Cabin Fever

  Entry 007:

Reading back on some of my previous scrawlings, I find that I am quite the fatalist. Sure, I’m probably going to die out here in this blizzard-beaten cabin. And I really do think that every night is my last. My thoughts are plagued with thoughts of what it will feel like to freeze to death. If it happens in my sleep, I’m sure I’ll hardly notice (though I might have some really messed-up dreams in direct correlation to the deep chills my body will feel). But if it happens while I’m awake – the onset of hypothermia – I wonder what it might be like. They say that drowning feels like you’re falling asleep. But they don’t tell you what freezing to death might feel like. I doubt it’s like falling asleep, but I do wonder if there comes a time when you cease to feel the freeze. Maybe it won’t be so bad in the end.

In conjunction with this, I find that I refer (perhaps too often) to my “audience” as imaginary or most likely non-existent. I have no doubts that I will be lacking an audience for these scrawlings of mine, seeing as the likelihood of anybody finding them is astronomical. I don’t even know where I’m at exactly, and it’s likely that this cabin may never have another visitor or tenant; our future is still quite precarious. Heck, even if humanity rebuilds some semblance of its former self, this cabin might just be rubble under twenty feet of snow. It sure seems as though it’ll be swallowed up in this current blizzard. (How the sky can hold so much frozen precipitation in one place – and for such an extended period of time – is mind-boggling.)

Yet I still write…without a prospective audience, I still write…

Whether this place kills me or not, it will certainly rob me of my sanity before I die. It’s already stolen a portion of it. My scrawlings are proof of this. Paradoxically, though, they also help me retain bits of myself, extending the process of going completely bonkers. Or so I think…

But I have digressed…back to my earlier point: fatalism. Well, to be more precise: my overuse of fatalist statements. As when I called myself out for being my own peanut gallery, I shall now call myself out on my fatalism. From here on out, I’ll try to avoid such statements as “perhaps I will freeze tonight” or “hopefully I’ll survive the night.” Henceforth, these possibilities will simply be implied. And then, if my story is incomplete, my fan-base (har-har) will understand that I died here. Maybe there will also be a detailed footnote about the state in which my body was found – I could be an archaeological specimen! And then, if I were to reanimate after death, my body would be of more value in death than it has been in life. Just think about it: frozen, uninfected man reanimates as zombie after thawing – the implications!

(Writing longhand, one can easily forget that you can’t just edit out wild tangents by selecting and deleting, as one would do on a computer. Thus my tangents, like the one above, is now and forever apart of these memoirs – these scrawlings. My apologies.)

But really: the implications of such a thing…

Damn, how this predicament has altered me so…

Through all the years of this “apocalypse” – through all the hard-fought fables and follies of this scourge – I have always managed to avoid such a predicament. How I allowed such a fate to befall myself is still a mystery to me. I know the circumstances – I even had the opportunity to influence these circumstances to my benefit, however slim this chance may have been – and still I can’t believe it all. If only I had seen through the smokescreen sooner…I’ll never be able to forgive myself for all my inactions. From the deaths of all my closest friends all the way up until this late point in my life, my inactions have caused far too many untimely demises.

Heck, as I see it now, my imminent death is atonement for all the lives lost by the inaction of my idle hands. Which is okay in my book; this just means that the big wheel of Karma is working its way back to me. (It’s probably taken so long due to the overwhelming population of ingrates and assholes that this scourge has created or enabled – which, by my estimation, is most every remaining survivor…but that’s just my opinion on the matter.) Freezing to death must be the most suitable tenfold end for someone who’s frozen up in so many crucial situations. Which means that such a death probably won’t be so pleasant, after all.

Then again, maybe it will feel ten times as uneventful as every moment of failed courage. If this is the case, I guess the sensation will be more akin to the deepest, most hopeless sorrow; an empty, soulless sensation chillier than Neptune’s most remote tundra.

And so, with such epic fatalism staining these tattered pages, I must move on and leave these thoughts at the back of your head. For they are discouraging thoughts, and do nothing to further my tale – or whatever life it is I have carved out of this horrifyingly surreal life.

The blizzard is still berating me. I think it’s died down some. Perhaps I’ll even manage an excursion outside in the next day or so. If I don’t, then it may be malnutrition that takes me down before anything else. And when the weather does die down, I’m just hoping I’ll still have the energy to make my way out, and the poise to forage for whatever fruits this frozen wasteland has to offer. Being so late in the day already, I won’t be able to venture out today. But if it lets up by the morning, I’m sure I’ll have the wherewithal to forage tomorrow.

I’m still managing the disciplined rationing of firewood (somehow). I’m also doing well with my water supply; I now store bags of water under my armpits to keep them from freezing. This helps me ration both water and wood. My excrement remains problematic, despite my lack of solid waste. I have since been unwilling to recycle my urine, and pray that I’m dead or gone before resorting to such extremes. Though, I still face this quandary daily.

At least I haven’t put any serious thought into autocannibalism…

My waking periods have gotten shorter. I think I’m falling asleep as many as four times a day. But I can’t tell how long I sleep – sometimes I don’t even realize I’ve been asleep until I wake up – so I could be sleeping entire days away without knowing it. Everything is beginning to feel like a dream, and I think I’m even beginning to hallucinate (though I can’t be entirely certain of this with my grip on reality slipping away). Even now, as I grasp for my sanity with these scrawlings, shadows jump at me while the walls wheeze and whisper. More than once, I could swear I’d been tapped on the shoulder. I must admit: I did whip around to confront whoever it may have been. I kept expecting to find the stony stare of Death and his cold touch, but only ever found an empty cabin full of dancing shadows and the living, breathing walls that would surely gobble me up – in due time, of course. These walls are apparently content with torturing me for the time being.

There I go again, babbling the day away with my problems while ignoring the memoirs altogether. I apologize for this and will try to get some real work done at my next session. Maybe then I’ll have eaten something. As for now, I’m off to sleep with my painfully empty belly. Good night. May it not be the last.