Survivor: A Novel

“Actually, it’s awfully boring stuff. Anticipating the future based on the past. We might as well be an insurance company; nevertheless, it’s our job to make cult suicide look fresh and exciting every time around.”

It’s music as wallpaper, utilitarian, music as Prozac or Xanax to control how you feel. Music as aerosol room freshener.

Because the only difference between a suicide and a martyrdom

Since change is constant, you wonder if people crave death because it’s the only way they can get anything really finished.

You realize that people take drugs because it’s the only real personal adventure left to them in their time-constrained, law-and-order, property-lined world.

People used what they called a telephone because they hated being close together and they were too scared of being alone.

What people forget is a journey to nowhere starts with a single step, too.

Even getting munched on by zombies beats the idea that I’m only flesh and blood, skin and bone. Demon or angel or evil spirit, I just need something to show itself. Ghoulie or ghosty or long-legged beastie, I just want my hand held.

Not that I’m crazy or anything, I just want some proof that death isn’t the end. Even if crazed zombies grabbed me in some dark hall one night, even if they tore me apart, at least that wouldn’t be the absolute end. There would be some comfort in that.

To stand here and try to fix her life is just a big waste of time. People don’t want their lives fixed. Nobody wants their problems solved. Their dramas. Their distractions. Their stories resolved. Their messes cleaned up. Because what would they have left? Just the big scary unknown.