Hey, as I’m putting this up, Pfizer has today reported they have a hopeful vaccine, which WHOO-FREAKIN-HOOOOO! It’s hard to be melancholy with that news. But! I wrote this earlier, and frankly, if I kept a non-relevant post down every time something exciting was happening in this country… you know the rest of that sentence. Anyway, I wanted you to know, I’m happy today! But if you want my unadulterated homicide adjacent melancholy , here it is!

Also: If you are someone squicked out by feet, stop short of the photos on bottom.

#

You’ve burnt through all your adrenaline. You only want to sleep. You are at all times half-asleep: Not tired. Not quite sad yet.

Although as a general credo, you do hate everyone. That’s fair, right?

The news about Aggressor dies down. Still, you circle, vulture-like, to all the articles. They’re still there, but old news doesn’t give you that hit you need. No pop of adrenaline with some new horror.

Some unfamiliar number calls and leaves a message. A voice, garbled, perhaps alarmed even. You listen twice, heart in your throat.

“That’s a butt dial,” your spouse says when you play it for him. Oh yeah. Of course it is.

“…what did you think it was?” he asks.

You remain silent as you do not want to admit an elaborate fantasy in which Aggressor has called from prison but maybe gotten beaten while waiting for your machine.

Last week, it was all closeness and love with you and spouse. But now there are things you can’t say to him. Like this. You don’t know why exactly. It’s just too ghoulish somehow.

You expand your circling old news circle.

A few days later, in what seems like a Life Lesson, one of the top 3 spots when you google Aggressor’s name now is something about HVACS. Incredible as it seems, that old adage is completely true: Day old news lines the bottom of birdcages.

You realize that’s what the circling was about. Victim remained vestigially alive while news kept coming out. New details meant new ways to understand. As the internet stories go cold, nothing more is ever going to happen, as far as Victim is concerned.

You think perhaps Victim’s ghost, or the possibility of their ghost, will likewise fade away. There is no jarring new thing to boost your adrenaline up to the levels that might help a hallucination out.

OK, I’ll sleep you think.

So you do. But you are tired when you wake up.

There is a moment about exactly a week after all that where you think, Wow, I am over it. I feel the light on the other side. Things are going to get better and better from here on out, I can feel it.

You tell your spouse. He agrees! He’s been feeling the same way!

Of course this happens. Horrible tragedy or no, 2020 has trained you to Olympic medalist levels of compartmentalization and refusal to process.

But about once a day, you wonder if Aggressor will call. Why hasn’t Aggressor called? Will it be as if Aggressor died too, in terms of never hearing from them again?

You don’t know why it’s a question. If Aggressor called, you wouldn’t pick up the phone, just like you didn’t when you thought it might’ve been them before. There is nothing Aggressor could say you’d want to hear. You are actually kind of relieved you do not have to deal with making the decisions that would come with hearing that SOMEONE FROM JAIL IS CALLING YOU DO YOU ACCEPT? recording.

But still, you wonder if you can write off  Aggressor, if this means there is an unspoken promise they will never contact you again.

Maybe this is just the last new thing you are waiting for.

Maybe whatever Aggressor could tell you about the end– and the fact you don’t know what it is, only that it remains out in the universe somewhere — is that last little flicker of Victim still being alive in some way.

#

Your dodgy cat, the one that doesn’t like to be pet ever, but will sometimes pet you, calls you out and pets you for several minutes.

And when you try to go do something else, she cries until you come back, and pets you some more. This happens three times in a row, and of course, you think she must need love, you’ve ignored her five years and that was long enough, you are friends now.

You go to pet her, and she darts away.

So this is over, you think, and try to go about your business. But then she creeps back and cries until you stand still long enough for her to start petting you again. You wonder if she might be stressed about the elections, or possibly the passing almost-presence of Victim in the house these past few days.

But there’s no way to tell her it’s gonna be OK, because you don’t speak cat.