A Facelss Voice

“Hey, are you there?”  Roger called out, hopefully. Wishing he would go away, not in the mood to deal with him, I say nothing. Roger knows I am home as I am always home. We both know that if I don’t answer, he will ask again, every 15 minutes, until I relent.

“Yes, I’m here.”

Before the government made everyone stop working and stay home all day, Roger and I had never spoken. When transience, a once deplorable quality in a person, became rampant in my neighborhood, I quit trying to get to know my neighbors. It wasn’t worth it to get to know someone who might only live next to me for a few weeks, then never be seen or heard from again. Of course, now, everyone stays home. There are no more moving vans or new faces around here since the world closed.

“Tell me again that this is all temporary,” my faceless neighbored implored me.

“Everything is temporary, Roger,” I said, the 600^th time I had reminded him that week, “Nothing lasts. All storms pass, eventually.”

“But what if the businesses never open and we are all made to stay in our homes for forever, our books

being kept in the red by the government? What then?”

“Not going to happen, Roger, everything will go back to normal very soon,” I told him.

Halfway believing myself, I wondered, God, what if it doesn’t? What if this it, this half life of no future and no past, just money for food and time at home? It was much easier to keep an hysterical neighbor calm than myself, telling him what he so obviously wanted to hear and saying it as often as he wanted to hear it. I tried to ignore my negative thoughts as they led to nothing productive, just fear. Trying to assuage Roger’s worried mind was comforting to me, talking to him across the alley between our buildings. The phone system and internet had been ‘temporarily cancelled’ months ago by government. My conversations with Roger were his only connection to the outside world.

The only entertaining thing there is to do in the time of no jobs is talk and eat. Before the lockdown, I used to love going grocery shopping, meticulously picking out the ripest fruits and vegetables. Now, when anyone gets low on something, they write it down on a piece of paper and  put in our defunct mailboxes, as our mail service was also shut down ‘temporarily’, months ago. Someone collected the papers and took the list to, well, no one really knew where the food came from, but it shows up a few days later and the appropriate amount is taken from your bank account.

Or so it seems. No one can check their balances with no phone or computer, so we keep a running tally of our expenditures and hope for the best. The first of every month brought with it a huge amount of food to everyone’s doorstep, without asking. By my calculations, the months are all now 30 days. How the government reconfigured the calendar is beyond me and, stranger still, I seem to be the only one who noticed. No one cares how long since the last massive food drop. Most are too relieved to have food and essentials to really complain.

“Did you get your toothpaste?” Roger asked, knowing I had been running low.

“I did. It is some brand I have never heard of, though, with words on it written in a language I have never heard of. But it works, I guess,” I said, weakly.

“You ok, buddy, you sound a little down,” Roger asked.

“I’m fine, thanks,” I lied. Not being allowed out of your house and treated like a convict was taking a toll on me. A couple of us had been sneaking out at night as no one was watching us very hard and we needed to feel free, if only for a few hours. Most nights were a waste of time other than the exercise we got walking around. Last night, though, I wish I would’ve stayed home.

We had walked to the strip mall a few streets from our building and almost shit ourselves when we got there. There were hundreds and hundreds of women, standing quietly in lines, no men, no children, no belongings, just subdued women, standing there.  About 15 buses and 20 men with AK47’s were directing some of the women onto the buses. Suddenly, one of them started screaming.

“This is Fucking Bullshit!!“ she screamed at the to of her lungs ”I will NOT go quietly into that good night!! NO!! NO!! NO!! NO!!!,” she roared,” I will RAGE at the dying of light! Fuck you all,” she shouted, “Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight- yes, YOU, with the AK, you will not send me silently, you assho-“ POW, the butt of a gun slammed into the side of her head, her body crumpling on the ground like an empty balloon. “Shut up, bitch,”  the operator of the gun mumbled as he walked away.

The other women saw what happened. All of a sudden, about forty women, from both ends of the parking lot to the middle, started screaming ‘BULLSHIT’ and ‘NO!! NO!! NO!! NO!! NO!! NO!!’. Within seconds, hundreds of women joined in, no longer standing in lines but, bolstered by their numbers, slowly moving towards the men with guns. The men were ill prepared for the attack as it was thorough and unplanned. Not the sheep these men were told the women would be, assured that feminine timidity would partner with their stupidity and they would be no trouble, the women subdued their would-be captors with deft and deadly precision.

“Get on the motherfucking buses and follow me!!!!,” one of the women called out and in about a minute, the parking lot was quiet. The men lay on the ground in stillness, the buses speeding their way to some final destiny, whether peaceful or dramatic, we would never know. We walked back to the perceived safety of our homes, quietly, unsure what the freedom of those women had to do with our own, hoping they were intertwined somehow.