I'll Save You My Heart

I'd known for months my food would run out, even in my restaurant, where I was holed up alone, as the world went completely mad.

I'd managed six on the stuff in the freezer and the big tin cans. Almost gone now. The milk's totally soured, so I pour it on the floor in thick globules and stand in it. One small step.

The virus had come out of nowhere. The socials were rampant to start with. A space plague from a meteor, a vindictive lab shocktail from crazy COVID scientists, an act of vengeance from the spurned online giants? 

Bladi bladi bla!

Who the fuck knows! Society was on its arse before the madness anyway. The influencers killing themselves live in a studio, the massive price hikes for fresh air, the failed attempt to get to Mars; the rocket, New Apollo, laden with so many people and way too much hope - our only fucking hope - smashing into the moon like a scud in a piss-poor parody of it's namesake's glory.

They say the virus got the pilots. Or NASA controllers. It doesn't matter. That lunar tragedy was the final crooked line on Mankind's hashtag headstone, the skeletons in the regolith the pallbearers of our world.

I weep and grip my statue, the one sent to me personally by motorcycle courier with thanks from the boys in Houston. 

A ceramic figurine of the astronauts. Of her. My knuckles turn white with rage. They'd put her in a cannon and fired. Fuck!

We'd fucked it up ourselves though. Here on Earth. Us Boomers. 

Boomers screwed the planet for everything it had. Or so the kids said. "So fuckin' clever" they memed day and night. Robots, AI, The internet. We had it all and wanted more. But at least we didn't meme about it.

And those poor bastard Betas paid the price. Those screen-distracted babies not watching what we did. They'd inherited the wind alright, an acrid wind of a napalmed Earth, where the sun baked babies like fat pizzas.

Pizza! Yes! My last one. A margarita. Then there would be nothing. My beloved ristorante hollow. I had become Mamma Mia Hubbard and like billions more faced the inevitable checkout. Madness, starvation and one final dance with the Pillsbury Doughboy.

I hadn't noticed my own insanity arrive. 

Like a non-paying customer it asked for the best table, ate everything on the menu, ate the bill and smiled like a hyena.

But it was there for sure. Houston, we've got a problem!

The virus had brought it of course. The madness.

From space they said. Cosmic wrath. Some said it was the crash on the moon. It spewed up God knows what that filtered down on our waiting brains and sent us to the nuthouse. Dust to dust. Ashes to ...

I hoped it had. I'd been waiting for her.

Another morning's come.

I don't dress anymore. Don't shave or wash. I stare at my blank eyes on the back of a shining ladle hung above the hobs. I look like a demon. With a beard. An unshaved Lucifer. The fallen one who fell on bended-knee before the Influencers set fire to Amazon.

But Lucifer is hungry. It's been two days since that damn pizza. Or was it a Beta baby I ate? I forget. I'll forget my own funeral one day. Or my God damn birthday!

Yes, my birthday! It must be today! I must celebrate. Of course I must. Start spreading the news and hurry, hurry, before the air is gone in my big tin can.

A large glass of brown water from the tap first, no doubt full of tasty virus and I'll get busy.

I want to be a part of it.

Sharpening my biggest knife I watch a dying spider snatch another near the seasalt. 

Alas, the victim is much fitter and turns the table round so quickly that I can't tell who's eating who. 

For no earthly reason I can think of, I cover them both in salt, preserving the moment, curing the death-throes, that fatal salty waltz.

I gawp. The pile wriggles, grains shift, a leg sticks out and then it all goes still.

I light the big gas oven my father had bought in the Sixties, God bless him. I inherited his gas, not the wind. 

I stare at the eager flames for an age.

I can't help thinking about those crashed astronauts bound for Mars and lying on the moon. 

Thinking of her: spread-eagled in the ashes. Visor cracked. Smothered in dead dirt. A dune forming like a pyramid. She writhes within. Like my salted spiders, staring at me, with corroded eyes and a rictus smile.

I take my ring off and slice one last bag of frozen veg and place it in my biggest oven tray. I make a gravy from whatever's on the kitchen floor.

The taste reminds me of regret blended with yearning: like a wedding cake left outside forever.

Its quite a feat getting into that oven.

I've way too many limbs, not like a chicken, but somehow, all curled up, I shut the steel door.

Plup!

I'm inside now. Cooking my last meal. I baste myself over and over with floor gravy.

I lick my lips. Over and over I lick my lips. I'll have the extremities and I'll save you my heart.

I feel a hot wind like a Martian breeze on my skin and as the blazing sun singes my hair I swallow my wedding ring so I'll find it when I've eaten.

As the moon peers in the oven and I crowdsurf on full-bellied spiders, my broiling mind cures itself and I dance one last time with my wife's swooning bones.

We lie down together on the lunar dunes for hours and laugh out loud as my skin turns into burning confetti and lands on our flaming heads.

We kiss without lips.

Ping! I'm done.