Three decks of success. Three in a row. Seems like an amazing feat, and if there was money on it, it would have been quite spectacular. But when one considers it was merely Windows Solitaire then really, what is there to celebrate?
Maybe the fact that I’m still breathing, still alive, and they still haven’t found me yet. They’ve been searching for over a month now, I know, I can feel it, and yet I have somehow eluded them without moving. I stayed in one place, waiting, and still they haven’t come. Surrounded by my books and cartons of cigarettes, filled with a loneliness I can barely understand or describe, I never left my spot and yet I seem to have thwarted them.
I look over at the volumes I’ve used to hide myself from what’s really happening; Stephen King, Peter Straub, Richard Matheson (the matching dvd still sitting next to the player), my ventures into fantasy with Terry Pratchett, David Gemmel, David Eddings again. I keep returning to Eddings, like some crackhead swearing he’d hit rock bottom but always returning for his fix. Not that Eddings is bad, don’t get me wrong, just that I’ve read his books probably about seven times each in my twenty four years of life. I’ve read and reread Matheson’s one over and over again, searching for some form of relevance to the film’s adaptation, and finding small satisfaction in that the alternate ending of I Am Legend is much better than the original one, but still lacks the punch. I keep landing on the realization that unfortunately Hollywood makes more money off of the stupid people than those with brains. Sometimes I cry about it. I don’t know why; maybe it’s the Robert Neville inside of me.
I’ve been here for over three months now. Put myself in recluse for fear of my own problems, not realizing that my arrival here would only make it that much worse. Its fine how isolation can bring everything into stark contrast; make you see through the greys and find the whites and blacks a lot further separated than you thought they were. And truly, I am in isolation.
If I walk outside my front door, I can see nothing but the ocean. To the left of me, a wide expanse of forest climbs up a mountainside, a sight that used to bring images of Orcs and Elves racing across its flanks to mind. As a child, this place was where I found my love of worlds other than these. That was back when I had a family. That was before I ran.
But understand me, my recent pogrom had nothing to do with them; they had been dead long before that. No, I left suburbia and the rush of Johannesburg for this haven because it was one of my few links to my family. And because of what I had to escape there. The beast within the machine of that city, that creature that digs its claws in and drags you screaming into its maw, and then once you’ve been engulfed you find yourself merely falling into a further hell beyond that of digestive juices into a nightmare of servitude. Yet you can’t see your shackles or your cage, but still feel the noose tightening around your neck every time your pace falters.
And so I find myself in this place. This dream of existence, this peaceful panorama of hermitic study and calm. No wonder my dad loved this place so much. He worked these gardens and reinforced this wooden cottage. He slaved away on the driveway to reduce the sharp incline. Everywhere around me I can almost see him, feel his safe presence, sense his laughter and good nature pervading this place. No wonder I can’t leave it. No wonder I can’t abandon it for them to defile when they finally discover it.
Maybe that’s why I haven’t left; maybe because I chose my last stand, my fort to launch whatever attack I can when they come. And I have definitely prepared myself; there’s salt around the perimeters, salt on the windowsills and doorways. Every day I check the trip wires attached to small crossbows I’ve hidden across the entrances. I have a routine, but then all paranoid people do. And paranoid I may be, but if you knew what was hunting me, you’d be paranoid too.
To explain what they are, I have to tell you a story, a very long story. one that explains why something so evil, so unreal could exist and why it is chasing me. Why I am my own Robert Neville, why in this case I am legend but, unlike him, I have a lot more to lose and I am no reaper of those who stalk to dark.
My name is Patrick Schwinn. Listen closely and you can hear my tale…
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