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I sat in my minivan, now fifth in line to get to the order kiosk. I kept my emotions in check as best I could. The thumb drive filled with MP3s threw out a selection from Justin Hayward via the “shuffle” command on my in-dash sound system. You can’t call it a CD-player anymore, even though it would indeed play them if I wished. It just does a lot more these days, and I’m not allowed to let the age of this humansuit dictate what I call things, including other humans. So many seemed to have their own pronouns these days, and I can’t keep up with them anymore, so I’ve stopped trying, especially now. I’ve been told to keep my “judgmental” pronouns to myself. I consider it my duty to be intolerant of intolerance, so I will lean toward tolerance of this active divisiveness in the same way that I will tolerate the rest of the psychic chainsaws that carve my mind into agonized submission to this increasingly alien world that I so much want to leave. I dismiss this further annihilation of consensus reality and itch my van closer to getting what I’ve waited for, for so long now.

After a late dusting of snow last night (May 10th, just for the record — what part of “global climate change” do these idiot humans not understand?), the sky was entirely clear today; Grandfather Sun was bright and beautiful, warming things enough for me to have both windows open. I need the sensation of air moving around me. There are no humansuits to bother me here, since the Church of the Sacred Bean has not yet reopened its holy interior for fear of spreading The Plague to the entire world because one “asymptomatic carrier” will end humans once and for all. Personally, I see very little downside to that, but with the battering that my humansuit (and, by extension, my heart, mind, and soul) has withstood for so long now, I try not to express such opinions too widely. Humans don’t mind airing their own opinions, but they seem to object to other people’s opinions, as if no one else is supposed to have any opinion or purpose that doesn’t specifically align with their own. This, to them, makes sense. My scars are inside, and I daren’t let them be seen.

Eventually, I get to the ordering kiosk. It feels good that I can still rattle off hot venti blond white chocolate mocha with whip without missing a beat. The voice on the other side muffles that they don’t have any blond roast. I change the order to regular roast with an extra pump of white chocolate. That costs extra, is that okay? Absolutely. I don’t tell her this part, but it helps soften the full-on darkness of the regular roast, and that’s my purpose today. The screen shows me a total, and I’m told to pull forward, which I can do just as soon as the car in front of me makes his own moves. While I wait, I read the printed paper that’s been placed inside a clear plastic page-holder and taped to an unused part of the menu sign. It explains all of the precautions that the company, this franchise, and the staff inside have been making to ensure that everything is safe for them to reopen the drive-thru line during “these unusual times,” and thanking me for my understanding and cooperation as they “do everything possible” to keep me “safe.” This humansuit is old enough to remember when “be safe” meant to use a condom when having sex.

Justin Hayward finishes telling me That’s the way of the world, and the shuffle offers me Dead Can Dance informing me that I have been too long American dreaming. Only a few cars ahead of me now, as we make incremental movements toward the window. It takes yet another bit of incremental forward moment before I’m able to see exactly what sort of precautions have been developed, and I find myself wondering if getting a coffee is really such a good idea. The song about American dreaming has no relevance to the nightmare that I’m witnessing. By the time I get to the window, it had segued again, this time to Bette Midler’s rendition of Is That All There Is.

Behind a seemingly impenetrable wall of Plexiglas, the barista showed eyes there were supposedly human, but they were lying. The mask that she wore (if there were anything like a “she” behind the mask, behind the plastic smock that covered from the neck down, inside the arm-length plastic sleeves, inside the bright blue latex gloves) featured what was probably supposed to have been a smile, drawn hastily in lipstick. The mask was of the type that unfolded when put over the nose and mouth, so the smile was split worse than even the Joker’s worst nightmare. As I watched, she was wiping down every surface with some sort of bleach-based wipe, including the length and mechanism of some kind of grabbing device. Through the recently-installed intercom, she verified my order, asked how I wanted to pay. I, contaminated beyond all possible survival and redemption, proffered a plastic rectangle rather than the literally filthy lucre, hoping that I might be deemed worthy of receiving my beverage. She took it carefully, swiped, returned it to me quickly before she could be endangered. The cup went first into a holder, then pushed through a specially designed window cut-out, the grappler helping to maintain the one corpse-length distance requirements of the walking dead.

“Steady it from the bottom,” her bloodied masklips told me, “grip just above the clamp.”

I managed her instructions, and she released the mechanical grip, passing the consecrated chalice to the unworthy who begged to be saved. With that, the bloodied, paingrinned provider of an essential service pulled the device back inside, already tending to it with a fresh antiseptic wipe in case the sacred device had passed through a cloud of Plague hanging in the air in front of the window. It’s been proven, the Death And Doom Not News Network told us — in still air, the Plague can hang in place, without moving, like pockets of invisible nerve-agent gas that are expelled from those jets that fly overhead without any reason to. If you walk through one of those clouds of Plague, you’ll catch it, even if you have your mouth and nose covered, because it will go in through your eyes, and it will cover your mask, and when you take it off at home, it will infect you, it will kill you, it will kill your family, and it will kill your pets too, because it can cross species boundaries at will, and exposure means death, death, DEATH, ALWAYS DEATH…

Slinking away from the line, I bleed slowly toward an uninhabited portion of the parking lot. In defiance of all laws of the hysterics, I leave the windows open and switch off the engine, leaving the battery to power the random selections from a time of lesser madness. I lowered the volume, letting the Mamas and the Papas explain to me why I shouldn’t trust Monday, Monday. It actually was Monday, and I didn’t trust anyone or anything, in that moment. All else still, no one within plaguing distance, I dared take my first sip of the elixir I’d not had in six weeks. I burned myself with the anticipation and with the brew, and I didn’t care. Aleksandr smiled at me, gently suggested caution. Tora chuckled softly, knowing my reaction. The wolf-demon, the one whose True Name I know and have sworn upon my soul never to reveal, licked his lips, certain that the temperature would not have fazed him in the slightest. His only complaint would have been that it was too sweet to be tolerated by any self-respecting demon. (This, from the winged, horned wolf-demon that had devoured a quarter-ration of raspberry crumb cake while moaning in ways that he usually did only during far more intimate activities.)

Sipping more slowly, I look around at a day that is bright, clear, warming gently toward summer, looking past buildings into areas that still have their undergrowth, greenery, the faint hint of jungle that makes them worthless to developers and dollars. I consider how much better the planet will be without humans, or at least without most of them. My own humansuit will give out eventually, and the insatiable curiosity of humans to explore and despoil things better left alone will one day be Gaia’s triumph over her cancer. This new Plague is only one of many she’s unleashed over the centuries, each time trying to show her self-destructive invaders how to curb themselves, contain themselves, stop being so much wildfire and pestilence to All That Is. The greatest joke ever made will be that the planet will not be destroyed; it will become poisonous to all human life, and no doubt to many other forms of life, all because of those humans. The planet, however, will outlive them all, and Gaia will return. With a few billion years and just a little luck, some other species will rise that will be intelligent enough not to do it again. I dislike the idea of having to wait so long. Tomorrow would be soon enough, if it ever got here. It would have been too synchronic to have Phil Collins’ version of Tomorrow Never Knows crop up on the shuffle.

The coffee continues to go well with the day’s soundtrack, as Loreena McKennitt tells me of the Beltane rambling, presenting me with a sprout well budded-out, to remind me that the planet itself will survive, and that some few humans may yet be able to make it work, if the rest could be culled. I sometimes think it sad that none has found an elegant solution, not of death, but simply of not supporting unnecessary life. Whose choice? Evolution, of course. If the few good humans out there can find ways to thrive, while the rest of the psychotic confederacy can be left to slit its own throat, there may yet be a chance. The best of them has only to wait, to find more of themselves, keep the truth alive…

Perhaps strangely, it is my beloved demon who praises my hope for them. His job has nothing to do with “harvesting souls” or separating humans from their God(s); after all, they’ve done that on their own. The best he can do is to provide a touch of chaos to the mix, and his own great irony is that The Plague had nothing to do with himself or his kind. Again, humans did it to themselves. His chaos is sewn into the magic that is Truth, the essence of order. Most humans don’t know what truth is, and they content themselves by basking in the reflections of the blackest mirrors. They cry that The Plague will kill us all, or they will cry that it’s all a hoax, or whatever gives them their own measure of anti-light that they take within, to nurture it, encourage it, let it burn through what remains of the husk of their once-ago souls. It’s never been more difficult to be a demon, my winged, horned wolf tells me, because humans have taken corruption of the soul to depths heretofore unknown, and they are actually proud of it. Holding out hope for what good humans there may yet be is what my demon calls the greatest act of faith he has ever seen.

“Be careful,” he warns softly. “They’ll nail you to a tree as well.”

“Easier just to shoot me. It supports their Constitutional rights.”

“The price of lies,” he purrs softly. “No wonder it doesn’t pay for us to use them anymore.”

“Got plenty of their own.”

I finish my coffee more quickly than usual. I can’t savor it as I shop, since I too must wear my partial shroud, become another of the walking dead, for the privilege of picking up my medicines and whatever is left in the grocery for me to scavenge for myself. If any of these humans cared to read through the actual scientific research, they would read the simple truth that these face-covering attempts are all but worthless. It will offer some small protection if someone sneezed into your face, but even then, there’s no guarantee; The Plague is of a size that will penetrate most simple cloth. The use of “any face-covering” was decreed by the same sort of people who said that the radiation from Chernobyl was “contained” or “within tolerable limits,” because it’s important that the State protects the Lie, so that the Lie can protect the State. It’s no wonder that my demon is smiling — all this tremulous, shimmering chaos, and he doesn’t have to lift even the merest claw.

My luck dragon, cleverly disguised as a 2003 Dodge Caravan, helps us to find a space that I didn’t think I’d need for so long, but the mirror tag that permits me to park in the handicapped zone is good for a while longer. I’ll take advantage of it, since The Plague has robbed me of places to walk until (and unless) the unpredictable weather here will permit me to use the roads and sidewalks again. Falkor does his best not to groan as I fumble my way out of his driver’s seat. Aleksandr, Tora, and my wolf demon will all go in with me, despite the edicts against shopping with others. “Shopping alone decreases the risk of spreading it to your household.” Work on this logic, modern-day Stalin, present-day Hitler, all of the State’s favorite deniers of science. If one person is infected and goes home, everyone in the household will, of course, DIE HORRIBLY, including the cat, dog, bird, mice, and cockroaches. If two people shop together, one could bring it home, or both could bring it home, and the difference is…? We’re waiting on Donnie to answer, or Mikey, or Mitch, or anyone else. You, scientist, lower your hand and remember your place; you aren’t capable of protecting the people of the State. You, fake scientist who agrees with the State, what’s your answer? We Will All Die If We Don’t Follow The State’s Rules. Excellent answer; for safety’s sake, we’ll cancel the elections now.

Reusable bags are allowed here, forbidden elsewhere. The makers of single-use plastic bags have their own State-authorized not-scientists who insist that reusable bags will spread the contagion everywhere, and the laws prohibiting the use of such bags must be suspended indefinitely. No one at this store seems bothered by it. Perhaps the owners are enemies of the State now, and I will be held accountable for destroying commerce and income by shopping here. I take in my bags, my black cloth mini-shroud already making me feel choked, go in through the designated entrance. I try to remember what I came in for. I used to go to the pharmacy first, but I must go in through the approved stock chute, enter and leave the slaughterhouse via the correct doors only, go only in the directions marked by tape on the floor. If I forget something, I have to start over. If I forget enough, I have to check out with what I have, put it in the van, go back through the maze again, with a different cart because mine has been contaminated. I’m not even safe from myself. I must be careful of everyone else, but especially me. I’m one of the dangerous ones. I see too much Truth, and worse, I will tell it. No one will believe it, of course, as my wolf demon has told me any number of times. Sometimes, just seeing is the crime.

That is something that is also known about The Plague. No physical contact; stay at least one standard coffin space distance apart. Don’t make conversation, because words too are carriers. And don’t look at anyone, no one, ever. The eyes might see something and, having seen, tell something. Human eyes are shuttered “windows to the soul,” but when the eyes are all of the face that is left to betray emotion, they might perform that betrayal, and no one wants to be betrayed. The Plague can be caught by being discovered, caught betraying all the rules, like the sign going into the store that speaks of “staying positive,” and above all, “Keep smiling!” None see smiling lips, none speak through smiling lips. Although eyes can smile, that will betray them. Eyes might accidentally tell the truth, not the smiles but the terror, so look at no one, never look at anyone, never take the chance. It, too, might KILL YOU. Fear is always the best path to follow, like the arrows on the floor. Keep the eyes down, follow the arrows, and don’t speak of it. No words. No Truth allowed here. Stop everything to keep going. The message is clearer than ever. Follow it.

Having entered, the humansuit’s heart begins to pump harder, sluggishly. The beginning of the panic. Control the breathing. Don’t grip the cart too hard. Don’t hunch over and contract your muscles so hard that the pain will purr sandpaper down the nerves. I reach for Tora, for Aleksandr, for my wolf-demon… they must be there, they would not abandon me, but to know them, I have to open out, and to be here, I must close in, protect, walk through the thickened broth of extreme terror that surrounds me. To live now is to live in terror, and I am helpless to fight it openly.

I look for fresh chicken. I’m in luck — two packages of chicken breasts. I take one, seeing how empty the display case looks. It’s not due to hoarding (“Limit 1 package of each type”). Deregulation, to improve profits, left packing plants open to contagion; two major plants in the area were shut down for The Plague. I leave the department, watching for arrows to ensure that I will be slaughtered properly. The mask is making my glasses catch my exhaled breath, and they are fogging. I take them off, and my anxiety spikes further. It’s not the coffee that makes me begin to shake; this is happening even after taking Xanax before coming here. I don’t talk about panic attacks, because they’re just drama, after all, and Real People don’t have them. Ask my father, the physician, whose family members never had anything wrong with them, especially so-called “mental problems.”

I’m trying to push past the panic that is making me forget why I came to this place. It smells wrong. A grocery store is supposed to smell of hot bread and cold meats, of fresh produce, of new fruit, of the sweep-and-mop of the night before and the great wars of cleanliness pouring forth from detergent boxes on the far aisle near the wall. Everything here smells of chlorine. We swim through the Olympian pool of constantly-wiped surfaces, the chemical smell penetrating, proving the worthlessness of “facial covering.” My wolfself forces my humansuit not to gag on it, taking in higher levels of CO2 than normal, maw-breathing, trying to stay calm. Get what you came for. Cookies, made in-store with huge chocolate chips and sodium hypochlorite. Some cold cuts, packed by double-sterilized disembodied hands, made cleaner by cleaners, perhaps you should heat those up to kill anything that might try to kill you. Prepackaged cheese, mummified in huge layers of plastic, Sanitized For Your Protection.

The maze allows me access to one of the minotaur’s lairs. Most of the minions at this location know this humansuit; this one needs my name, which I spell. She, like others of her kind, is behind a mask, behind hazmat covering, behind thick Plexiglas shielding that is probably hosed down with antibacterial surfactant wipes every hour on the hour. The low-level apprentice monks will make the sign of the cross before smudging it all off again, erasing godliness with cleanliness. My sins are recorded, and my penance is pushed through an opening almost too small for it. I pay the fine with the plastic that represents my worth in the world; I don’t even touch the machine, but it too will be blessed after my departure. The eyes behind the everything have seen me sweating and are certain that I am contaminated beyond all redemption. Nothing shall absolve me.

Back into the maze. Impatience rules, the undead on the razor edge between seductive apathy and shivering violence. The eyes, the lifeless eyes, the raging eyes, the eyes who saw the world after April, and none of them real anymore. My mental list crumbles into mummy dust, cooling case sarcophagi, shelves half empty, shattered silt ware amphorae, the tomb looted beyond imagining. Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair.

Breath is no longer possible. Ice water poured down my spine and out through my shoes. I agonize in a line for another line, for another faceless clockwork automaton to make clean the device, the conveyor, the laser eyes forever seeking crosshatch data, cataloging things, defining me by my foolish needs. The plastic deems me worthy (this time). Fifty-pound feet push the humansuit and the tiny cart of meager goods forward. Back to the van, back where I am allowed to feel Falkor, Tora, Aleksandr, my wolf-demon, once again five musketeers, four more real than the one in the driver’s seat.

I strip off the mask, gulp for air, Gaia’s breath resuscitating, the humansuit bleached with fear (safe for others, now). I fight the fireball scream that threatens to consume me and become a nuisance to others. I know what I need, and I need it most desperately. The feeling within me is too strong to ignore.

“Not a good idea.” The wolf-demon has read my mind yet again.

Aleksandr puts his forepaw to my arm, Tora his to my shoulder.

“I have to see.”

“I will take you.” Falkor, faithful, keeping me alive since December 2002.

“I have to know it’s still real.”

Removing us from the stupidity-scarred, plague-scared walking dead, I coaxed my luck dragon away from the lot, onto the roads, toward the northwest, flying safely along a highway not traveled in months, several miles hence. For a change, so few to want own the road in spite of me. I looked beyond the railings of bridges into places yet untouched by humans, comforted by the idea that the real animals would survive without the cancerous creatures to stop them. The unnatural things would crumble, eventually, and the various wildlife would venture more boldly than before, and perhaps those of us finally stripped of their humansuits will be able to come back, teach them, animal to animal, reality to reality, and there will be no more masks.

I find it there where I left it — the temple, the shrine, the building that houses all that I most worship. No other vehicles around me, a wilderness of radiant heat to poison Gaia’s breath, sear her flesh, until the humans can no longer survive, which is their goal anyway, so they should be quite pleased with themselves when it all crashes down upon them, delighted as they wonder how the hell this could have happened. This church was closed, as so many things had been closed against The Terror That Stalked The World. Would it never open again, I wondered? Would there be nothing left after all, nowhere to go for the salvation I needed?

“You know you can’t go in.”

“I know, Tora. You could, or Aleksandr, or ??????? [name redacted].”

“Without you? Whatever would be the fun of that?”

“You could tell me if they’re still there. My monsters. I have to know that my monsters are safe. I need my monsters.”

“They’re in there,” my great lion assured me. The grand love of my next life comforted me with touches only I could feel, and only if the humansuit allows.

“I need my monsters!” I whined in spite of myself.

Yes, monsters. The most marvelous, most fabled monsters that the world ever craved to know. The bell-ringer of the great church, who died for love. The creature who made a singer so great that she, too, would perish. The remade Prometheus, articulate and hideous, hunted for being more humane than the humans. The ones who discovered the whys of killing more than the how of it. Those who knew that a wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser and is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong. Monstrous rats who save one from the pendulum, yet kill others for trying to hurt one they saved. Fabric-wrapped undead, awakened to stop thieves. Gigantic, glowing hounds that haunt the moors. World-shaking, world-making worms. Even the monsters born in flickering light and shadow, their developer-bathed grit defying the lasers with the honesty of monochrome. Holiest Harryhausen, who breathed upon his clay and made it live. Hitchcock, who always gave his audiences pleasure, “the pleasure of having awakened from a nightmare.” Monsters from the id, from black lagoons, from five million years to the London underground. Monsters who feast upon blood and flesh and bone and souls. Monsters that existed long before me, who grew up with me, who will live far beyond me. The monsters that I could understand.

Within those walls lay an atom-blasted land where people are born, live, and die, all within eight days. The pantheon included pegasi and those who ride them, the great lizards of flight and fire, living crystals, child wizards, wizened wizards, wizards for hire, detectives in the Nightside. Behind the windows lay beings I once had the ability to dream for myself, and the exquisite leavings of the few humans whose words and lives made a difference in a world they tried but could not save. Humans have always tried to destroy each other, themselves, their planetary nest. The beauty, the art, the fabulous words? Lulls between disasters, pleasant diversions during theater intermissions, to buy pastilles from the usherettes, to get more popcorn before returning to the gigantic horrorshow, the ugliness that is the mark of humanity in its fullest flower. Watch the death, watch the destruction, watch the greatest self-imposed doom on Earth…

I looked around at desolation that I am assured is temporary, that these aren’t the apocalyptic end times, or that they are, but Our Special Psychosis will ensure that we are saved and thus can let this world die its own death. There are monsters like that in that building too, several no doubt, but they had endings, resolutions. This… wild rumors and visionary expectations, promises of protections and tests, all go hand in rubber glove with re-infections, mutations, second-wave predictions, restrictions even more draconian than now. This will not be solved in a five-story underground lab in the desert. All reports say that we will not be spared, the death-knell keened over and over, the Newspeak telling us how we will only be saved by keeping our head down and following the arrows.

“Come away, Tristan.” Tora, over five centuries seen himself, over two decades seen with me, whispers no-breath that brushes the tiny hairs in my ears. “There will come a time.”

“Things will not always be the way they are now,” my wolf-demon assures. “That’s what change is.”

“Things can get worse.”

“That’s the war, Tristan. There is no ‘good’ or ‘evil,’ per se; it’s order versus chaos, creation versus entropy. You know that from our conversations.”

I knew. Known of old, before they tried to kill me with their accepted mediocrity, tried to rewire my mind to accept the dung heap. That’s why I needed to worship at the temple, for the doors to swing wide, to let me search for my monsters, my terrible lovers, my wonderful horrors. Puzzle me with locked rooms, regale me with carrying alligators home, delight me again with Sleary’s fits, show me the gams and gats and gummed shoes, drill into me Three Laws and then show me why they won’t work. Take me from the crater Tycho to the infinity beyond Jupiter, show me all the myriad ways, let me chase the microscopic black hole into the center of the Earth, and come to know a tiger who seems to be two different beings in one body. I must sniff the books, wear them like hats on my crazy head, as I was bid by The Master, long ago! Let me in, let me in, let me have my monsters!

There was none who would hear my cry, none even to half-grant what I wish, to snatch me away, not to return. Before the thought has even a chance to nestle comfortably into my mind, my wolf-demon made it vanish.

“It’s not your time. If it were, I’d see to your wolf personally.”

“I know,” I whispered. “I count on it.”

“It’s time to go home. There’s still one monster left you.”

I leaned down to kiss the steering wheel, to pet the dashboard. I wear a humansuit; Falkor wears the van.

“Yes,” I tell us, we five strange musketeers. “Mumbee will be waiting.”

The drive home was uneventful, and I did better than usual for this trip — it took only three hours to calm myself from having to disguise myself as one of the walking dead. The first time that I had to forage for myself, my housemate saw me upon my return and remarked, “You look whiter than a Klansman’s sheet.” I didn’t look at myself in a mirror this time, and he wasn’t home to tell me. Judging by the shaking, yeah, I’d say about three hours to recover from the worst of it. I avoided the usual “social” media, abandoning my favorite online comics because they, too, are joining the Fiesta de Los Muertos. At the hour when all my best pills are set to kick in, I go to my bed. I read aloud to my family. Each has his particular tastes. Aleksandr loves the Nero Wolfe stories, Tora is partial to Philip Marlowe, and my wolf-demon requested that I read Shostakovich’s Testimony, to help him understand further the man behind the music that he had become partial to. Tonight, we needed to laugh: George Carlin’s When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? went down well.

I turned out the light and settled down under the covers. After a while, I whispered, “Hey, Mumbee? You still awake?”

Silence.

“I heard you giggling earlier.”

Silence.

“I need my monster tonight.”

Silence.

“You wanna be big spoon?”

Another moment of silence. “Okay.”

The Monster Under My Bed slid silently from beneath, crawled undercover gracefully, wrapped long-armed warmly, murring softly into my ear.

One monster for today. One of my monsters.

I can sleep now.