Trapped In An Imprisonment Of My Own Making

Dear Diary,

Day 1

June 18, 2009

I had a choice. I should have known better. How can someone lie, and be so deceitful? If only I hadn’t lost something so precious and rare. I can’t forgive myself for losing it. I knew I shouldn’t have gone back to the one place that felt like home, that made me feel safe...

11 years ago...

I was laying on the pitcher's mound just staring up at the clouds when I heard the crunching of the dirt scatter behind me. I looked back and that’s when I saw him. He might have been upside down. But he was the most beautiful boy I had ever seen.

His skin looked warm, like he had been in the sun most of the day. His cheeks were rosey and the smallest beads of sweat dripped above his lips. He had a birthmark on his left cheek dimple. His eyes were bluer than the sky and his brown curly hair just flipped around. It was then that I heard his voice.

“Hey, do you mind... ( Gestures to the pitcher's mound).” “Yeah, I do.” I said. The look on his face was of amusement. He said, “Fine, just lay there. Will play ball around you.” I said, “Go ahead.”

And that’s when he straddled my body, he began to pitch the ball to his friends. As I laid there, in my jean shorts I cut myself from an old pair of Aeropostale jeans, and my white tank top, which was looking more tan-colored by the second, looking up at this boy, whom I have never met before, it was as if nothing else existed it was just us. That was, until one of his friends, some short blonde-haired kid with glasses yelled at him and said, “ Come on Garen, make her move so we can play.”

He looked down at me, smiled, adjusted his yankee baseball cap and said, “she’s not in the way I can still pitch.” That was when my stance to stay became harder because the butterflies that just hatched in my stomach made me feel woozy and now I just wanted to leave.

But how was I going to get out of this situation? So I asked him,

“ So Garen, was it, can I play?”

He said “ Are you sure it won’t interrupt your busy schedule? ( while winking his beautiful blue eyes)

“I said no of course not, but I would like to pitch.”

He bent over like he was wearing an extravagant ball gown and was going to curtsy to me and handed me the ball. When our hands touched it took everything out of me to not recoil away. I feared if we touched he could almost read my every thought.

I was setting up the first pitch and noticed written on the ball in blue ink the name Tark. Garen Tark, that’s a name I’ll never forget. I threw the first pitch, then the second pitch and by the third I had striked out shorty in the glasses. I slowly placed the ball on the center of the pitcher's mound, dusted off my white converse and casually walked away.

Shorty was busy kicking the fence, upset that a girl struck him out. But that was when I looked out of the corner of my eye and that’s when I saw Garen’s face turn from amusement to something else. Something I hoped meant that we would see each other again.

But that was 11 years ago. I had never seen him again after that day. I had fallen in love at 10 years old with the boy with the blue eyes and birth mark on his cheek.

Day 2

I had to come back to Elk Grove Park to see if it was still here. Times have changed, a lot of things are destroyed or lost forever. But I had hope that this place would still be there.

As I approached the pitcher's mound. I sat down and the base felt uneven, and was wobbling back and forth. I moved over to fix it when I noticed this small brown box. I pulled it out and inside was a note written on the back of a gum wrapper. It said,

“ To the girl with the best pitcher arm and blue eyes, I've ever seen, you dropped this, and I hope it makes its way back to you someday. Every year, on the day we met, June 17 1998. I will come back to make sure this beautiful heart shaped locket is kept safe under the pitcher's mound.”

-Garen Tark

That’s when I dropped the box and saw the one thing that I had been searching for. It was the last thing I had of her. I couldn’t believe it. I had twirled it between my fingers so many times the gold tarnished and was faded but you could still read the engraving which said,

“Protect The Secrets In Your Heart.”

Garen protected something of mine, a total stranger for almost 11 years. That’s when I heard the crunching of the dirt scatter behind me, again. His voice that I had held so vividly in my mind was more mature sounding now, and he said, “ Hey, do you mind?” And I said, “ Yeah, I do.”

Day 3

I turned around and our eyes connected. He started to blush, his cheeks almost as rose colored as the day we met in that exact same spot all those years ago. He asked me what I was doing here. I told him I needed to feel safe again. After the virus hit later that summer of 98’ life was never the same. This virus had spread across the world killing so many people with no cure.

Parks where children once played lay empty, abandoned, hopeless. That summer three major things changed in my life. I had lost my mother to a virus that we had yet to know was going to kill millions. I met the love of my life and the world turned dark.

So many people had died or been sick, business closed, kids no longer could go to school. We had to wear masks and stay 6 feet apart from one another. Affection, intimacy gone.

So as I stood there on that pitcher mound looking at the man I loved for so long, who I barely knew. Garen stood there on home plate looking at me, and that’s when we realized we didn’t want to live in fear anymore that we had something worth fighting for, love.

He slowly walked up to me, so close in fact that I could see the beads of sweat dripping from his forehead, behind his mask.

He pulled his mask down, and I pulled down mine and as we reached closer that’s when we felt the ground below us shake. We ran to the dugout to take cover. Now that the humans of this world were afraid of one another the police no longer helped civilians which meant crime was at an all time high. It was like there were no rules, no judge, no jury. We were left to fend for ourselves in an imprisonment of our making.

Day 4

When the virus first started being documented in the news they had provided rules and regulations to help slow the spread of the virus because hospitals were at max capacity, and people were dying not just from being sick but from lack of access to proper medical equipment. My mom had been sick very early in May and they didn’t know what was wrong with her. She had shortness of breath, she had the worst cough that at night I would sleep with headphones on because just hearing her in pain was too much. I couldn’t help her.

She died May 27th, 1998 at the age of 43 years old. Because people made choices that affected people halfway around the world my mom died. The virus's origin started in China, but was not contained and it spread like a wildfire.

As I looked out to the field we noticed a group of individuals that I had no intention of sticking around to make introductions. They must have set off that explosion we heard, and I didn’t want to know what else they had planned. I started to leave when Garen grabbed my wrist and said “wait, you can’t leave me again, I waited 11 years for you to come back, 11 years to even just know your name.”

I stood there frozen, vulnerable and wanting to stay, but it was too dangerous for me to be out in the open again. I grabbed him and pulled him close and kissed him, and I said, “ Garen Tark do you trust me?” He said “How could I not trust the girl who memorized and remembered my last name written on an old baseball.”

I asked him to help me move the dugout bench and underneath was a trap door to a place not many people knew about.

We climbed down the ladder into the dark and damp tunnel. I grabbed my old reliable army green flashlight from my back pack and started walking. Garen’s face had a look on it that I did not recognize.“Garen stop looking at me like that.” He started laughing so hard that I couldn’t help but laugh. I could not remember the last time I laughed.

We had been walking for a few minutes and I didn’t hear anyone following us. So we stopped for a second and I turned to him, my name is #68193. He laughed again and said no your real name.

Day 5

You see after the first year hospitals had no time to write full names so that’s when people were assigned numbers. I had 5 digits which meant that before me, in Black Ridge County, a small town just outside Walker Lake, Nevada, 68,193 people had died and I didn’t... I was the only person to survive this virus during the year of 1998, and the doctors don’t know why.

That’s when I ran away and changed my real name, afraid they would find me again, and put me back in that room with the horrible fluorescent lighting, and poke and prod me for answers.

Garen was a boy I loved for so long, before me stood a man with such trusting, hopeful gleaming eyes, how could I lie to him now, after what he did for me. So I told him my story and ended the horrible tale with my name. My real name is Davina Clyde and I am the only Covid-98 survivor.

Dear Diary,

Thursday, August 13th, 2009

Today is day 57 of solitary confinement. Remember when Thursday meant one more day closer to Friday, well for me it means time to give more blood for testing. Everyday I keep this diary to keep me aware of the time since he betrayed me. I trusted him, it was all a lie. The day I took him into that tunnel, my life ended. They used him to get to me. In those moments leading up to the bright flash of light from a flash bang in that long dark tunnel, he told me that, after that day on the baseball field he was approached by them, to find me because I was the cure. And little did I know his little sister was sick. He would do anything for her. He told me that he didn’t realize how he would feel seeing me again and he wanted to warn me to leave but then the bright lights flashed and I woke up here, in an imprisonment of my own making.

-68193

P.S. My mother warned me one day this might happen. That they might find us and take us.