chapter one.

"that damn squirrel is at it again. i can hear it, gnawing on the plastic bucket for the birdfeed. stupid squirrel. stupid me - i started feeding the birds too early. now i have to wait until the damn squirrel hibernates of whatever they do, half-hibernate or something. stupid squirrel. fuzzy rat. stupid me. fuzzy thinking. it's fat, too, i don't know why it doesn't stop. i hit the window and rattle the blinds to scare him off but he knows i can't hurt him. i'll have to call the neighbor boy again for him to shoo that nasty rodent away. i'll do that."

that was his last letter. the single page was torn near the bottom and he only sent me the bottom part. it's not signed and he never explained why he tore the paper or why he thought it so important to tell me about the birdfeed-eating squirrel. and i don't think any of his neighbors had sons young enough to be called boys. he was a strange man living in strange obsessions. but aren't we all? just because i personally choose not to be haunted publicly by my own illusions doesn't mean they're not hanging around like spirits around me and perhaps if you saw me in the back corner of some smoky bar with the dim light just right and the pool table's green sheen between us and my hand on my dusty glass and my eyes on the clean liquid, perhaps if you looked above me and around me you could see them hovering and spinning, trying to get my neurons to misfire and my hand to reach for the gun, thin wispy gray half-translucent shapes of doom. but perhaps not. most people would simply see a barfly, someone dressed to fit the part, shoulders hunched, a grim grin, dirt and an aura of don't come hither. who's to know really what people see. it has always fascinated me how little i know of how others perceive things. i've never been somebody else! d'uh, of course not, right? but how can i pretend to know what others feel and think just from my little single stupid experience? just because we all do it doesn't make it sane to me. just because there seems to be no other solution just now doesn't mean we're right. in fact when it comes to human i assume they're wrong most of the time. because i am. so we're back to it. i have very little scientific insight but whatever little bit i have tells me that any observation on humans taken from my own, single human point of view, is necessarily flawed. and since we each have nothing else to go on beyond cold observation, it stems that most of what we assume others to know or think or feel or want and all their why's are necessarily flawed and just plain wrong.

all this to say that others frighten me. well, i think they should frighten anybody in their right mind but who am i to judge what a right mind is, whether i have one, and what others should do. all i know is, they scare me. just like pretty much everything does but if you stop at that, if you - no, i - if i stop to think about all that scares me or could if i thought about it, i probably wouldn't leave this apartment much. and in fact, i don't. leave this apartment much. but it's not because of all that i think about that induces fear. i have my own reasons, which you don't know about because you're not me. see what i mean? things can get complicated when you - i - want to be exact. and i don't even know why i want to be exact because nobody else seems to care about exactitude anymore, not the kings ruling nations, not school teachers teaching, not pupils misbehaving. i care. but in this as in everything i may be alone. which is the ultimate fear of others, i guess - the fear that there are no others. i think about deserted islands sometimes. then i wonder who'd deliver my groceries. i think about the end of the world, if i was left all alone the infamous day after. i've decided i'd start walking south before the winter came. because there'd be no power, right, and all the cars would be wherever they were when it - whatever it was - hit and the roads would be blocked with cadaver-filled hunks of metal and i guess the smell would be horrible so perhaps i'd keep the highway at a safe distance but i'd follow it because it goes south and knows the country better than i do. i think if i was that alone i'd want to be somewhere nice. perhaps near the equator, somewhere where i imagine coconuts to fall from the sky at my feet and lobsters to hop out of the sea on my plate, already boiled and crimson. and when i've gone over it all in my mind, i realize how ridiculous it is to think about why i'd be the only survivor. and also, i realize i don't know how to crack a coconut open.

how to open a coconut, easy version. first, hold the coconut over a bowl in one hand so that the coconut's midriff rests in the middle of my palm, with the tip on one hand and the eyes on the other. then, whack the coconut with the back or blunt side of a cleaver a few times all around the center until it cracks open into two halves. third, catch the juice in the bowl.

i didn't know coconuts had midriffs, tips or eyes. i think i'd better buy a few and try to figure out the nut's body parts before anything too final happens and i'm stuck starving surrounded by coconuts. i must also remember, when i start walking, to bring a meat cleaver and a bowl. the meat cleaver might come in handy too. in my fantasy, the whatever that hits the planet only kills humans, and then only humans who aren't me. i figured it would be more interesting for me that way. with animals i mean. and without my death adding to the billions of others.