Rancho Tarzanadu: "Quarantine"

     

     Miss Linda didn’t even know where to start! The entire world had come to a screeching halt due to the Coronavirus, which the Overlord was petulantly blaming on China, when actually the real culprits were bats. Miss Linda had always loved bats, especially since she had many in her own belfry, but these bats were a completely different story. She had abandoned her secret serial critique of “Overlord L’Orange” because it had become so soul-numbing and emotionally devastating. And things had only gotten worse. So much worse. So horrible, in fact, that if one was to write a Sci-Fi Horror novel about the situation, no one would actually believe it was true. No one would believe that our “President” could be such an incompetent Boob that everyone would have to quarantine themselves indefinitely for fear of imminent spread of plague and death. 
     Miss Linda was especially upset because she had just purchased several Spring dresses, joined various (now disbanded) Pagan Meet-Up groups, and had enrolled in a Music Recording class at Los Angeles Pierce College. Now she was destined to wear floral-print Mumus or pajama sets with socks at home, with only her cats and not-so-new-but-still-unfamiliar housemates, who were jumbled up on top of each other, arguing over toilet paper and who ate the last egg, and generally getting on each other’s nerves. The Mime was especially irritating, which was ironic because he said the least. His body language was overpowering at times, requiring lots of elbow room. And those big, watery eyes. Miss Linda chose him as a housemate initially because she thought he would be easy to live with (she liked quiet types), but he seemed to be in every room she entered, like one of her cats; silent, but lurking.

     And then there was Manuel! Or there he wasn’t. He had been held in Guantanamo Bay since the General and Little Johnny had disappeared into the Vortex several months ago. Ten months ago, to be exact. She had been running Rancho Tarzanadu all by herself, and she was beginning to realize that Manuel had never really done anything to help her, because things had been going much more smoothly without him around. But that made her miss him even more. She had not been distracted in a long time, and she found her new-found focus a little on the intense side. When was the last time she had just lied around in the grass? Or made a piece of broken-doll-art jewelry? Or sat her ass down at the piano? It had been a long time. Now with this State-enforced quarantine and the world going mad, she wanted to return to what made her truly happy, instead of running in constant circles like a gerbil on a wheel, making money for “the Man”. Although the whole system was now falling apart, literally, right before her eyes.

     Where would she wear her sparkly Irregular Choice shoes now? To wait in line at Target at 7:00 AM, hoping for paper towels and hand sanitizer? She begrudgingly wafted herself downstairs, kimono swirling behind her, to make a peanut butter and banana sandwich. It was past midnight, but she couldn’t sleep. The owls were hooting outside her bedroom window, and the coyotes howling intermittently in the distance, packs of them growing larger and larger every evening by the sound of them. The Mime was at the kitchen table (what a surprise!), sitting in his chair backwards (what a surprise!). He scrubbed at his eyes with balled-up fists, indicating that he couldn’t sleep, either. Miss Linda rolled her eyes and sighed heavily, indicating her irritation at seeing him again. He made a “crying” face, with puckered lower lip, using his fingers to make “tear trickles” down his face. Miss Linda grabbed an overripe banana, a jar of Nutella, and the last of the Irish Soda Bread from the St. Patrick’s holiday that passed uncelebrated this year, and high-tailed it back upstairs, where the cats formed a ring around her while she ate, then as she dozed off into fitful dreams in which a defiant rubber Troll Key Chain with orange hair made major decisions about what happened to the rest of the world, and blamed it on Dung Beetles, which were immensely busy rolling their little piles of shit indefinitely up steep hills, that repeated and repeated again and again in an endless loop for all of eternity.