Inkwell 2018-2019

Bricks by Gwen Hawdon

Staring out a window is not much fun when beyond the window there is only a brick wall. I count brick after brick after brick, 805 bricks to be exact. I’ve counted and re-counted and counted again. I’ve even gone as far as to start naming them. Once or twice I struck up a conversation with one of them. I’m not insane of course. Although sometimes, the bricks do talk back. They talk about all sorts of things, but mostly they tell me the things happening beyond the wall. Beyond the brick. Beyond this building in which I’m imprisoned. They tell when the trees have begun to lose their leaves, or when the old man mows the grass. They tell me the colors of the sunset, and that a stray dog moved into the neighborhood. They tell me all of the things that I am missing. All of the things I may never see again. And I know it’s all in my head, but sometimes their voices sound so real. But maybe it is simply the sickness. The plague eating away at my brain, eating away at my body. The damned sickness that is keeping me locked inside this damned brick hospital. It wasn’t always a hospital, but when the hospitals fill up, it doesn’t matter much what a building used to be as long as there’s room to stack some not-quite-yet-corpses. Did you know that the average housefly can lay up to 500 eggs? And those 500 flies only live up to about 28 days? So let me tell you, when you see people literally drop like flies, it’s a little overwhelming. The thing is, these people aren’t just sick, they are dying. Every single one of those 500 flies can see the light. You would think that this would scare me. It used to, but as days drag on, death becomes less frightening and more tedious.

This is where the bricks come back into the story. There aren’t many people to talk to around here. They tend to be sleeping or, well, dying. Which leaves me, sitting alone next to my window, counting the 805 bricks. Naming the bricks. And occasionally, talking to them. I’m not angry anymore. I used to be mad at the people who didn’t have to sit in this building. Those who could breathe fresh air and talk to their neighbors, but I’ve accepted it now. Some people are immune to the incurable plague, and others just aren’t. It may not seem fair, but life was never fair and, frankly, neither is death. I used to think there was a point to life. Now I realise how wrong I am. There is no big plan for the human race. We are simply animals, slowly going extinct. We are no greater than dinosaurs, no more important than the wooly mammoth, truly as useless to the world as the dodo bird. Soon enough, we’ll all be gone. Maybe not with this plague, but certainly with another. The human race is not infinite. We are not immortal. Only 5,000,000,000 years until the sun explodes. It may seem like a lot now, but I promise you when the sun turns big and red, all you will hear is that our time came too soon. Because people believe that they will leave a mark on this world, but when the sun blinks out, there will be no one who ever knew we existed. No one will ever kiss our corpses or taste our blood. No one will learn our languages or write our letters. No one will ever find the rubble of the brick wall that the dying girl got her daily news from. No one will ever know.

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