a cup of coffee and sat at the table. Her fingers began slowly tracing the little heart locket she had taken out from the file. “This is it?” She thought. So many relics of the past are lackluster to say the least. But this one is different. Its quaint. It reminded her of something he would have bought her. Surprised her with one day, wrapping around her neck from behind with some dorky look on his face. He would always fall apart during sentimental moments like that. It was like that was his security blanket, being a dork, and she loved every minute of it. She decided to skip ahead to the end. The last passage, she wanted to know the end early, as all creatures do. Maybe there is some reassurance for a happy ending. Though she knew very much otherwise.

6/6/66

“This day finally came. Remember how excited I was for this day? I always said I’d ask you to marry me when the date is all 6’s. That’s not true at all, I wasn’t going to wait that long. I waited too long already. You know you always read it in those quotes not to, “die with regret”. They weren’t lying. Don’t ever die with regret. I guess it’s time to come to terms with that. This is my last message. If you’re reading this, don’t die with regret. Don’t. Here I am, laying here at the very end of my life and I’m trying to write some trite quote to a non-existent audience from the future. One I wish would come and save me so bad. This is the part where the good guys come at the very end and we both make it out barely alive. They really have sold us all on a fake happy ending, haven’t they? I’m so selfish. This whole time I’ve prayed you’re alive. Now I’m hoping you’ll be there waiting for me. I guess somethings never change. I have the necklace still. The one you know nothing about, because I never gave it to you. Like I said. Don’t die with regret. Don’t.”

She stopped tracing the necklace. A single tear fell to the table. And another single one, and another, It’s singles night. She put the heart locket on and put her hair in a ponytail. “Too late” she thought. She hated Brad for writing that. She decided that was his name. His name’s definitely Brad now for making her feel like this. She should have listened to Lan. “Too late” she thought, tears rolling more steadily as she gets up to leave, she was still dressed from yesterday. “Why’d you have to make me miss him like this Brad? It’s too late”. Tears were steady now, she needed sunglasses. “It’s too late Brad. Too damn late.”