"There is no evidence that wearing gloves makes any difference"

But I apply two pairs of gloves hastily before stepping out.

Ready to continue the fiction adventure into the original novel, “Senseless”?

These were yesterday’s words… or you can go back to the beginning here.

Thank you for being willing to go off on a new and unexpected journey and for gifting me this recovery time!

And hopefully you enjoy the special glimpse at a book I otherwise never would have shared?

I will return to my normal style of essayist writing and real time rambles and Every Weekday Promises but…

Maybe this is an experiment worth taking?

Please share. Consider supporting an independent writer. And let me know if you wish you could turn the page (fingers crossed, but I’m not editing this to perfection before sharing… I’m just willing myself to be vulnerable and share in all its imperfection).

See you tomorrow for more!

I woke up unsure of where I was again.

It’s been a hundred and eighty-two days at least… maybe more… but sometimes I still think I’m in my old apartment instead. The first thing I used to do was wake up and feed my fish, Freud, and tell him he’s gorgeous. He knew it, but I liked to remind him anyways.

The first thing I do now is look around the dark dorm room and wonder where the fuck I am for a second. I used to hope we could sleep-in sometimes on the weekends, or what used to feel like weekends before days blended together, but eventually realized that made me pretty bad at my job.

I wanted Mondays that weren’t even Mondays to feel a little less like Mondays, since the world was ending and it didn’t fucking matter… But I knew that the best thing for everyone here is to carry on as if Mondays can still Monday.

So, I wake up, and make sure my socks are still fully covering my feet before even shifting towards the floor. I swing between three or four at once, wearing all layered together like some sort of bobby-sock twin-tower, never really knowing if it makes a difference. I do it anyways.

The floor would probably feel cold underneath my feet if I could feel it… but who wants to put their feet on the floor of a once-was residential dorm at all?

Waking up at 5:45 AM for my job used to feel validating in a way; like I was finally putting all my “elitist education” (my brother’s words, not mine) to good use, but now it just feels cruel. Who the fuck needs to rise early to see humanity end?

Before, in my apartment, I’d glance through my closet for Boring Staples (as Theo used to say) and find something reserved, yet professional, yet also to make my ass look good. My ass almost always looks good, but the requisite wardrobe of slim-fit khakis and patent loafers seemed to kill the vibe. Instead of fully conforming, I started to wear tight pin stripes instead, and leather-style Vans that looked sensible, but sort of said, “Am I really?”

Now, I don’t have to make any immediate fashion decisions at all, because I’m wearing the only option available.

At first, when the doors closed, I thought it was sort of cruel that I wound up here in my least comfortable pair of pants (burgundy corduroy) and an off-white sweater, but now I’m grateful. The thinner I get, the less my pants seem to shift in shape; no longer telegraphing the obvious downslide of its inhabitant.

The sweater was ruined long ago, a few weeks in, and had to be burned in the makeshift fire pit built in the central common area with the pastel polyester-looking cushions of the hallway chairs which were never comfortable anyways. They reminded me of hotel artwork which is so ambiguous and also so oddly specific that you forget before you have a chance to remember if you liked anything about it at all.

My sweater was covered in blood at the time, and no one knew if body fluids were dangerous. I don’t think they are, by the way, but I’m glad it burned. 

The shirt I’m wearing now was left behind from a student who’s no longer here. The student didn’t die, but they did transfer back home right before everyone started to really worry. Back when pulling kids from school or driving down south seemed reactive. I wonder if that student is dead now too.

You look like Jerry fucking Garcia, I think to myself, as I absentmindedly pass a mirror, latched to a wall splitting between two small bathrooms. The shirt is tie dye but was also the only thing I knew with some-certainty hadn’t been touched by anyone else in some time.

I hate tie dye.

Two students used to share this space and now it’s mine. I’m on the third floor- the top one. Below me is a floor of classrooms and a small lab; sandwiched by the common area and offices at bottom. Few of the rooms are used now for what they once were, but I still think of them by name. This is still Dorm #58, even though it’s also now my home.

Sometimes I wonder how much easier this would have been if we were trapped in the building with the cafeteria across campus, or even up the hill in the nurse’s clinic, but here we are.

If it were just me, I would probably not go about my Morning Routine in the way I once did. I used to wash my face quickly with a minty smelling cleanser, swipe my T-zone with a toner or two, and add a dose of sunscreen before walking out the door. I’ve never liked makeup much, or taking time on my hair, but I do like feeling clean; centered.

My hair has gotten so long … but it’s getting thinner too. My joints hurt more and more with every passing day, and I wonder if I should start doing more pull-ups on the wooden bar that used to be a clothing rack inside the vast built-in wardrobe which formally housed teenage clothes. Even though it feels silly, I quickly finish five pull ups, wondering when the wood will break. I used to be able to do fifteen a hundred-and-something days ago, but the less food we have and the longer we’re here, the shorter my routine becomes.

I did hot yoga twice a week, I think to myself for no other reason than to remind myself who I used to be. I did headstands in my living room.

Only I touch this room now. Only I touch the clothing-pull-up-bar and double toilets (which I use interchangeably for no reason at all except the symbiosis of alternating rituals makes me feel less out of control). Only I touch the heavy wooden wardrobe doors which are always left open by me, because even empty of all belongings, I can’t fight the urge that something might be hiding inside. That what I’ve heard clawing outside the long silver door downstairs will find me sooner or later for all the times I’ve ignored it.

I know that none of us have the condition… but I can’t help but dream of wiping down every hinge and handle, wishing some of the students who walk these halls didn’t have to use their hands to walk the halls.

I can’t wipe anything down, but I apply two pairs of gloves hastily before stepping out. We managed to procure them from the janitor’s closet months ago. However, we didn’t have enough to go around, so some of us have resorted to wrapping our hands in left over fabric, or harvested materials, or wrappers from the stale sandwiches we’ve long since eaten.

There is no evidence that wearing gloves makes any difference… but it can’t hurt.

It can’t hurt, I think all the time, multiple times a day. It can’t hurt.

Except it can. And it did. And now most of humanity is seemingly dead outside our door, and we have no idea how many are still alive… if any.

I do the Morning Routine because I know that’s what the students need from me right now. I still remember when we built their plans together after I first arrived; laminating them in the machine adjacent to the break room.

I was so excited to finally be working back then. To be doing what I’d always wanted to do, even when lovable dumb asses like my lovable dumb ass brother didn’t get what I did to begin with. It felt good to see people that no one else bothered seeing. To not be made “sad” by them like the Sunauras of the world.

“I’m waiting, Pearl!” I say as chirpily as possible, thinking fuck the Sunauras of the world inside my head. 

Pearl is my favorite, even though I’ll never say that out loud. “I love all my students,” I used to say to Dr. Jake when he’d ask me how I was doing in that sympathetically condescending way he always had of speaking. The papers in his room said Dr. Jacobi Gerome Nova the Third, but he insisted we call him Dr. Jake regardless. He thought it made him feel approachable, ‘one of us’… but his insistence on trying to be one of us made him not one of us at all.

Pearl didn’t have as many mobility needs as some of the other students… she wasn’t even fully Deaf Blind… but she was the happiest person I’d ever met. And not in that trope sort of way (where anyone with a disability is jovial and loving and ready to inspire), but just in the sense that she really liked me and I really liked her and that worked for us.

“Pearl,” I said, as loudly as possible incase her hearing aids weren’t on yet, “You ready?” We were down to some of the very last batteries foraged from the audiologist’s office on the ground floor, and I wasn’t sure what we were going to do once hers finally died since we can’t touch.

All of my adaptive methodologies are going out the window lately… but I have a few ideas still up my sleeve. I just need time to test them... And Morning Routine is not that time. 

Pearl knows the routine involves waking up, brushing our teeth with the pasty-porridge of baking soda and water we salvaged from the midfloor bathroom when all the dorm toothpaste ran out, and brushing our hair with our fingers. My hair is easy enough to ignore – neither super straight, nor super wavy- but Pearl has natural hair, and the inability to properly care for it is making me want to drop all pretense and help her.

I can’t.

I can’t help Pearl with anything… because I can’t touch her.

I can’t help my student with sensory deficiencies learn how to navigate our new world…

Because the rest of the world is being robbed of theirs and we don’t know who’s next.

Continued Tomorrow.

** Thumbnail Art Credit: Unsure/Unknown **