Doomsday Diary

Merrick County Nebraska was never a very large town, but after the virus, there was rarely a soul in sight as Gretta James peaked from the tiny attic window daily. She reluctantly geared up in her one-piece long-sleeve pants jumpsuit, quickly threw her wavy light brown hair into a messy ponytail and put on her gas mask. “This is not how I imagined my 30’s going, but fuck it! Here goes nothing!”, she said. It was time to leave the attic or her childhood home and face the new world, ravaged and complicated by the Myoloma-44 Virus which took the world by storm on October 20th, 2021. Over 20 million died in the past 6 months, including her husband as the airborne virus spread like wildfire throughout the modern world. Although apprehensive, Gretta knew that her survival depended on her finding food and supplies.

With her 9 mm in tow, she left through the rear of the house making sure to set up things so she would know if anything was moved upon her return. She headed to the local Pick and Spend Grocery store which was about a 10-minute walk. Cars were stopped and abandoned in the strangest places with doors left open, and some had dead people slumped over inside. She couldn’t tell if they had all died from the virus or other causes and she was not going to investigate and find out. As Gretta reached her destination, she walked in cautiously and grabbed all the canned goods, canned meats, and water she could fit into her knapsack and high-tailed it back towards her house. As she walked up Neander Dr. She noticed a little girl who appeared to be 9 to 10 years old standing on the sidewalk facing her. This virus was serious, and she didn’t want to catch it from anyone no matter how old or young they were. As Gretta approached, the girl said, “You’re the lady in my dream, you can fix it!” I’m just trying to survive, I’m sorry I can’t help you. Go home and get inside before it gets dark. It’s not safe to be out at night,” Gretta said. As she walked past the girl she turned to ask where she lived, and the girl was gone. The sun was beaming off a shiny silver object on the ground in the same place the girl was standing. Gretta walked back to the spot the girl once stood in and said “Hello, where did you go?” Dead silence plagued the streets once again. By now Gretta was close enough to see that the shiny object was a silver heart-shaped locket on a chain. She picked it up and secured it in a Ziplock sandwich bag.

“Home sweet home I’m glad to see you again,” said Gretta as she got home and made sure her traps had not been moved by intruders. She dumped her grocery store haul onto the kitchen floor and first sprayed everything with a combination of alcohol and water, then wiped them down with paper towels and sprayed the items with Lysol. She let the items sit to ensure the best sanitation of the cans, bottles, and other packaging. She removed the back with the locket and wiped it down with a washcloth dipped in hot water and bleach. It didn’t tarnish, so it must be silver, she thought. She hadn’t seen a locket like this since she was a little girl. Her mother wore a locket like this around her neck when she was a little girl. She remembered seeing it on her mother’s neck when she would read to her before bed up until the tragic car accident that caused her untimely death. Gretta was only 5 years old when her mother died so she did not remember the specifics of the heart-shaped locket, only that it was silver like this one.

Gretta sprayed herself with Lysol from head to toe and then took off her protective gear. She sat down at the kitchen table and opened the locket and there was a flash and a loud booming roar like thunder inside the house, it became very windy. So windy that she closed her eyes and grabbed onto the table in utter fear and confusion. “Are you okay honey? It looks like you’ve seen a ghost” said Kenner, Gretta’s husband. Gretta gasped for air and uttered out the words “This can’t be. You died of the virus 6 months ago. I saw you as you took your last breath.” Kenner looked confused and asked “What the hell are you talking about? Are you having nightmares again? We need to call Dr. Gray if your medication is not working as it should because PTSD is a serious illness, and you need help!” Gretta was sitting in the same spot at the kitchen table but the food and duffle bag she carried it in, as well as her protective jumpsuit and gas mask, were nowhere in sight although she had just emptied and sat everything in the kitchen. “What day is it? What day is it!” she yelled. “Give me your phone, I need to know what today is!” She snatched Kenner’s phone, and the date was June 28, 2022. This could not be, that meant it was 8 months after the virus instead of 6 months. Before she left the house for supplies, she was alone and the date on her phone was April 4, 2022. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and the date said June 28, 2022, now. As she scrolled through her photos that had been taken throughout the pandemic, they were suddenly all blurry. “Am I in the fucking Twilight zone?” she whispered and sobbed. Either she was going crazy, or it was a dream were the only logical explanations she could think of. It was too real to be a dream, she remembered the smell of rotting flesh, the sound of police sirens, the painful silence of continued solitude for months on end. It was the locket! Something happened when she opened that locket.

As Gretta walked around the house, she noticed slight differences in the way the furniture was arranged and the color of things such as the backsplash in the kitchen. She had chosen black subway tile for her counter backsplash, but the subway tile was white now. As she looked at her husband carefully and went in for a hug, she noticed a mole on his right upper cheek that was not there before, she would have noticed it in their seven years of marriage had it been there before. Suddenly Gretta began to realize that this was her husband and her home, but this was not the Universe she was from or knew. Could it be that the multiverse theory and the Mandela effect were true? She asked Kenner if he knew about the Mandela effect and he responded, “Who is Mandela?” She searched and there was no record of Nelson Mandela online as the former President of South Africa. This is a lot to take in, but she had her husband back despite minor differences and the pandemic had never occurred in this timeline.

When Kenner went to work the next day, Gretta wrapped the locket up in cloth and put it in a metal lockbox and buried it as deep as she could dig in the backyard. She had beat the virus and escaped death and destruction for the time being and nothing was going to interfere with that. She planted a rose bush over the area she buried the heart-shaped locket and never mentioned it again.