We parked a few blocks Northeast of the hospital and walked. My father took long strides and only looked ahead, my mom clacked along beside him at a fast trot. I never tried to keep up.
We stood at the stoplight waiting to cross the street and it began to rain. Orange cones went through the intersection stopping all traffic. There was a long line of cars being redirected to turn right: and my father had thought that waking up early would beat the crowd.
“Hurry up, Dan,” my mother would periodically shout over her shoulder as we made our way down the street. Her back was slanted awkwardly, bent on moving fast. I kept my hands in my coat pockets and lowered my head to avoid getting rain in my eyes. There were a lot of people down the street, they were idling still another block from the hospital.
“What on Earth?” my mother exclaimed.
“We’ll just have to wait longer than we thought,” I heard my father mumble.
“Oh, great, this is just what we need,” my mother said bitterly.
“Shut up, Brenda,” my father said. They were silent.
When we got close we could see that there was a line of people behind the gate into the parking lot. My mother pushed me forward to keep up. There were a lot of nurses in pastel scrubs escorting people through the gates, those in orange vests blocking the entry, and police guards spread about.
They were sorting people into the line and putting a green band on their wrists as they walked through. The last time I’d seen a line that long was at Disneyland, which frightened me. The towering grumpy people scared me, and I could never see anything.
The crowds swarmed towards what they thought would bring them satisfaction: parades, castles, tea-cups, pirates. “Be happy, today you will be happy,” my father instructed. How could I not be?
In reality I couldn’t hold down my food as Dumbo made me fly, clumsy and slow. It was hot and I kept pestering my mother for a lemonade, a strawberry lemonade. I’d just about given up on feeling good until I saw the Monstro ride. The big blue whale’s mouth was open, ready to consume. I was fascinated and horrified because it was real, “I’m Pinocchio!” real. All I remember was darkness and the smell of chlorine. Then the row of jagged teeth appeared, cutting through the sky as we emerged from Monstro’s mouth. We barely made it.
“Children have priority,” someone in an orange vest shouted catching my attention. My father gripped my hand and dragged me to the front. A nurse put wristbands on some other kids and I.
“1112, 1113, 1114…” she muttered to herself as we passed through.
I looked back at my parents, who were being directed to the very end of the line. “We’ll see you soon, watch your phone,” my mother shouted after me. I nodded. The people in the line next to us stared as we passed by, their faces torn between contempt and pity for the kids who got to move to the front. There were people who looked like parents, professionals, the hip, and the elderly: an assorted mix. They followed us with their eyes.
The line stretched on until a person was indecipherable from the next, where everyone looked the same. When we reached the front the people in scrubs told us to “wait patiently” until we were seen to. They walked away to escort the next batch of kids. I stood there staring at the girl in front of me for a while. She kept shifting her weight, exchanging her umbrella from one hand to the other. She looked all around her, back and forth.
“What?” She caught my eyes.
“Nothing,” I replied. She scoffed and then looked away. “This is so boring,” she mumbled as she pulled out her iPhone, trying to ignore me.
“What’s the rush, honey?” a guy from behind me retorted. He was very tall and had a wry smile.
“Don’t call me that,” the girl snapped back. She flipped her hair as if to brush him off. He studied her for a while, lips pursed.
“So, what’s your name?” He asked as he turned, facing me instead.
“Dan,” I answered. “You?”
“I’m Adam,” he said. “Do you live around here?” he asked.
“Kind of, it’s a ten minute drive. Why?”
“Oh, I’ve just seen a lot of people that don’t look like they do. I live down the street,” he said.
“In the ghetto,” the girl in front of us remarked, her back turned.
“Snooty-Bitch is talking to me! Look at that.” Adam tried to sound excited. He winked at me.
“Don’t call me that, it’s degrading.” She turned her head slightly to glare at him, and then went on pretending to ignore us again.
“A feminist, I wouldn’t have guessed,” he chuckled, seeming to be amused by her. On a second look I supposed I could see that her clothes did look expensive. I didn’t know anything about brand names, but they just seemed that way. Adam had on a worn leather jacket that was too big for him, it looked warm.
“Why did we all wake up so early for this?” Adam asked aloud as he stretched.
“My parents are big on being early birds,” I answered.
“It doesn’t really make a difference when the neighborhood has cats, now does it? Birds are just birds then,” Adam tried to say as a matter-of-fact.
“Yeah, I guess so,” I laughed anxiously. “How long do you think this will take?”
“God knows,” he exhaled.
I tried looking behind us towards the gate, I couldn’t see my parents anywhere. I checked my phone but saw nothing. I figured the sun would have been rising right about then, it was obscured behind the rain clouds. The crowd was starting to grow larger behind the entry gates.
“Speaking of cats, do you have any?” Adam reigned my attention back in.
“Um, no. I don’t really like cats, actually,” I tried to put it softly.
“Are you human?” he mocked.
“Yeah, I just have really bad allergies is all,” I said.
“Okay, I forgive you. I’ll be civil,” he patted my wet shoulder, neither of us had umbrellas. “You really should be thankful, I’m supposed to dislike you because I had a cat named Jonah,” he stopped, noticing my surprise. “Well, what can I say? My parents were hyper-Christian.” He drew his collar up and stuffed his hands into his large pockets. “Anyways, guess why he got his name,” he smiled.
“Because he was a prophet to mice,” I laughed. “No, I dunno’.”
“Because he ate the fuck’n whale,” he said as if it were obvious. “Or at least I thought so when I was little, and the cat was ginormous, that was my logic.” His eyes wrinkled a lot on the sides when he smiled.
How could you live in the underbelly? I thought that our insides were a vast open space. You could set up camp in a whale, like Geppetto. The rib cage would be the exposed planking of a ceiling, and the mushy intestines the interior decor: mod, red, and steamy. I thought you could light a flame to lead you out, but the moisture would just consume it.
“I guess you could say that about me too,” I said self-consciously to the tips of my feet.
“Oh, jeez, I didn’t mean to offend you. I didn’t mean it like that, really,” he said in earnest. He silently muttered to himself.
“It’s fine, man,” I assured him. “So a cat ate the whale… which ate Jonah,” I continued, “Now that’s just original.” He smiled as if thanking me, and we were distracted from all the commotion for just a second longer.
Snooty-Bitch scoffed at me again, and it pissed Adam off. “Chill out, we’re going to be here for a while, and you’re stuck in your spot, so you might as well,” he said to the back of her head.
“I’m not stuck here, please. My dad is going to come and get me any second. This is a waste of time,” she said in an exasperated tone.
“It’s your loss,” Adam said gravely.
She left five minutes later. “I don’t know how she’s going to get out. This is compulsory, that’s why they have police patrolling shit,” Adam said.
“You should be more careful,” a nurse said as she passed by us with a group of little kids. “There are younger ears around you, you know.”
“Sorry!” Adam called out after her, caught off guard. We were silent for a while. The line had only moved up maybe twenty feet at most since I got there, and it had just begun raining harder.
An elderly woman behind us blinked up at the sky in dismay as it wet her curly wig, which she was frantically trying to cover with her manicured hands. “Goodness, no, no,” she went on and on. We all stood solidly, not flinching, or giving up as it rained down on the long line. “Why? This is crazy. Th-This is a breeding ground,” she realized in panic. “Nurse, nurse!” she shouted at a man in scrubs walking by, “Nurse! Can I have one of your masks?” she pleaded. He didn’t hear her over the cried of the children that were steadily growing around us. “No, I’ll catch it before I get to the front. I’ll catch it,” she sobbed with the children. Everyone stared at her as she walked out of the line.
“I’m sure they won’t let her out either,” Adam said. I watched the woman hobble down the length of the line, until the splattering rain blurred her into the rest of the crowd.
“This is just another vaccine, we’ve been getting them forever,” I assured myself.
“Yeah, but have you seen what people have been posting about-“
“None of it’s consistent,” I cut Adam off. “How do we know how bad it is yet? We just got the vaccine,” I lashed out, getting more and more anxious. I didn’t know what to think.
“Really? Drink your milk, and swallow your drugs. Medicine made us gods, immune, salvation guaranteed. Natural selection: go fuck off,” he said sarcastically. “Because we have long lines: organized, impenetrable,” he said as he waved behind us. “Do you really believe that?”
“No. I don’t know, never mind,” I said, dismissing it.
The crowd that had been building up behind the hospital’s gates broke out into uproar. We all looked around in confusion. The tally had reached it’s maximum, and officers at the gates announced that they wouldn’t have enough vaccines for everyone that day.
“Come back on Tuesday,” the loudspeaker screeched, “Again, the next round will be shipped in on Tuesday.”
Then there was a sudden surge. People were ramming themselves into the gates with a rhythmic thud, those caught against the bars cried out. They were stepped on, made into human ladder. Thud, thud, thud: Monstro chomped away.
Those inside the gate stood and waited for the police to pull out their clubs. Everyone stood on edge, hungry, possessive of the small piece of slab beneath our feet: our spot in line. We watched the instigators being bludgeoned from a distance, hands pulled behind their backs. They dispersed the outsiders.
“Again, come back on Tuesday,” the loudspeaker kept repeating. They will come back to form another line.
We found God. He was old, he stood up but his back arched. As he stood, he let his wet blanket fall to the ground, and massive wings revealed themselves. He could have once been a magnificent bird, but his wings were lice ridden and looked like they’d been plucked in many places. He flapped them, timidly at first, blowing gusts of musty air and rain at our gaping faces. He lifted himself off the ground, slowly inching his way up above the cars, the streetlights, and the freeway. We could hear his wings flapping over the rioting and the hum of the city for a while.
God was clumsy and slow as he climbed into the sky.
Archives, Long Beach Polytechnic, 2010年
Matthew Peyton, Creative Writing
“Powerful genre bending: pre/post-apocalypse, picture book, prophesy.
Consequential setting.
Unseen yet palpable forces.
Here is what I see in your writing, wonderful sensory detail imparting the specificity of a time and place; portals into other genres which comment upon the main narrative, great trust in your reader, allowing them to ask and answer their own questions and enter into shared mysteries, a powerful blend of sober realism and intrepid optimism. This is some of what you do; keep doing it.
MP”
Digitized as submitted for credit with the instructor’s handwritten feedback from the analog era.
行き止まり 